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LISA GALARNEAU, M.Sc.
Lisa Galarneau, M.Sc. is
a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Screen and Media Studies at the
University of Waikato in New Zealand. Her research is focused on social
learning associated with virtual worlds. She also works at Microsoft
Games User Research doing usability
and playtesting on a variety of games
and contributes to
Terra Nova, a collaborative blog exploring virtual
worlds.
Lisa's research into the types of social learning associated with
virtual
worlds is inspired by her interest in the nature of learning, her
experiences as a gamer, and the research and opinions of a great number
of scholars, including John Seely Brown, Etienne Wenger, Jean Lave,
Henry Jenkins, T.L. Taylor, James Paul Gee, Constance Steinkuehler, Kurt
Squire, and countless others.
She is specifically interested in the phenomenon of self-motivated
social
learning in virtual worlds: how players self-organize and self-empower
to achieve mastery of a game or virtual space.
This interest covers various aspects of participation, community,
learning and self-organization:
- How players self-organize into temporary and more permanent
groupings and assist each other in learning the intricacies of a world.
- How players contribute to the world and meta-world environment,
and how developers/publishers respond to these contributions.
- How socio-cultural literacy develops in the context of a world,
and how the worlds develop and regulate unique cultures and values.
- How skills developed in virtual worlds might be leveraged into
real-life contexts.
Her project takes a qualitative approach to exploring these questions.
Lisa authored
Productive Play: Participation and Learning in Digital Game
Environments,
Authentic Learning Experiences Through
Play: Games, Simulations and the
Construction of Knowledge,
Spontaneous Communities of Learning:
Learning Ecosystems in Massively
Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments, and
The eLearning Edge: Leveraging
Interactive Technologies in the Design of
Engaging, Effective Learning Experiences,
Are Virtual Worlds Good For the Soul?,
Talking Trash About Intellectual Trash...,
The Singularity, Virtual Worlds and AI Babies,
Is it Really so Bad to be Bad?,
Organizing the Virtual Organization,
My Other Self is an Ass-kicking Supermodel, and
The New Love?,
and coauthored
Online Games for 21st Century Skills,
Play my way: The
politics of cooperation in massively multiplayer
online games,
Read the
full list of her publications!
Lisa earned her Bachelor of Arts in Socio-cultural Anthropology at
The University of California at Berkeley in 1993. She earned her
Graduate Certificate in Online Teaching and Learning at
California State University Hayward in 2002. She earned her
Master of Science in Education, option in Online Teaching and Learning,
at California State University Hayward in 2003.
Read
Expert rates New Zealand's finalists and
Game Anthropologists Watch the Natives.
Print bio!
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