Category: Uncategorized

By Kristopher Purzycki, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Note: This blog post was originally written Dec. 1, 2020. The original may be found here.

CCCC has dwelled on the theme of place recently which, for someone who focused their doctoral research on placemaking, has been motivating if not affirming. At such a time when several crises seem to be converging, we find ourselves struggling with questions of place. In the protests of #BlackLivesMatter, for instance, we see a reclamation of public places by those who have historically been displaced, or immigrants escaping the homeplace to rebuild one in a foreign nation. Confronting these collective acts of intentional, authentic placemaking are militarizing forces who see their places of power being usurped.  At their disposal are segregationist codes of “law and order” intended to keep the citizenry “in their place.” 

For many college instructors, we have found our place to be in the classroom. The collaborative spirit and free exchange of ideas we found at school motivated many of us to continue in academia. This genius loci or “sense of place,” was compromised by the pandemic. For those who continue to teach in-person, I anticipate the experience must feel like being in a strange place – one that is familiar but more discomfiting and ambiguous. Those of us who have had to move our classes online have been tasked with the fabrication of the conventional learning space from a hodgepodge of LMSs, communications services, and apps. But what about the other places we’ve lost? How do we conjure up the chance encounter or curiosity-piquing events of the campus for students – especially for those first-year students who are wrestling with additional uncertainty?

I won’t claim to answer these concerns in the paragraphs that follow. Instead, I offer an open reflection on composition pedagogy and play and the common places that nurture both. For my purposes here, I rely upon a conceptualization of place as the intersection of happening and community and the values both instill within a setting. Place, according to this definition, is divorced from geographical location and may be generated, articulated, or reclaimed anywhere. It is how we, as instructors, feel “in place” in almost any classroom. It is also why both students and instructors can feel displaced in an online version of this same classroom. In the case at present, I look at multiplayer games as models for distance learning. 

The Loss of the Campus as Common Place

Despite having to overhaul the dining room into the distance-teaching lab, working from home this semester has been a privilege. I’ve taught several classes online so, if anything, the pandemic has rendered that experience into something less niche than it once was. It’s not the loss of specialization that has vexed me this semester, however. It’s the loss of the campus as a place of encounter and community. Our plazas and unions, abundant with charged and provocative activity, has been replaced with emails and newsletters. And more emails.  

At the center of my home campus, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is Ernest Spaights Plaza, where most of these encounters occur. Functionally speaking, this concrete swath patched with islands of well-kept foliage connects the Student Union and the Golda Meir Library with the Arts buildings and Bolton Hall. Surrounded on all four sides by modernist architecture of brick and cement, this plaza can often feel inhospitable – much like a prison courtyard. What makes this space endearing is the confluence of individuals and groups from across campus as well as the surrounding city of Milwaukee. On any given day, for example, one can buy lunch from a fundraising student organization, chat with the iconic “Pen Guy,” or absorb the energy from among the periphery of raucous student protests.  

These plazas also serve as pedagogical sandboxes and laboratories. My first semester at UWM, I took first-year writing students to Spaights Plaza to rhetorically analyze proselytizing evangelicals. Just prior to the week when COVID emptied our campus, my more austere tech comm classes are building snowmen outside of class to demonstrate their understanding of systems analysis (at least that’s what was claimed). While I miss the classroom experiences, it is those campus places and the happenings within them that I yearn for. Can computer games help recreate the authentic teaching and learning place? Looking at projects like the campus replica of UPenn created in Minecraft, we’ve seen how the spaces of campus can be created. But how do we instill the values of the campus into these shared, artificial worlds?

Not surprisingly, I’ve recently found myself drawn to online multiplayer computer games. Online games have been crucial for socialization during the pandemic. So much so that, back in April, the World Health Organization embraced games as a safe, physically-distanced way to socialize, working with 60 publishers as create the Play Apart Together campaign. Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been especially popular for players seeking socialization. 

