James Paul Gee
Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University

James Paul Gee received his Ph.D in linguistics from Stanford University in 1975.  He started his career in theoretical linguistics, working in syntactic and semantic theory, and taught initially in the School of Language and Communication at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts.  He went on to do research in psycholinguistics at Northeastern University in Boston and at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Holland.  As his research focus began to switch to studies on discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and applications of linguistics to literacy and education, he took a position in the School of Education at Boston University, where he was the chair of the Department of Developmental Studies and Counseling.  From Boston University, he went on to serve as a professor of linguistics in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California and, later, served as the first Jacob Hiatt Professor of Education in the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  In 1998, he became the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  In 2007 he became the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at the Arizona State University.  From 1989-1992, Prof. Gee was a co-director of the Mellon Foundation funded Literacies Institute in Newton, Massachusetts, an organization that sponsored joint teacher and researcher research on language and literacy.  From 1995-1998, he was co-director of a Spencer Foundation funded research project at Clark University that ran a community-based after-school science project for culturally diverse urban middle-school children. 

His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990) was one of the founding documents in the formation of the “New Literacies Studies”, an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and cultural contexts.  His book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999) brings together his work on a methodology for studying communication in its cultural settings, an approach that has been widely influential over the last two decades.  His most recent books both deal with video games, language, and learning.  What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003) offers 36 reasons why good video games produce better learning conditions than many of today’s schools.  Situated Language and Learning (2004) places video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can help us in thinking about the reform of schools.  His new book, Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul (2005), shows how good video games marry pleasure and learning and have the capacity to empower people.

Prof. Gee has published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education.  In 1989, the Journal of Education, one of the longest running journals in education in the United States, published a special issue devoted to reprinting his early essays on literacy.  His books include Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, Second Edition 1996; Third Edition 2007); The Social Mind (1992); Introduction to Human Language (1993); The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism (1996, with Glynda Hull and Colin Lankshear); An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (1999; Second Edition 2003); What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003); Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling (2004), and Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul (2005); and Good Learning and Good Video Games (2007)

Gary R. Bertoline
Distinguished Professor, Computer Graphics Technology and Computer & Information Technology, Purdue University

Gary R. Bertoline is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Graphics Technology and Computer & Information Technology at Purdue University, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies, and Director of the Envision Center for Data Perceptualization. From 1995 through 2002, Dr. Bertoline's research interests are in the development and implementation of grid computing and cyberinfrastructure, scientific visualization, and STEM teaching and learning.  He currently is the co-pi on the NSF-funded TeraGrid project at Purdue University, serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the TeraGrid consortium of universities and national labs, and serves on the Open Science Grid (OSG) council.  He has authored numerous papers in journals and trade publications on engineering and computer graphics, computer-aided design, and visualization research.  He has authored and co-authored eight text books in the areas of computer-aided design and engineering design graphics.

Samantha Blackmon
Associate Professor, Department of English, Purdue University

Samantha Blackmon (http://blog.samanthablackmon.net) is an Associate Professor at Purdue University. She focuses on rhetoric, digital media, and their intersections and serves on an interdisciplinary university gaming committee working on curriculum and research initiatives. She began her career teaching elementary school and figuring out how to make learning a game. She has published on race and gaming, race and technology, and technology and pedagogy and her most recent publications include ³Racing toward representation: An understanding of racial representation in video games² in Gaming lives in the twenty-first century: Literate connections (2007) and ³(Cyber)Conspiracy theories?: African-American students in the computerized writing environment² in Labor, Writing Technologies, and the Shaping of Composition in the Academy (2007). She also writes about games and education online at Joystick101.org. Samantha spends her free time traveling to various places, including World of Warcraft¹s Azeroth and Oblivion¹s Tamriel, and trying to figure out how to drive while playing FFIII on her DS.

