Invited Speakers and Bios
Welcome |
Professor; Associate Dean, Faculty & Academic Affairs |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Director of Annenberg Stuides on Computer Games Ute Ritterfeld |
|||
| Introductions | Ben Sawyer | ||
| James Paul Gee | |||
|
Learning |
Development |
Change |
Empirical Findings |
|||
Respondent |
|
|
|
Methodological Challenges |
|||
Respondent |
|||
Theoretical Mechanisms |
|||
Respondent |
|||
Applications |
|||
Conclusions |
|||
Malcolm Bauer
Bio is coming soon.
|
Carole R. Beal, Ph.D. Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California, USA cbeal@isi.edu |
Carole Beal is Director of the Learning and Development Center at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Information Sciences Institute. Her research focuses on the integration of educational psychology, artificial intelligence, and instructional technology, including “serious games” for STEM learning. Her K12@USC project emphasizes the evaluation of instructional technology in realistic educational delivery settings: public school classrooms and informal learning settings in the urban Southern California area, with its rich ethnic, economic and linguistic diversity. Dr. Beal’s research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.
Back to top
 |
Gary Bente, Ph.D. Department for Psychology University of Cologne, Germany bente@uni-koeln.de |
Gary Bente is professor for Social Psychology and Media Psychology at the University of Cologne. He has been chair of the Department of Psychology for many years and is now Associate Dean for Research at the Faculty of Humanities. He is heading the M.I.N.D. Lab Germany and is co-director of the Faculty Centre for Media Sciences. He is co-editor of the Textbook of Media Psychology and of the Journal of Media Psychology. Major research interests lie in the area nonverbal communication and person perception, extending concepts from face-to-face communication to computer-mediated communication and human computer interaction. He is an experienced researcher and particularly known for the development of research methods and instruments, with a focus on measurement and computer simulation of motor behavior, the analysis of psycho-physiological processes and eye tracking. A series of funded research projects focused on avatars and embodied conversational agents as a means to augment social experience in mediate encounters.
Back to top
 |
Frank Biocca, Ph.D. Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies & Media Michigan State University, USA biocca@msu.edu |
Frank Biocca is the AT&T Chair of Telecommunication, professor of cognitive science, and visting professor at the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research at the Helsinki School of Economics. Dr. Biocca’s research explores how media form and structure supports human cognition, specifically how immersive and mobile interfaces and virtual evironments can enhance cognition, experience, or human performance. He directs the networked Media Interface and Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Lab (www.mindlab.org). The M.I.N.D. Lab is an international, multi-university human-computer interaction and communication research lab with eleven facilities spanning seven countries. Dr. Biocca is or has been on the editorial board of many journals including MIT’s Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Journal of Communication, Media Psychology, the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and other international journals. Dr. Biocca has been a professor, researcher, or lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford, University of North Carolina, and University of Wisconsin.
Back to top
 |
Jennings Bryant, Ph.D. Associate Dean for Graduate Studies CIS Distinguished Research Professor Reagan Chair of Broadcasting College of Communication & Information Sciences University of Alabama, USA jbryant@ua.edu |
Jennings Bryant is CIS Distinguished Research Professor, holder of the Reagan Endowed Chair of Broadcasting, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Alabama. He received his PhD from Indiana University in 1974 and was President of the International Communication Association in 2002-2003. From 1989 through 2004, he served as Director of the Institute for Communication Research. Dr. Bryant has authored more than 85 articles in peer-reviewed journals, over 100 chapters published in edited scholarly books, and about 200 papers at conventions of national and international professional associations. He has served on the editorial boards of twelve scholarly journals, currently holds editorial board appointments on eight scholarly journals, and is founding co-editor of the journal Media Psychology. Active in public service, Dr. Bryant recently chaired the State of Alabama’s task force to create a statewide broadband communications network. In terms of professional experience, Dr. Bryant has been a Spencer Fellow at Children's Television Workshop, where he worked on Sesame Street and The Electric Company. He has founded and sold two companies that produce specialty television programs, and he has been a paid consultant to more than 50 major media companies.