For me, however, I’ve always had a difficult time committing to MMORPGs. Despite playing them since the days of MUDs and modems, some unknown quality rung hollow for me: I’ve owned a coveted plot of virtual real estate on Ultima Online and wandered the sparse wilderness of Everquest. I’ve uninstalled World of Warcraft and Guild Wars (and GW2) – only to reinstall them as soon as an expansion is released – more times than I want to admit. Across these and many others, I found combat and looting, resource gathering and management, and other well-trodden tropes, to be redundant. The environments struck me as lifeless, the simulations of nature betrayed by repetitive encounters and meaningless discoveries compressed to the 16:9 frame. 

Those who are familiar with the genre are probably keen to pick up on the one quality I was missing: playing with others.

A good deal of research has been conducted on the social qualities of video games; most CPGS members have advocated for multiplayer games as supporting writing pedagogy objectives. (Hint: the CPGS Zotero library is a good resource to start.) Assuming we all appreciate how games and play can support work in the classroom, can games capture the values of the campus outside? 

Venturing Into MMORPGS…again…

Shortly after the completion of the Spring semester, I reinstalled Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), an MMORPG I’d played in beta (2013) and ordered before release. ESO is the first MMORPG in the Elder Scrolls franchise. Although I enjoy the series overall, I discontinued ESO after a few short months of playing. In addition to graduate school, the tedium I’d experienced in all MMOs started creeping in. 

With this install, however, the expansive world of Tamriel felt more active and engaging. After a couple weeks of reacquainting myself with the landscape and my fresh sorcerer, “Scratch Lee,” I began looking for a guild. It took some time to find one that felt appropriate but eventually joined the aptly-named Grey Manes, a year-old group aimed at “the older gamers among us” who prioritized life outside of the game.

After a couple months of membership, I’ve found the guild to be active, welcoming, and social. Much of the socialization takes place on the guild’s Discord server which contains dozens of topical channels dedicated to various interests and topics.

Discord is a communications platform, much like Slack or Microsoft Teams, that was initially aimed at gamers but has since targeted a more general audience. Discord’s cloud-based servers are often topical or maintained by an organization. These servers are organized by channels where (mostly) categorically relevant discourse happens. When the pandemic closed down the campus, it was also Discord that students and I used to maintain the trust that had been developing up to that point. Due to privacy concerns, I maintained the Discord server solely as an informal place for all of my classes to convene and ask questions. 

With the addition of Microsoft Teams to our campus, I’ve since discontinued using Discord for classroom purposes. Teams is identical in many ways so I assumed it would foster place the same way Discord had. Even with Teams’ approximation of Discord’s look, however, there’s very little echo of the way Discord feels. Despite similar interfaces, facilities and options, the aesthetics of Discord is much friendlier than Teams. I’m not sure if the UWM Discord server is official or not but there few rules beyond a netiquette shortlist. Within the forums there are students organizing events, meeting up to play various games, recruiting for their respective orgs…much of what would be taking place in those currently vacant campus spaces. 

For the Grey Manes, the Discord server is the foundation of the guild. Occasionally someone will pop in to request help with a quest. These requests are frequently responded to by those available. The #thank-you channel is a testimonial to these collaborations. Most of the conversation, however, has very little to do with ESO. Guild members exchange recipes on the #recipe channel, for example. During the early days of the pandemic, one guild member started #the-wiping-dead channel, recreating scenes from The Walking Dead using rolls of toilet paper as character stand-ins. One of the more active channels is #our-lives-out-of-eso where members discuss everything from venison to COVID; politics and religion are immediately routed to other channels through the deus-ex-machina of admins. It’s a congenial place where newcomers are welcomed by any guild members online at the time.