Sean Brophy
Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering Education, Purdue University

Development of AAE 251 ‘Introduction to Aerospace Design’ as a Multi-Player Online Serious Game

Sean P. Brophy, PhD. is an assistant professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University.  Dr. Brophy is a learning scientist and engineer; his research focuses on the development of learners’ ability to solve complex problems in engineering, mathematics and science contexts.  Part of his research focuses on how people learn with technology in formal and informal learning environments.  As part of this goal he has developed interactive simulations and visualizations to support learners’ conceptual understanding of complex systems.  His research strives to integrate these tools into formal learning environments that support the co-development of innovative thinking, conceptual understanding and personal development in the context of solving interesting challenges.  Serious gaming provides a new frontier for the next generation of effective learning environments that promote learning with understanding.  https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/People/profile?resource_id=8786

Mia Consalvo
Associate Professor, School of Telecommunications, Ohio University

There is No Magic Circle

Mia Consalvo is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. She is the author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (MIT Press, 2007) and was executive editor of the AoIR Research Annual series. Her current research interests focus on new media and popular culture, with more specific projects now focusing on the global nature of games, and fashion in MMOGs.

Dan DeLaurentis
Assistant Professor, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering,
Purdue University

Dr. DeLaurentis is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering at Purdue University, appointed in August of 2004. He joined the university as a strategic faculty hire in Purdue’s Signature Area for System-of-Systems research. He is a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the incoming Chairman of its Air Transportation Systems Technical Committee (TC), and recently served as the Technical Program Co-Chair for the 2007 IEEE International Conference on System-of-Systems Engineering held in San Antonio TX.  Dr. DeLaurentis’ research is motivated by the need for understanding the significant change in the structure and behavior of design problems being faced by the aerospace community, and further, by those in other domains in which complex, interdisciplinary challenges persist. Many problems are increasingly recognized as being of “system-of-systems” type, consisting of multiple, heterogeneous, complex systems that are operate independently but have consequential interactions. This research extends to the study of new modes of learning for students who will be faced with these complex challenges in the future, exemplified by the development of a Serious Game version of a collaborative design course described in this talk.

Michael Fatten
Lead Designer, Arden Project, Indiana University

The Bard's Petri Dish

Michael Fatten is the Lead Design for the Arden project. Undergraduate work in information systems and economics has colored his long-term analysis of game rules systems. He is currently pursuing post-graduate work at Indiana University's Department of Telecommunications assembling economics, social science and business models into a new perspective on game mechanics design. When not occupied exploring this perspective in Arden or his studies he can be found in competitive simulations such as medieval combat groups, customizable cards, Civilization and especially MMO's of many flavors.

Sheri Graner Ray is a game industry design and development consultant who has been in the game industry since 1990. She has worked for such companies as Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, Sony Online Entertainment and Cartoon Network. She is author of the book, Gender Inclusive Game Design-Expanding the Market, and is the game industry's leading expert on gender and computer games. In 2005 she was awarded the IGDA's Game Developer's Choice award for her work in gender and games. She is currently serving as the chair of Women In Games International; an organization she co-founded.

While she has worked as everything from a writer/designer to head of her own studio, her first love is game design and she describes herself as a "hard-core gamer." She currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Tim, their four dogs and two cats.

Sarah Robbins
Director of Emerging Technologies, Media Sauce
PhD candidate, Rhetoric, Ball State University

MUVEin' on Over: Exploring the Pedagogical Challenges of Second Life in Higher Education

Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at Ball State University and the Director of Emerging Technologies at Media Sauce in Carmel, Indiana. Sarah uses Second Life to teach Freshman Composition courses at Ball State and is the coauthor of Second Life for Dummies. Her research regarding education in virtual worlds has been featured in the New York Times, USAToday, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Alice J. Robison
Postdoctoral Researcher, Comparative Media Studies Program (New Media Literacies Project), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Writing New Games: Designers Enacting the New Media Literacies Framework

Alice J. Robison (http://alicerobison.org) is a postdoctoral researcher in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, where she writes and teach about literacy and new media, especially videogames. A founding member of the games-and-learning research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she now advises MIT's Project New Media Literacies, which is funded under the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Learning Initiative. Her primary research analyzes how game designers and developers write, think, and talk about the ways their games are made and interpreted. She then translates the interesting bits to literacy instructors in an effort to redesign literacy education.