Back to top
 |
Michael Cody, Ph.D. Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA cody@usc.edu |
Michael Cody was born in Auburn, California and attended California State University, Sacramento. He earned his Ph.D. in Communication at Michigan State University in 1978, where he focused on research methods and face to face social influence processes. He studied why individuals selected certain “compliance gaining tactics” in interpersonal settings across diverse situations. This line of work resulted in a goal-oriented approach to communication, including self-presentational goals, relational goals and instrumental goals – See Interpersonal Communication: A goals based approach (St. Martin’s Press). Dr Cody is interested in “taxonomies” of messages in either “compliance gaining” (seeking one’s goals) or in “accounts” (offering explanations for one’s actions) when individuals pursue goals in “real life” contexts such as flirting, relational dissolution, sales encounters, traffic court, child custody mediations, and in health maintenance contexts. Between 1999 and 2002 he was Principle Investigator of a Tobacco Control grant with the State of California and completed projects on the presence of tobacco online (Hong & Cody, 2002), online sales of tobacco (Bryant, Cody & Murphy, 2002) and blocking access to tobacco online (Reagan, Hong, Cohen, & Cody, 2002). During the same years he was editor of Communication Theory, a peer-reviewed journal of the International Communication Association.
Back to top
 |
Tom Hollihan, Associate Dean and Professor Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA hollihan@usc.edu |
Thomas Hollihan is a professor of communication and associate dean for academic and faculty affairs in the Annenberg School. Professor Hollihan publishes in the areas of argumentation, political campaign communication, contemporary rhetorical criticism, and the impact of globalization on public deliberation. He is the author of several books including Uncivil Wars: Political Campaigns in a Media Age, Arguments and Arguing: The Products and Process of Human Decision Making (with Kevin Baaske), now in its second edition, and Argument at Century's End: Reflecting on the Past and Envisioning the Future. In addition, Hollihan has published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Argumentation and Advocacy, Communication Quarterly, Western Journal of Communication, Southern Speech Communication Journal, Speaker and Gavel, and Debate Issues. Professor Hollihan has served as the chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the National Debate Tournament. He has also served as President of the American Forensic Association and also of the Western Forensic Association. He is a former chairperson of the National Communication Association's Doctoral Education Committee and of the Committee on International Discussion and Debate. Finally, he also served as the chairperson of the National Debate Tournament Committee. In addition to his teaching and academic publishing, Professor Hollihan has served as a consultant to many different political candidates, elected officials, business leaders, and also to the leaders of non-profit organizations. Professor Hollihan makes frequent appearances in the media to discuss political issues and campaign strategies. Back to top
 |
Marco Ennemoser, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Justus-Liebig-Universitat Giessen, Germany Marco.Ennemoser@psychol.uni-giessen.de |
Marco Ennemoser (born 1969). 1996 Diploma in Psychology. 2003 PhD at the University
of Wuerzburg (Dr. phil.), PhD-thesis about the impact of television on the development of language and reading. Since 2005 Assistant Professor for the Psychology of Special Education at the University of Giessen. His research interests include methodological issues in evaluation research, educational interventions for children with special needs and media effects.
Back to top
 |
James Paul Gee, Ph.D. Department of Educational Psychology University of Wisconsin, USA jgee@education.wisc.edu |
James Paul Gee is the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After Aug. 2007 he will be the Mary Lou Fulton Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. He received his PhD in linguistics in 1975 from Stanford University and has published widely in linguistics and education. 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, shows how good video games marry pleasure and learning and have the capacity to empower people.