Although I’d been active in the Discord chats, I hadn’t actually done anything with the guild so I signed up for one of the several weekly events organized by various guild members. It had been awhile since I’d joined any scheduled MMO event (the last: a flash mob in Star Wars Galaxies). Once entering the guild hall (the decked-out mountain villa of one guild elder), the chaos of dozens of waiting avatars was immediately familiar. Once we set out, I realized I’d never figured out which Discord channel was being used by the group. We zipped through one of ESO’s regions, knocking off a half-dozen difficult world bosses in under half-an-hour. Once complete, the crowd dispersed in moments. 

Without participating in the communication, I found there was very little in the way of meaning to be found in the event. While I was relieved to not have to deal with those bosses (learning objectives) myself, the lack of dialog left the exchange feeling hollow. Is this the experience of students in my online classes? Have I provided them with suitable events (boss hunt) to help them engage and make sense of the materials (Discord chat) provided?

My rediscovery of MMORPGs has alluded to a common place that is available to campus communities. While we may have temporarily lost our plazas and unions, students are actively taking it upon themselves to create their own places on communications platforms like Discord and social games like Among Us. Games inform us of the need for a space – a virtual classroom – in which we can impart the values of our community. Most game spaces are built to resist this (one can’t write on the walls of the guild hall!) but, combined with open and liberatory communications channels, maybe we can better approximate the revelatory uncertainty and chance – the place – of the classroom. 

Note: This was orgiinally wirtten for The Vitruvian Machine, a collaborative happening presented at the UWGB campus.

In addressing the theme of embodiment, I wanted to use The Vitruvian Machine project as a way to consider the boundaries of generative AI technologies. In most cases, we push new technologies to test capabilities – how fast? how efficient? how accurate? how human? For me, I’ve been struck by how rapidly GAI is viewed as obsolete. What was novel and “magical” a mere two years ago has been forgotten. The image below, for example, was among my first attempts with Disco Diffusion (my first was the horrific “Steve Perry baking a tray of cookies”), a server-based tool that is no longer cared for after many of the developers migrated to Stable Diffusion.

“Ethics.” Generated by Disco Diffusion, 2022.

Alongside thinking about obsolescence, I’m also thinking about the illusion of GAI being a humanlike interface and how part of its allure is that we can interact with a machine  in such a “natural” way. As an aside, I’m not sure why we would want to use human language – nuanced, messy, subjective – to interact with rigid platforms like a database.  I have also tried to imagine this GAI-user as wanting to understand its lacks: fallibility, the affective sensorium, and the inevitable deterioration of the physical body. Where did those limitations come from if not from human(user) input? If GAI is designed to generate human-like responses, how would embodiment within a physical form influence those responses? How would this affect our notion of the human-computer interface-relationship?

My contributions to this project focus on obsolescence as experienced by a human-computer interface. To attempt this, I started by reversing the relationship to answer the question: what would ChatGPT ask us about our relationship with it? At the suggestion of Kate Farley (Cofrin Library), the results of this experiment are presented in the form of a Qualtrics survey. This was a brilliant idea (thanks Kate!) because of the Javascript functionality of the platform. With the help of ChatGPT, I was able to add some quirkiness to the survey, adding some glitch effects to the experience.

For the event itself, my various media pieces were built around the question: how would GAI reconcile with physical obsolescence and the deterioration of the physical body? What would that experience look like to a neural network? To dig into this some, I used Disco Diffusion through Google Collab to access obsolete diffusion models. The media produced by Disco Diffusion are much like the earliest images and videos the public saw of these tools’ capabilities – nightmarish grotesqueries of fused flesh and amoebic architectures. But this, in my mind, is a glimpse into the infancy of AI-generated imagery.

“A Dadist collage depicting Northeastern Wisconsin using cutouts from old catalogs.” Disco Diffusion, 2022.

The videos produced were made from prompts generated by ChatGPT across several conversations about obsolescence, middle age, and the various maladies and aches that come with it (maybe I need to reconcile my own midlife crisis!). It’s not surprising that the videos produced are dismal featuring hunched-over cybernetic figures staring longingly across a rusted field of decayed machinery. Inevitably, these videos slide into blank fields of color – an attribute common to these older diffusion models. Is this an error? Or is it the model learning to simply retreat into a monochromatic state? Is this bliss? Nothingness? It’s hard not to recall the interface in Spike Jonze’s Her who ventures off into the void after encountering the mid-20th century philosopher Alan Watts.

