Going back over some student papers, there was one submitted recently in which
a student cum teacher pursued an observation of some students playing SimTown
for his midterm project. I'm quoting him primarily for my own records, but
this seems something to share, peripherally related to the present discussion
of the tensions surrounding debate and consensus -- and are we taking for
granted that the context of academic work is pretty much a competitive
environment? Here are some curious twists from the summary of some field
notes:
"A lot of discussion went on during this time and some conflict too. The boys
generally wanted to remove certain parts of the city, while the girls wanted to
build. An interesting observation was that during this time the boys in each
group had control of the mouse and completed all the actions while the girls
instructed them on what to do next. Also noted was that the youngest boy was
the first to notice that it was important to keep a certain equality between
building and resources. The younger girls in his group made the connection
that if a town is stable they gain credits.
After about thirty minutes, the groups began developing their groups town.
They each started with the same identical starter town. I expressed that this
should be fun but that they need to develop as much of a quality town as
possible in the time given. This indirectly set a competitive edge between the
groups and the dynamics of the groups noticeably changed. The girls in the
group almost instantly gave a limited equal time that a group member could
operate the mouse. One group would even change chairs when time on the mouse
was up. The boys were limited on removal and were pressured to spend more time
building. Both groups were constantly aware of the business-to-house ratio and
the older group would check on their resources more often." (S.J. 7/2001)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:08 PDT
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