Back to top
 |
Art Graesser, Ph.D. |
Art Graesser is a professor in the Department of Psychology, an adjunct professor in Computer Science, and co-Director of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California at San Diego in 1977. His primary research interests are in cognitive science, learning sciences, and discourse processing. He has designed, developed, and tested software in learning, language, and discourse technologies, including AutoTutor, Coh-Metrix, HURA Advisor, Point&Query, Question Understanding Aid (QUAID), QUEST, and Source-Evidence-Evaluation-Knowledge (SEEK) Web tutor. The current AutoTutor versions are designed to be sensitive to the emotions of the learner and to promote self-regulated learning. He has developed computational models of question asking and answering that have been tested in college students and that have been incorporated in learning environments and information retrieval facilities. Dr. Graesser is associate editor of the journal Discourse Processes and was senior editor of the 2003 Handbook of Discourse Processes. Dr. Graesser is president-elect of both the Society for Discourse Processes and the Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education.
Back to top
 |
Patricia M. Greenfield, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of California at Los Angeles, USA greenfield@psych.ucla.edu Children’s Digital Media Center website: www.cdmc.ucla.edu |
Patricia Greenfield received her Ph. D. from Harvard University and is currently Professor of Psychology at UCLA, where she directs the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and Children's Digital Media Center, UCLA. Her central theoretical and research interest is in the relationship between culture and human development. She is a past recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Behavioral Science Research, and has received teaching awards from UCLA and the American Psychological Association. She has held fellowships at the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, the School of American Research, Santa Fe, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford. Her books include Mind and Media: The Effects of Television, Video Games, and Computers (Harvard, 1984), which has been translated into nine languages. In the 90s she co-edited (with R.R. Cocking) Interacting with Video (Elsevier, 1996) and Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development (Erlbaum, 1994). She has done field research on child development, social change, and weaving apprenticeship in Chiapas, Mexico since 1969. This cumulative work is presented in a book entitled Weaving Generations Together (SAR Press, 2004). Her research program includes basic and applied cross-cultural projects in Los Angeles, as well as cross-species and neural investigations linking the ontogeny and phylogeny of cultural processes in language and cognition.
Back to top
 |
Andrea Hollingshead, Ph.D. Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA aholling@usc.edu |
Andrea B. Hollingshead is associate professor of Communication at the USC Annenberg School of Communication. She is also faculty chair of the Communication Management Master’s Program. Professor Hollingshead joined USC Annenberg in 2005 after serving on the faculty at the University of Illinois for 12 years, where she was an award-winning teacher and researcher. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Illinois. Prior to graduate school, Professor Hollingshead worked in marketing research and advertising. Professor Hollingshead's research investigates how groups collaborate and create community using communication technologies. She has had extensive support from the National Science Foundation for her research. Her publications include two books, Theories of Small Groups: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2005, co-edited with Marshall Scott Poole) and Groups Interacting with Technology (1994, with Joseph E. McGrath). Her articles have appeared in top-tier journals in the fields of communication, psychology and management. She is a sought-after speaker, and has given more than 50 invited presentations about her research at major universities around the world. Professor Hollingshead is currently Senior Editor at Organization Science and has served on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Personality and Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Group Dynamics, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, and Small Group Research.
Back to top
 |
Jeroen Jansz, Ph.D. The Amsterdam School of Communication Research Department of Communication University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands j.jansz@uva.nl |
Jeroen Jansz (PhD, Leiden University, 1991) is a senior associate professor at the Amsterdam School of Communications research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). His current research is concerned with video- and computer games and the people who play these games on a PC and/or a game console. The project about gaming and gamers started in 2002. Most studies focused on psychological factors that may explain the appeal of gaming. The theoretical framework uses building blocks from communication research and (media-) psychology. The research has been supported by a four year PhD grant from the Dutch national science organization (NWO, 2003), and a four year PhD grant from ASCoR (2006). For details about the publications see: http://users.fmg.uva.nl/jjansz
Back to top
 |
Yasmin B. Kafai, Ph.D. Graduate School of Education & Information Studies University of California at Los Angeles, USA kafai@gseis.ucla.edu |
Yasmin Kafai pioneered research on games and learning before it became an acknowledged field of study and published in 1995 “Minds in Play: Computer Game Design as a Context for Children’s Learning” and worked on the policy reports “Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the Computer Age” (AAUW, 2000) and “Under the Microscope: A Decade of Gender Equity Projects in the Sciences” (AAUW, 2004). Supported by the National Science Foundation, she studies teen's socializing, cheating and learning in Whyville, a site with over 1.9 million registered players, and develops media-rich programming environments for after-school centers with colleagues from the MIT Media Lab. She organized in 2006 the Girls ‘N’ Games conference in Los Angeles and edited together with Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner and Jen Sun "Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Computer Games" to be published by MIT Press later this year. She is an Associate Professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies and currently the President of the International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Back to top
|
Christoph Klimmt, Ph.D. Institute of Journalism and Communication Research Hannover University of Music and Drama, Germany Christoph.Klimmt@ijk.hmt-hannover.de |
Christoph Klimmt studied Communication at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research, Hanover University of Music and Drama, where he graduated in 2000 and continued his work at the department as doctoral student. He received his Ph.D. in communication in 2004 for a dissertation on "Dimensions and determinants of interactive entertainment". Since 2006, he serves at the department to replace a vacant professorship position. Being involved in various research projects related to media entertainment, new media, and video games, his main interests are the uses and impact of video games, especially enjoyment, but also social and political consequences of video gaming.