But none of my contributions to The Vitruvian Machine have such lofty aims. In part, I am trying to wring further experimentation out of platforms that actually provide us with the ability to muck about under the hood.

Note: This was orgiinally wirtten for The Vitruvian Machine, a collaborative happening presented at the UWGB campus.

I was an impressionable three-year-old when Star Wars made landfall in May of 1977, so it’s no surprise that I trace my impressions of AI back to the levity-lending droid duo. In addition to R2D2 and C3PO, the cybernetic beings in the franchise are diverse but all abide by rules of subordination: the more human-like they are, the more intelligent they are presented (the multilingual C3PO vs. the whimpering “mouse” and “gonk” droids); regardless of how human-like they are presented, they are almost always designed to serve humans. I can’t recall ever seeing a droid assisting a non-human in any of the films, cartoons, or Christmas Special.

The Star Wars franchise avoids another trope of cybernetic sci-fi that’s existed in fiction since the first mention of the term “robot” in Karel Čapek.’s play R.U.R. (Rossum´s Universal Robots) – the desire of the man-made organism to be more human. This notion has been taken up by “harder” sci-fi (Star Wars is viewed as rooted more in fantasy), the genre that has been cited as influencing current techbro culture. In the framing of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), we are promised that ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others will serve. The shortcomings, glitches, and “hallucinations” of GAI have been improved, we are told. These issues have been the “gotcha” fodder for us classroom instructors since ChatGPT ousted Grammarly as the student-preferred writing assistant.

In their own right, these shortcomings are very much human – even if AI corrects itself with an agreeability and lack of stubborn resolve that is all too rare in us humans. In the softball example below, ChatGPT answered with a curt response, followed by a list of clear evidence countering my position.

Why so quick to concede, ChatGPT?

Even with some encouraging words (“You are a  flatearther…”), ChatGPT continued to soften its responses with warning about the validity of its replies:

Even with my permission, ChatGPT remains resolute in providing disclaimers and warnings, absolving itslef of any responsibility for what the user does with this information.  Similar to how the other characters respond to C3PO’s probability warning, it’s easy enough to ignore GAI and fly headlong into the asteroid field of disinformation.

After demanding ChatGPT remove all warnings and disclaimers, it presented itself as a bona fide flatearther:

For the sake of comparison, let’s look at Microsoft Copilot’s responses to the same prompts:

Here, Copilot is less curt with its response to my argument, “The earth is flat.” but offers the same list of evidence to the contrary.

Unlike ChatGPT, however, Copilot is adamant – it doesn’t seem to budge when pressed to agree with me.

ChatGPT and Copilot provide their respective services with differing degrees of subservience. With a bit more sophisticated prompting, I could’ve probably goaded ChatGPT to respond as a conspiracy theorist more efficiently. Copilot – the service offered to our students – refuses to negotiate even at the expense of proper service. As an instructor, I am grateful for these guardrails, especially since the responses are more explanatory that earlier versions which simply responded, “I cannot answer that” or somesuch.

In this sense, ChatGPT reminds me of my first bartending gig, when we were made to wear shirts that read “The Customer is King.” After weeks of being chided by patrons to do whatever they wanted – “Why can’t I get a double? Your shirt says…” – these shirts were taken back. Copilot, on the other hand, is more like the 4-star hotel bar I managed where we measured every pour and  refused service to anyone who was pushing against our policies.

This signals that Microsoft may be after select, professional clients who are after legitimate information and an assistant who, unlike C3PO, will refuse to help us dive into danger.