Ben Stokes, Co-Founder of Serious Games Org
MacArthur Foundation

Practitioner's Challenge: Games, Civics Learning, and Bottlenecks in Field Building

Benjamin Stokes is a Program Officer at the MacArthur Foundation.  His focus is on the five-year, $50 million "Digital Media and Learning" initiative launched in 2006 to help determine how digital media is
changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.  Previously, Benjamin co-founded Games for Change (G4C), the central organization advancing games media for positive social change.

Before G4C, Benjamin served as e-learning architect at NetAid, training high school students to reach 150,000 of their peers in the fight on global poverty.  For middle school students, Benjamin produced the Peter Packet Challenge, the first online game application of real-world service learning.   Benjamin has also studied and managed the United Nations' online volunteering service.

William Watson
Assistant Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Purdue University

William Watson is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Technology Program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Purdue University. He has a Bachelor’s degree in English, a Masters in Information Science, and a Ph.D. in Education from Indiana University. Prior to coming to Purdue, he was a  Lecturer in Computer and Information Technology at Indiana University – Purdue University in Indianapolis. His research interests include advanced technologies for information age instruction, with a focus on the design of educational video games, and systemic change in education. He may be reached at brwatson@purdue.edu.

Alka Harriger
Professor, Department of Computer & Information Technology,Purdue University

Chair, Online Learning in Virtual Worlds session

Alka Harriger joined the faculty of the Computer and Information Technology Department (CIT) in 1982 and is currently a Professor of CIT and Assistant Department Head. She is the author/co-author of three college-level textbooks and has published numerous articles in journals and conference proceedings. She recently led CIT's accreditation activities, which led to CIT earning program accreditation of its CIT program. In January, she will begin managing a 3-year, NSF-funded project called Surprising Possibilities Imagined and Realized through Information Technology (SPIRIT), which seeks to reduce the IT gender gap through educational programs for high school teachers and counselors, and through interventions for high school students. Professor Harriger's current research interests include reducing the IT gender gap, web application development, and service learning.

Christoph M. Hoffmann
Professor, Department of Computer Science
Director of the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, Purdue University

Chair, Brain, Behavior, and Cognition in Gaming session

Before joining the Purdue faculty, Professor Hoffmann taught at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He has also been a visiting professor at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, West Germany (1980), and at Cornell University (1984-1986). His research focuses on geometric and solid modeling, its applications to manufacturing and science, and the simulation of physical systems. The research includes, in particular, research on geometric constraint solving and the semantics of generative, feature-based design. Professor Hoffmann is the author of Group-Theoretic Algorithms and Graph Isomorphism, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 136, Springer-Verlag and of Geometric and Solid Modeling: An Introduction, published by Morgan Kaufmann, Inc. Professor Hoffmann has received international media attention for his work simulating the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Teaching Serious Games for Computer Science
In Spring of 2006 I taught a course on serious games for computer science using Microsoft’s XNA development environment.  The course was open to undergraduates and graduates.  In this talk I will report on the experience teaching the course, the subject-specific challenges, and the students’ reflections and accomplishments.  See also http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cmh/490G

Lorraine Kisselburgh
PhD candidate and Research Assistant, Discovery Park and Department of Communication, Purdue University

Chair, Gender and Race in Gaming session

Lorraine Kisselburgh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication, and a Research Assistant with Discovery Park.  Her background includes the study of computer science, human performance and information processing, and education. She worked in the IT industry for a number of years directing the development and use of emerging technologies and applications in higher education, including a variety of new learning technologies and environments.  Her research interests include the social implications of emerging technologies; privacy and digital identity; social networking; technological organizations and careers; and gender, diversity, and technology.  Her dissertation will use social network analysis to examine the influence of privacy on the social structure of online communities.  She is interested in gender inclusiveness in STEM careers and technologies such as gaming.  Some of her current research examines cross-cultural and gender differences in how young girls construct science and engineering careers, and gender preferences for competitive and collaborative environments in games-based learning.