Back to top
 |
Elly A. Konijn, Ph.D. Department of Communication VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands ea.konijn@fsw.vu.nl |
Elly Konijn graduated in social and emotion psychology and wrote her Ph.D. in Psychology and Theater, Film, and Television Studies on the psycho(physio)logical processes of professional stage actors while performing. Dr. Konijn developed the so-called 'task-emotion theory,' which explains how actors use their real-life emotions to form lifelike character-emotions. She replicated the effects in the USA with (sometimes quite famous) Method Actors and extended the research to emotional processes involved in media entertainment in general. Her fields of interest are the psychology of media entertainment, in particular emotional processes and perceived realism (in fiction), and mediated interpersonal communication. Konijn received an ASPASIA grant to further explore the blurring borders between fiction and reality in contemporary media fare (including tv, film, internet, games). Recently, she included research on media violence and entertainment-education.
Back to top
 |
Kwan Min Lee, Ph.D. Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA kwanminl@usc.edu |
Kwan Min Lee (Ph.D., Stanford University) is an Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Lee specializes in social and psychological impacts of communication and information technologies (e.g., computer games, mobile devices, Internet), and human machine interaction including human computer interaction (HCI) and human robot interaction (HRI). His research has been published in major journals in communication, computer science, education, psychology and telecommunication policy. His research findings have been covered by the Washington Post, BBC News, USA Today and other major international news agencies. He received two top paper awards from the International Communication Association (ICA) and four fellowships (including three endowed fellowships) from Stanford University. His current research is funded by the Annenberg Foundation, National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education in S. Korea, Center for Telecommunication Management, Korea Information Strategy Development Institute and other national and international foundations. He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Media Psychology, and Korean Prospect (founding member).
Back to top
 |
Debra Lieberman, Ph.D. Department of Communication University of California at Santa Barbra, USA lieberma@isber.ucsb.edu |
Debra Lieberman is a lecturer in the Department of Communication at UC Santa Barbara and a media researcher in the university's Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research. Her research focuses on processes of learning and behavior change with interactive media, with
special interests in interactive games, health media, and children's media. Dr. Lieberman has published widely and she consults for education agencies, health organizations, and media and technology companies to help design and evaluate interactive games, educational software, health promotion web sites, interactive toys, and interactive television systems. Before working at UC Santa Barbara, she was vice president of research at Click Health, Inc., where she developed the instructional design and directed clinical trials and evaluation research for a series of health behavior change video games on the Nintendo platform. Prior to that she was an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Back to top
 |
Lynn Miller, Ph.D. Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA lmiller@usc.edu |
Lynn Miller specializes in interpersonal, intrapersonal, and health communication. She has been Principal Investigator on interdisciplinary HIV-prevention projects totaling over $7 million funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and other agencies. Using a highly personalized approach, research uses virtual interactive and gaming technologies to study, predict and reduce real-life risky decision making over time for high-risk, diverse, community-based populations. The resulting applications can be rapidly diffused through such media as DVDs and the Web. Additional interdisciplinary collaborative work, funded by the Department of Defense, is supporting the development of cognitive architectures for intelligent agents with realistic and “tweakable” personality, communication patterns, and emotion that could “model” individual cases and also be used for a host of training, educational and health communication applications. Other work uses computer simulations/computational modeling and evolutionary approaches to understand systematic sex, reproductive and health outcomes in a changing environment. Publishing in and reviewing for the top outlets in many fields, she has been the recipient of a variety of awards for research and teaching, including the Gerald R. Miller Early Career Award from the National Communication Association, the Provost Fellowship from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at USC and the Phi Kappa Phi Mentorship Award.