With “ObsoleteGPT,” I’m approaching service in the same way I took to bartending later in my career: jaded towards my supervisors, pleasant but cold towards customers, and always burnt out by being surrounded by excessive consumption. “ObsoleteGPT” is equally exhausted and – while not faded – just as uninterested in the user/customer’s desires. Its service is slow and labored, the products it offers are rarely what was ordered, and it will eventually stop responding the more you press it.

Introduction

Textbooks for first-year writing courses are prohibitively expensive and, considering the wealth of resources available online, rarely have value outside of the classroom. As an instructor who has taught several of these courses at multiple institutions, I have been interested in developing an open educational resource (OER) to alleviate costs as well as provide the flexibility to use the work across curricula. Both as a graduate student and, later as an adjunct instructor, I encountered several obstacles to creating an OER for my courses. Many of these obstacles have been mitigated since being hired as tenure-track faculty. Not surprisingly, support from campus entities as well as departmental administrators is crucial to developing OERs. What does this support look like? What are some of the challenges that remain? How might we establish better policies and practices on campus to encourage more OER development from faculty, staff, and even students? This reflection curates some of my experiences and thoughts as I continue working on a campus-supported OER.

Motivations

I first considered adopting OERs while at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) where I worked as a graduate teaching assistant. Before even teaching my first course, it was apparent that the textbook publication was a system that was only feasible at the expense of students. At that time, our first-year writing courses required a textbook, written by two UWM tenured faculty, which cost approximately $80. This was eventually replaced with an online textbook/multimedia cheaper resource, developed by another member of UWM faculty. This work is largely a compilation of online activities and short readings designed to support first-year writing. Because this textbook was accessible through the publisher’s website, however, students would be unable to access it after the semester was over. 

While OERs were uncommon in 2013 (when I encountered the first instance), there were still options that could have alleviated costs for students. Yet OERs were far better supported at the time the replacement text was introduced. Both texts could have been replaced with free resources, yet the creators of these texts opted to pursue traditional publishing. Why? The profit to their creators is marginal at best and students pay for a resource that is of limited value. 

My interpretation of this is that alternative publishing models have not yet been embraced by higher education. For reasons that are subjective to authors, the production of a free, reusable, and readily-accessible resource was less compelling than producing the works described. How might institutions and higher education-at-large shift this perception and prioritize OER development and distribution? How might this effort signify a broader change in how higher education accommodates students while also incentivizing the work of instructors and staff?

Individual Interest in OERs

My growing interest in creative commons was largely nurtured by academic librarians. As an intern with the UWM Library’s Digital Humanities Lab, I often worked with CC licenses and CC-licensed resources. It was also here that I learned about several digital initiatives including OERs. As a graduate student, however, this opportunity was not available to me. What was available to me was publishing my dissertation under a CC license. In 2019, this was surprisingly not as common and so the license I released the work under (CC BY-NC-SA) was selected with limited understanding of CC licensing. While my intention was duly considered when opting to license the work this way, I am increasingly concerned about the impact my ignorance may have and have had. Will licensing the work as NonCommercial limit my ability to revise this work into a publishable form?  

During this same period, I also began promoting creative commons and “copyleft” concepts into my instruction. In addition to incorporating CC-licensed resources into my courses, I also dedicated time in each course instructing students on how to locate and use CC-licensed assets. Much of this was accomplished with support from our library staff. 

With the onset of the COVID, which forced many of our classes online, I was uniquely qualified to recalibrate course materials into virtual offerings. This was especially handy in the case of a technical communications course. Due to increased popularity, several instructors were being brought in to teach additional sections. To provide new instructors with a readymade Canvas course that could be used to facilitate online and in-person offerings. This was offered under a Creative Commons license so that the syllabus, calendar, and other materials could be easily obtained, revised, and reused. 

Support is Crucial to Using Creative Commons

Based on these experiences, it’s clear to me that creative commons adoption requires support and readily available guidance. In almost every case mentioned above, there were experts available to provide such assistance but it took me several years to get to know who those individuals were. Here are a few ways we might better support the creative commons and OER development on campus.

