Horizons of Digital Media Learning: Challenges of Game-based Design and Analytics

Dear Colleagues,

The horizons of game-inspired digital learning are widening via an ongoing revolution in digital media learning methods, design processes, and learning analytics. The landscape now includes ubiquitous computing, 3D devices, gamification of networked social interactions, physical sensor networks built from fit-bits, phones and mobile interactions, and new immersive digital media experiences supported by crowd-sourced and cloud-based data mining methods. This Special Issue will explore these and other new horizons of game-inspired digital learning with papers that take stock, summarize recent research, survey the field, and utilize and integrate indicative examples from a wide range of research programs into a prospective view into the near future.

The goal will be to engage with experienced researchers with well-founded insights into the future, who are free to express their reflections and hunches. The Special Issue will ask researchers to build upon what they know to paint a picture of the "adjacent possible" future based on their recent thinking, solid hints from basic research in theirs and other fields, and on feasible research programs that could be undertaken today if funding and time were made available. For example, recent advances in natural language processing and semantic analysis make it clear that machine-assisted feedback to learners will be an important feature of digital media learning. What might this mean for digital learning in the near future?

The method of the Special Issue will pose the following set of key questions for researchers.

Given what you’ve seen arising in research and practice in digital media, performance, and decision support and based on your own research as well as that of others, what are the key areas of research and development that excite you?

What interests you about these areas in terms of the potential benefits to learners, teachers and the practice of education?

What new or additional research and development is needed next to help push the field forward in these areas?

How do you think the new advances will influence game-inspired digital learning experiences (design, learning, research) in the near future?

You can throw caution to the wind, or if that is impossible, then what should the field be cautious about in relation to your thoughts about the near future?

Potential contributors are encouraged to be in touch by December 1, 2015 with preliminary ideas and an initial dialog with the Guest Editor. Authors will be identified by a snow-ball method to locate the leading edges of research in digital media learning, game-based learning, assessment in game-based learning, and similar fields.

The goal will be to acquire several short (four to six pages, 10–15 references) thought-provoking statements about the leading scientific edges of the field, in order to give readers an up-to-date window on the most recent and ‘soon-to-be developed’ thinking and practices. Peer review of the pieces will occur primarily among the authors since the expectations will be similar among this group and more distant to non-authors, and will be augmented by an editorial team.

I hope you are interested in this project and will consider making a contribution.

Dr. David C. Gibson
Guest Editor

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