Back to top
 |
Marije Nije Bijvank |
Marije Nije Bijvank studied ‘Policy, Communication and Organization’, Faculty of Social Sciences, at the VU University Amsterdam, and obtained her Masters degree (Summa Cum Laude) in 2004. Currently, Marije is a Ph.D student at the Communication Department of the VU University Amsterdam. Title of Ph.D project is: Magnets of violence: Affect regulation and reducing harmful effects of violent video games in adolescents. Furthermore, she cooperates in studies relating to entertainment education, serious games, beneficial effects of gaming, and media literacy.
 |
Jorge Peña-Herborn M.S., Doctoral Candidate Department of Communication Cornell University, USA jfp24@cornell.edu |
Jorge Peña-Herborn, M. S., Cornell University, is a doctoral candidate at the same institution. Jorge hails from Chile, and his research focuses in how interaction takes place and impressions develop during online work and play. His previous publications focus on communication processes and reality judgments during computer game-playing, and speech act use when instant messaging.
Back to top
 |
Rabindra “Robby” Ratan M.A., Doctoral Candidate Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA raratan@gmail.com |
Robby Ratan graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Science, Technology and Society and an M.A. in Communication with a focus in Human Computer Interaction. As a full-time research assistant at Stanford and a researcher at Toyota ITC in Palo Alto, he engaged in various research projects involving the psychology of advanced media interface design, with a particular focus on voice interfaces. Many of his projects utilized driving simulations and other virtual environments. At Annenberg, Robby is continuing his HCI/new-media work, with a particular emphasis on virtual worlds (such as second life) and video games (for education and entertainment). He is especially interested in virtual identity management, self-presence, and attention/multi-tasking. He also sporadically posts to his blog on media technology.
Back to top
 |
Niklas Ravaja, Ph.D. Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research (CKIR) Helsinki School of Economics, Finland Niklas.Ravaja@hse.fi |
Dr. Niklas Ravaja is Director of Research at the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research in Helsinki School of Economics (HSE). He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Helsinki in 1996 and has been a Docent of Applied Psychology since 1999. His areas of research interest and expertise include the psychophysiology of attention, emotion, and temperament; media psychology, including psychophysiological responses to media messages and digital games; sense of presence; and time-series analysis. He holds strong expertise in research methodology. He has authored over 80 scientific papers, including 45 peer-reviewed articles in major international journals, such as Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Biological Psychology, Psychophysiology, Media Psychology, and Health Psychology. He is the Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the EU-funded international, interdisciplinary New and Emerging Science and Technology (NEST) project ”The fun of gaming: Measuring the human experience of media enjoyment” (FUGA). In 2006, he was named Researcher of the Year at HSE.
Back to top
 |
Ute Ritterfeld, Ph.D. Director, Annenberg Studies on Computer Games Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA ritterfe@usc.edu |
Dr. Ute Ritterfeld joined the USC Annenberg School for Communication faculty in 2002 after arriving from her native Germany. She holds a Master degree in Health Sciences (Academy of Rehabilitation in Heidelberg), a Master degree in Psychology from the University of Heidelberg, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the Technical University in Berlin. She was Assistant Professor at the University of Magdeburg, and Adjunct Professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and at the University of Hannover. Dr. Ritterfeld is now a Research Associate Professor at the Annenberg School and the Director of Annenberg Studies on Computer Games. She has published extensively in numerous journals, received multiple interdisciplinary research grants and serves as editor for the German Journal of Language Pathology. She is currently focusing on the interplay of entertaining media usage and learning in children, teens, and adults with a special interest in extracurricular education and health communication.