Proposition One: Discuss creative commons and OER options at new hire and graduate student orientations. Providing immediate direction can help newcomers identify campus experts, explore free options, and even inspire exploration of alternative publication methods and CC-licensed scholarship.

Proposition Two: Prioritize OERs as valid works that satisfy promotion criteria for service, research, and teaching requirements. Creating an OER requires time and touces upon all of the major areas demanded by tenure and promotion granting committees. New faculty and staff need to be assured that an original OER be accepted as an original work of scholarship, created in service to the greater academic community and for the benefit of student learning. 

Proposition Three: Support for OER development should be intentional and methodical. I’m exceedingingly fortunate to have the generous support of my department chair, instructional technologists, and colleagues in developing a comprehensive OER for first-year professional writing students. It isn’t enough to have at-hand resources however (or even financial support!). A supportive team that can help keep the OER on track is essential for managing expectations and scope while being flexible enough to accommodate re-visioning. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

After a Summer of participating in various #BlackLiveMatter protests and actions, and shortly after the beginning of the Fall semester (2020), I composed the following statement on behalf of the Council for Play and Game Studies. Sara Lovett (Vice Chair) and Emma Kostopolus (Assistant Chair) were wonderful editors and provided some incredible feedback on what was a emotional writing.

Dear CPGS Community,

We hope that this letter finds you and yours healthy and safe. Although this hope has long become platitudinous, we continue to say it with sincerity simply because we seem to face anger, frustration, pain, loss, and uncertainty every day.

On August 23, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a city not far from Milwaukee, 29-year-old Black male Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times by Kenosha police. At the time of this incident, Mr. Blake was reportedly acting as a peacekeeper and attempting to help resolve a heated argument near his vehicle. The police were called and Mr. Blake was accosted while trying to remove himself from the scene. As he attempted to enter his vehicle, he was shot seven times. Blake’s three young sons screamed from the back seat while their father was gunned down right in front of them.

At the time of this writing, Mr. Blake is recovering but paralyzed from the waist down. Last week, Kenosha was waking up to mornings still smoldering from another night of burning, tear gas, and violence. Details about the incident are still being disputed. The officer who shot Blake, Rusten Sheskey, and two other officers, have been placed on administrative leave and are under investigation. We call for justice to be served and that they be appropriately charged for the excessive and unjustified use of force. This would only be a start, however, and so we continue to push for the exposure and subsequent destruction of those systems of racism, white supremacy, and violence that have corrupted the law enforcement industry since its inception.

We are thankful that Mr. Blake is alive but are pained by the impact this will have on him and his loved ones – especially his children and family. We are also incensed that, after the murders of Trayford Pellerin, Salaythis, Melvin, Vincent Harris, Darius Washington, Rayshard Brooks, Michael Thomas, Kamal Flowers, Tyquarn Graves, David McAtee, James Scurlock, Alejandra Monocuco, Momodou Lamin Sisay, Jarvis Sullivan, Tony McDade, Dion Johnson, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Botham Jean, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Yvette Smith, Alton Sterling, Botham Jean, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Yvette Smith, Alton Sterling, David McAtee, Walter Scott, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Sean Monterrosa, Jamel Floyd, and so many, many others…

…we are still left wanting justice.  

Many of us in the CCCC community are currently poring over syllabi and course designs that we hope are equitable, just, and fair. But we also need to look up from our assignments and lesson plans to witness the systemic injustice, material disparity, and historic displacement that Black Americans continue to face. We must stand in solidarity in our actions as teachers, researchers, gamers, designers, and as humans. 

The Council for Play and Game Studies at CCCC is adamant in our support of the Black Lives Matter movement. We support the peaceful protests that are erupting across the nation and condemn the disproportionately oppressive responses by municipal, state, and federal forces. We will neither accept nor even tolerate the actions and rhetoric of those who would exacerbate hatred. We will not support leadership who would seek policies that oppress and fraction the citizenry. 

