User:Levonda

Guild Wars Educational Research Project

I have been playing Guild Wars for some time now and cannot wait for Guild Wars 2. I was hoping that it would come out before I started my Action Research project for my Masters Degree n Educational Media Design & Technology at Full Sail University online, but since they still haven't set a release date, I am not going to hold my breath.

Therefore, I am using the original Guild Wars for my research and I am looking for participants. Everyone seems to be using World of Warcraft (WoW) these days to show how it can be used in education to motivate students, but I have been playing Guild Wars, as I said for some time and would much rather use it.

I just started a guild with my level 20 Warrior/Monk and my Elementalist/Mesmer called VirtuGuild to use for this educational project. I wanted to create a virtual guild “club” to bring members together in order to research how social skills like leadership and teamwork can be taught by using Guild Wars. These skills are needed to help people in everyday situations from group projects at school to the workplace.

When looking to address social interaction I can see many potential sub topics. One of these I will be looking into is how improving social interaction skills will help improve a persons chances in the workforce, not only when looking for a job, but once they acquire a job as well. So far in my research I have discovered that MMORPG’s encourage group interaction and involvement. They require large groups of players to cooperate and work together as a team (clan/guild). Isn’t that a skill needed in the workforce?

There are several social skills that are relevant to real-life and the workplace that I could look at for sub topics. (Conflict resolution, communication, relationships, time management, leadership, following the chain of command, and problem solving.)

Communication skills could be taught by using voice communication through a program like Skype or Ventrilo versus just pure text in the chat box. Also in researching I saw that another is modeling behavior. Looking at how different people interact within the game by watching the conversations in the chat box for a period of time and evaluating it.

Some studies I have read show that the virtual friendships that are formed while playing MMORPG’s can develop into real-life friendships and/or relationships. Being an avid gamer myself for the past twelve years I can attest to this as I have made many friends through online gaming that I keep in contact with and/or have met in real-life. This is another area for possible further research.

If you would like to help me out with my research then please visit the invitation online at: VirtuGuild [1].

Thanks,

LeVonda (levonda@fullsail.edu) aka Morrigan Branwyn