Playing The University Game

Going to university is expensive. It's an investment of money. It is also a massive leap of faith by everyone connected to your choice. You hope it will be a good experience, but you aren't sure. You want it to be fair to you and worth the effort, but there are no guarantees. Going to university to study and get a degree or certificate of qualification is as political as it is personal. So beware and be ready! But worry not. You will spend your money wisely for a long-term return. Why? Because there is a game to play, and by picking up this book, you intend to play to win. Playing the University Game shows you the rules of the game, strategies for success on your terms (not those of the university as institution and system) and, most importantly, how to enjoy yourself as a university student, reaping the long-term benefits both during your experience and afterwards. How to win the personal way using political-social knowledge shared with you from inside the university walls. Helen Lees draws on her research and lived experiences of self-care in education, combining this with the voices of established academics, who between them have a wide-ranging and deeply reflective understanding of the university and university student interactions. Helen takes you into the heart of the mechanisms of university life, revealing key moves you need to make to survive and thrive in the game. She shares with you which actions and attitudes matter to win, why winning matters, how you can win without joining a dog-eat-dog competition. Helen empowers you to see why university education is about you and your flourishing, not the graduation prize but nevertheless happily also all about the graduation prize, which really matters. She skills you with the knowledge you need to avoid stress, to enjoy yourself and get true value for money from the educational product you have chosen.

"Going to university is expensive. It's an investment of money. It is also a massive leap of faith by everyone connected to your choice. You hope it will be a good experience, but you aren't sure. You want it to be fair to you and worth the effort, but there are no guarantees. Going to university to study and get a degree or certificate of qualification is as political as it is personal. So beware and be ready! But worry not. You will spend your money wisely for a long-term return. Why? Because there is a game to play, and by picking up this book, you intend to play to win. How to Win the University Game shows you the rules of the game, strategies for success on your terms (not those of the university as institution and system) and, most importantly, how to enjoy yourself as a university student, without reaping the long-term benefits both during your experience and afterwards. How to win the personal way using political-social knowledge shared with you from inside the university walls. Helen Lees draws on her research and lived experiences of self-care in education, combining this with the voices of established academics, who between them have a wide-ranging and deeply reflective understanding of university life and university student interactions. Helen takes you into the heart of the mechanisms of university life, revealing key moves you need to make to survive and thrive in the game. She shares with you which actions and attitudes matter to win, why winning matters, how you can win without joining a dog-eat-dog competition. Helen empowers you to see why university education is about you and your flourishing, not the graduation prize but nevertheless happily also all about the graduation prize, which really matters. She skills you with the knowledge you need to avoid stress, to enjoy yourself and get true value for money from the educational product you have chosen."--

Games and social media can improve college access, attract and support students, and boost rates of completion. The college application process—which entails multiple forms, essays, test scores, and deadlines—can be intimidating. For students without substantial school and family support, the complexity of this process can become a barrier to access. William G. Tierney, Tracy Fullerton, and their teams at the University of Southern California approach this challenge innovatively. Using the tools of online games and social media, they have developed ways to make applying for college much less intimidating. While the vast majority of college students use social media and gaming in their everyday lives, colleges and universities have been slow to recognize and harness the power of either. Postsecondary Play explores the significance of games and social media in higher education, and particularly how they can be used to attract, retain, educate, and socialize students. Tierney, a past president of the American Educational Research Association, has gathered some of the best research on the emerging role of games and social media in the classroom and how these tools can boost student confidence and increase college access. Scholars writing from a wide variety of disciplines—college access, social media, game studies, and learning sciences—provide concrete examples to illustrate the new and complex ways in which students learn in response to social media and games. Tierney and the contributors find that, although games can be powerful tools for encouraging underserved students, quality game design and mastering the concept of play—the ability to develop skills while engaging in the game—are essential in the effective use of serious games in teaching and learning. Summarizing a decade of research in game design and learning, Postsecondary Play will appeal to higher education scholars and students of learning, online gaming, education, and the media.

A study of the gruesome game characters we love to beat—and what they tell us about ourselves. Since the early days of video games, monsters have played pivotal roles as dangers to be avoided, level bosses to be defeated, or targets to be destroyed for extra points. But why is the figure of the monster so important in gaming, and how have video games come to shape our culture’s conceptions of monstrosity? To answer these questions, Player vs. Monster explores the past half-century of monsters in games, from the dragons of early tabletop role-playing games and the pixelated aliens of Space Invaders to the malformed mutants of The Last of Us and the bizarre beasts of Bloodborne, and reveals the common threads among them. Covering examples from aliens to zombies, Jaroslav Švelch explores the art of monster design and traces its influences from mythology, visual arts, popular culture, and tabletop role-playing games. At the same time, he shows that video games follow the Cold War–era notion of clearly defined, calculable enemies, portraying monsters as figures that are irredeemably evil yet invariably vulnerable to defeat. He explains the appeal of such simplistic video game monsters, but also explores how the medium could evolve to present more nuanced depictions of monstrosity.

While football does not generate discriminatory behaviour, it often replicates the very same social issues that concern any given society. Evidently, football has witnessed an alarming increase in the number of disturbing incidents on the grounds of racism, ethnocentrism, sectarianism, homophobia, and sexism. Given the variety of forms that discrimination can take, it is imperative that football addresses with effect all such anti-social phenomena in order to continue to promote notions pertaining to social inclusion, equality, and cultural diversity – all central to the game’s philosophy and overall popularity. Assessing the nature and causes of discrimination in football is key to identifying the much-needed remedies, but also because discrimination poses a serious challenge to long-established practices deeply rooted in democracy. Discrimination in Football provides a comprehensive and in-depth investigation into these key issues affecting football today. This new book will appeal to academics and students with an interest in social science, law, sport, and humanities as well as football fans and professionals in the football industry.

This volume puts forth an original theoretical framework, the ludonarrative model, for studying video games which foregrounds the empirical study of the player experience. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to and description of the model, which draws on theoretical frameworks from multimodal discourse analysis, game studies, and social semiotics, and its development out of participant observation and qualitative interviews from the empirical study of a group of players. The volume then applies this approach to shed light on how players’ experiences in a game influence how they understand and make use of game components in order to progress its narrative. The book concludes with a frame by frame analysis of a popular game to demonstrate the model’s principles in action and its subsequent broader applicability to analyzing video game interaction and design. Offering a new way forward for video game research, this volume is key reading for students and scholars in multimodality, discourse analysis, game studies, interactive storytelling, and new media.