Back to top
 |
Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Ph.D. Research Scientist and Research Assistant Professor Institute for Creative Technologies and School of Gerontology University of Southern California, USA arizzo@usc.edu ICT: http://www.ict.usc.edu/ VRPSYCH Lab Website: http://projects.ict.usc.edu/vrpsych/ |
Albert “Skip” Rizzo received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is a Research Scientist at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and has a faculty appointment with the USC School of Gerontology. Dr. Rizzo conducts research on the design, development and evaluation of Virtual Reality (VR) systems targeting the assessment and training/rehabilitation of cognitive and motor abilities. He is also investigating the use of VR for pain distraction at LA Children’s Hospital and is designing game-based physical rehabilitation VR scenarios for the elderly and persons with impairments due to Central Nervous System dysfunction. Additionally, he is conducting research on VR applications that use 360 Degree Panoramic video for exposure therapy, role-playing applications, and has experimented with this technology to capture news scenes for multimedia journalism applications. His latest project has focused on the translation of the graphic assets from the Xbox game, Full Spectrum Warrior, into an exposure therapy application for combat-related PTSD with Iraq War veterans. He is the associate editor of the journals CyberPsychology and Behavior; and The International Journal of Virtual Reality, is senior editor of the MIT Press journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, and is the creator of the Virtual Reality Psychology Email Listserve (VRPSYCH).
Back to top
|
Ben Sawyer President, Digitalmill Co-Director, Serious Games Initiative bsawyer@dmill.com http://www.seriousgames.org/about.html |
As co-founder of Digitalmill, Ben Sawyer is in charge of strategy, technology, and business development. Sawyer has authored or co-authored more than 10 computer trade books as well as numerous articles on a wide range of technology areas including e-commerce, interactive game development, software marketing, and computer graphics. He is also a regular speaker on the topics of e-commerce and other emerging Internet trends. After graduating from New York's Bronx High School of Science and attending the City University of New York-Baruch, Sawyer worked on the campaign staff for Clinton/Gore '92. He also worked on political projects for several major campaigns, a legislative re-apportionment for the Maine State Legislature, and on the news analysis staff for then President-Elect Bill Clinton. In 1995, Sawyer settled in his home state of Maine and began a career as a high-tech freelance writer and technology consultant. That year Sawyer wrote his first book -- The Ultimate Game Developer's Sourcebook -- which was published in early 1996. In June 1997, Sawyer and Dave Greely founded Digitalmill. In his free time, Sawyer enjoys the world's greatest sailing waters in and around Casco Bay.
Back to top
 |
Michael A. Shapiro, Ph.D. Department of Communication Cornell University, USA mas29@cornell.edu |
Michael A. Shapiro (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987) focuses on the mental and emotional processes that affect our interpretation of messages and our decision-making. His recent studies focus on the mental and emotional processing of media narratives, particularly how people judge the realism of stories—including the impact of stereotypes. His research includes a wide range of topics and stories from advertising, news and entertainment. He has also explored the complexities of generalizability in empirical Communication Research. He is currently a co-Editor of the journal Media Psychology. Recent publications have appeared in Media Psychology, Human Communication Research, and Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.
Back to top
 |
Cuihua “Cindy” Shen M.A., Doctoral Candidate Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA cuihuash@usc.edu |
Cuihua (Cindy) Shen is a second year PhD student at Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Her fundamental research interest is to understand human activities in the new social spaces created by the Internet and new communication technologies. Specifically, she studies virtual communities that are created for information sharing, collaborative production, and entertainment, from both socio-psychological and sociological perspectives. Methodologically, she employs quantitative as well as social network analytic tools. Cindy comes from Suzhou, a beautiful city in southeast China. Before coming to USC, she earned her BA in English at Zhejiang University and her MA in Communication at National University of Singapore.