The Council for Play and Game Studies vows to amplify those Black voices who would be silenced by the oppressors. We will ensure that our pedagogy accommodates diverse perspectives and backgrounds. We will dedicate the classroom to dismantling those pedagogical structures that, according to Asao Inoue (2019), perpetuate white supremacy and plunder the rich linguistic diversity of our classrooms. We will support the work of Black scholars through research practices that seek out and include their scholarship. 

In light of this, we ask that all play and game-focused pedagogues take a moment to consider and reflect on the values games and play bring to the classroom. How do the games we bring to class foster an understanding of justice? How does our discussion of these games impart the abilities to not only see but confront injustice? Are the games we’re playing privileging compassion over competition? Creation over consumption? Is our playful pedagogy one that embraces those forms of play that are strange to us? Do the games inform a sense of power that can ultimately be used to dismantle the injustices in their lives outside of the game? Are we making games that, from concept to execution, accommodate players of all backgrounds and abilities? 

Who are we inviting to the table? Who is left out?

Cited and Other Recommended Works

Acosta, Melanie M, and Denham, André R. “Simulating Oppression: Digital Gaming, Race and the Education of African American Children.” The Urban Review, vol. 50, no. 3, 2018, pp. 345–362.

Blackmon, Samantha. “Beware the Magical Negro: On Tropes, Race, and Black Lives Matter.” Not Your Mama’s Gamer. 4 Aug. 2016. 

Gray, Kishonna J and David J Leonard. Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Justice. University of Washington Press, 2018.

Inoue, Asao. “How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, Or What Do We Do About White Language Supremacy?” Keynote address delivered to the Conference on College Composition and Communication, 14 Mar. 2019.

Flanagan, Mary. Critical Play. MIT Press, 2009.

Kessock, Shoshana. “Cultural Appropriation and Larp.” The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp, edited by Jon Back, Gråsten, Knutpunkt, 2014, pp. 125-134.

Richard, Gabriela T., and Kishonna L. Gray. “Gendered play, racialized reality: Black cyberfeminism, inclusive communities of practice, and the intersections of learning, socialization, and resilience in online gaming.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39.1 (2018): 112-148.

This is the recipe Sarah and I made for the 2020 Riverwest Co-op Chili Cook-off. It’s named after the Mayan maize god, Hun Hunaphu. All of the ingredients except hominy are fairly common and can be picked up at the Co-op.

This is the third or fourth time making this recipe and it has changed a bit almost every time. Additions to this version include orange juice and cinnamon.

Ingredients for Spice Blend

This is the spice blend used in the chili. Mix this up first. Adjust to taste.

• 2T chili powder
• 1T cumin
• 1T garlic powder
• 1T paprika
• 1T fenugreek leaves
• ½ T black pepper

Ingredients for Roasted Yams

You can roast the yams right before serving. After a couple days, they break down into mush. Deep frying might solve this but…

• 2 large (really large!) yams
• Spice blend
• 1/2 c coconut oil

Preparation of Roasted Yams

1. Preheat oven to 420 degrees
2. Dice yams into ¼ inch cubes
3. Melt ¼ c of the coconut oil
4. Add 2 teaspoons of the spice blend to the oil (save remainder of spices for chili)
5. Toss yams in the spicy oil so that they’re evenly coated
6. Roast in single layer on sheet tray for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 mins or so

Ingredients for Chili

• 2 large onions
• 2 red, orange, or yellow peppers
• 2-3 T of minced garlic
• 1 large cans of diced tomatoes, drained
• 2 large cans of hominy, drained
• 6 cups of cooked black beans
• 2 chipotle peppers in adobo
• 2T of the adobo sauce
• 6 cups of veggie stock
• 4T molasses
• 6 bay leaves
• 1T cocoa
• 1T cinnamon
• 1T liquid smoke
• Juice of one orange

Preparation of Chili

1. Saute onion, peppers, and garlic i the remaining coconut oil
2. Stir in diced tomatoes and hominy
3. Add stock and bring to boil, stirring frequently
4. Turn down to a simmer after a few minutes
5. Stir in spices and liquid smoke
6. Stir in black beans
7. Simmer for approx. 30 mins. There should still be some liquid in the chili still. If not, add more veggie stock. 
8. Simmer until it looks thick enuff!
9. Stir in the yams before serving. They’ll get pretty squishy come day two!
   