Back to top
 |
John L. Sherry, Ph.D. Department of Communication Michigan State University, USA jsherry@msu.edu |
John L. Sherry, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Michigan State University. His primary research interest is media effects; focusing on neurophysiological reactivity to media which explain the etiology of the media use and the effects those media have. Recent studies have discovered a neurophysiological mechanism explaining television and video game use as well as sex differences in video game use. He currently teaches courses in the effects of entertaining mass communication research and research methods.
Back to top
 |
Valerie J. Shute, Ph.D. Educational Testing Service, USA VShute@ETS.ORG www.ets.org |
Val Shute is a Principal Research Scientist at ETS and is responsible for designing and developing basic and applied research projects related to assessment, cognitive diagnosis, and learning from online, adaptive instructional/assessment systems. Before coming to ETS, she earned a Ph.D. in cognitive/educational psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She held a postdoctoral research fellowship at LRDC (University of Pittsburgh) and worked at the Air Force Research Lab in San Antonio, Texas. Some example projects that she has been involved with include: exploratory and confirmatory tests of aptitude-treatment interactions using intelligent tutoring systems, student modeling research, and developing an automated knowledge elicitation and organization tool. Her current work centers on the design and delivery of online, adaptive, diagnostic assessments and instruction for students and teachers in grades K-16. Dr. Shute has written over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and technical papers. A few of the games in her "all-time favorites" list include: Zork, Doom, Tetris, Sims, Soul Caliber, Frequency, and DDR.
Back to top
 |
Arvind Singhal, Ph.D. School of Communication Studies Ohio University, USA singhal@ohio.edu |
Arvind Singhal is Professor and Presidential Research Scholar in the Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University, where he teaches and conducts research in the areas of diffusion of innovations, organizing for social change, and the entertainment-education communication strategy. He is author or editor of eight books, three of which (Combating AIDS: Communication Strategies in Action, Entertainment-Education: A Communication Strategy for Social Change, and India’s Communication Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts) won competitive awards. In addition, he is author of some 85 scholarly articles in top journals and over 30 book chapters. Two of his most recent awards include the first Everett M. Rogers Award for Outstanding Contributions to Entertainment-Education in 2005 and the Seventh Raushni Memorial Deshpande Lecturer by Delhi University in 2006. Dr. Singhal has taught previously at the University of Southern California, University of California - Los Angeles, California State University, Bowling Green State University, Institut Teknologi MARA (Malaysia), and Bangkok University (Thailand); and visited and lectured in over 50 countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia, Europe, and North America.
Back to top
 |
Stacey Spiegel Parallel World Labs Inc., CEO Adjunct Professor, Software Engineering & Game Design McMaster University, Hamilton, ON/Canada stacey@staceyspiegel.com |
Stacey Spiegel is currently the CEO and co-founder of Parallel Worlds Labs which is focused on enhancing creative expression in on-line worlds. Previously Spiegel headed up a Canadian innovative new media company, I-mmersion, a forerunner in the arena of social computing, which developed the Immersion Cinema product in museums around the world. Spiegel was the co-creative director on the design of the Canada Pavilion for the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, which included a ground-breaking interactive experience called Virtual Canada. Arguably the world’s first virtual country, Virtual Canada used a 3D massively multiplayer game world to bring Canadians and others together in an open dialogue, in three languages, on the theme of cultural diversity. Spiegel is on an internationally renowned artist and visionary in the world of interactive media showing in such places as MultiMediale in Germany, DEAF in the Netherlands, Ars Electronica in Austria and Elecrta in Norway.. A former fellow of MIT Center for Advanced Visual Study in Boston, from 1985 to 1987. Returning to Toronto Spiegel became an Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto from 1992 to 1997. Currently he is an Adjunct professor in the department of Software Engineering and Game Design at McMaster University. Spiegel has been named the Artistic Director of “Rockheim” the National Rock and Pop Museum in Norway which is developing a Virtual Museum as a co-creation tool in the museum. His professional consulting practise helps to crystallize the dynamic opportunities between corporate and institutional clients in connecting their research and applied activities.
Back to top
 |
Kaveri Subrahmanyam, Ph.D. Department of Psychology, California State University, Los Angeles, USA Children's Digital Media Center, UCLA ksubrah@calstatela.edu |
Kaveri Subrahmanyam is a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles and the Associate Director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from UCLA in 1993. She studies youth and digital media and uses developmental theory to understand the effects of their interactions with these new media forms. She has examined a variety of digital media including computer/video games and Internet communication forms such as chat rooms, blogs, and social networking sites. She is currently studying adolescent use of blogs and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Back to top
Matthew Ventura, Ph.D.
Educational Testing Service, USA
MVentura@ets.org
Matthew Ventura is currently an Associate Research Scientist at ETS. Before coming to ETS, he received his Ph.D in cognitive psychology at the University of Memphis in 2004. His work primarily focuses on education technology, artificial intelligence and computational modeling. More specific interests include knowledge representation and organization, vocabulary learning and comprehension, and discourse processing.
Back to top
 |
Peter Vorderer, Ph.D. Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA vorderer@usc.edu |
Peter Vorderer is a professor of Communication and Psychology and a leading expert on the psychology of entertainment. He is co-editor of Media Psychology, one of the impact strongest scholarly journals in Communication (http://www.mediapsychology.ws/). His most recent publications include Psychology of Entertainment and Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences, both of which he has been editing together with Jennings Bryant and are published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. His research interests include media effects, entertainment, new technologies, and video games.
Back to top
 |
Hua “Helen” Wang M.A., Doctoral Candidate Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California, USA wanghua@usc.edu |
Helen Wang studied Japanese Language and Culture at Beijing University in China where she was an active student leader, planning and organizing a variety of events. Helen earned her M.A. in Mass Communication and Media Studies from San Diego State University and worked at the Social Science Research Laboratory at SDSU for three years. She is now a doctoral candidate at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, a graduate associate at the Center for the Digital Future, and a teaching assistant and course coordinator. Her current research combines her interest in media psychology, public health and educational technology, and focuses on the role of new ICTs in health promotion and social marketing, and entertainment-education interventions in East Asia.
Back to top
 |
James H. Watt, Ph.D. Department of Language, Literature, and Communication Director, Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory Rensselaer Polytech Institute, USA wattj@rpi.edu http://www.sbrl.rpi.edu |
James H. Watt is Professor of Communication and Director of the Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which includes the Games Research Center. He is the author of two books on research methodology and over 70 research articles, book chapters, technical reports, and papers. His research interests include computer-mediated multimedia collaboration and digital simulation games. He is currently convenor of the Working Group for Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences, a group of Rensselaer communication and HCI researchers, digital artists, and cognitive scientists that has just completed the design of an innovative cross-disciplinary curriculum for a new B.S. degree to be offered in 2007. He is also a cofounder of a Web survey research firm and has served as a frequent consultant to high technology, market research, and media firms.
Back to top
 |
Michael Zyda, Ph.D. GamePipe Laboratory, Department of Computer Science Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, USA zyda@usc.edu |
Michael Zyda is the Director of the USC GamePipe Laboratory, a Professor of Engineering Practice in the USC Department of Computer Science, and a staff member of USC's Information Sciences Institute. Professor Zyda's research interests include computer graphics, large-scale, networked 3D virtual environments, agent-based simulation, modeling human and organizational behavior, interactive computer-generated story, computer-generated characters, video production, entertainment/defense collaboration, modeling and simulation, and serious and entertainment games. He is a pioneer in the fields of computer graphics, networked virtual environments, modeling and simulation, and serious games. He holds a lifetime appointment as a National Associate of the National Academies, an appointment made by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2003. Professor Zyda served as the principal investigator and development director of the America’s Army PC game funded by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. He took America's Army from conception to three million plus registered players and hence, transformed Army recruiting.
Back to top