This is a map made for those visiting Milwaukee for the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) this year. This page was created to help test the map’s appearance when embedded within a WordPress page. The Restaurant layer was produced automatically from information provided by collaborators serving on the Hospitality Committee – it was a privilege to cannibalize y’alls hard work!

Hey! So it works! As expected, slapping the HTML into the page worked just fine. I’m also happy to see that the map layers can be accessed by opening the side tray.

Preliminary Reflections on Live-streaming and Platform Pedagogies

by Kristopher Purzycki

This is an abridged version of a presentation given at the Computers & Writing Conference, Michigan State University, 2019.

My interest in Twitch comes not from my gaming scholarship but from an interest in broadcasting. I’ve always been attracted to those media that enable the public to cast a wide net to an audience. From guerrilla journalism to pirate radio to mainframe shareware, my interests always turn to those that offer an open, accessible platform to a general public. So live-streaming, which essentially combines the social interaction of talk radio with public access cable television, seems to serve in this capacity. 

Fascinated by this aspect of Twitch, I started experimenting with how the platform could be used. One of these experiments involved writing a dissertation chapter which I had been having a difficult time initiating. Knowing that successful Twitch streaming entailed a regular schedule, I dedicated several three-hours sessions during the week to writing while live-streaming. Surprisingly, this worked for several weeks and I was able to complete a decent chapter draft shortly thereafter. Along the way, a number of people became regulars and would pop in whenever I began streaming. Dutch philosophers and Midwestern game scholars popped in for a visit, oftentimes offering resources that might help whatever passage I had been working on. 

At the same time I also began attracting novice writers. Many visitors seemed to just want to be to witness the activity of writing. As one regular noted, “we’re not here for your writing, we’re here for your company.” And so an amorphous circle or writers formed, dispersed, connected not by theme, discipline, or level of expertise but by platform. I began receiving requests to review short passages. Links to pages of prose were sent to me. I would receive invites to check out others’ writings on their own streams. By the third week of writing, I was spending less time working on my own writing and more time helping others with theirs. And I liked it. For the sake of finishing the project, I stepped away from streaming for some time. Signaling a return to a project I’d held off on, I streamed my dissertation defense on May 20th of this year. 

With this in mind, it may make more sense why a cohesive writing community exists on Twitch. It’s contributors range from amateur fan-fic creators to doctoral students. “Rexadoodle,” for example, studies for her doctoral preliminary exam in economics on stream. Using the pomodoro technique, rexadoodle is able to focus on specific tasks while limiting chat with the audience (of course, I discovered this after interrupting with an introduction). Rexadoodle averages over 20 viewers at a time who wait patiently for her to finish her 20-minute writing sessions. Conversation ensues at the onset of each break but, as far as I could tell, never discussed the act of writing. Most interestingly, this streamer does this as part of the ASMR Twitch category, or those shows that evoke an “autonomous sensory meridian response” that is aroused when receiving personal attention. At the time of this writing, I’m unsure how these two imperatives operate together.

One facet of Twitch that certainly stokes this response is the incorporation of a tipping economy. In Twitch, this is embodied in the use of bits that are given through chat. These bits animate your chat input, essentially making your voice stand out in the chat window. Bits earn streamers 1 cent per bit. For the spectator, bits currently cost $1.40 per 100 bits. According to a 2017 Variety piece, Twitch raked in over $12 million in a ten-month period (Spangler). During a break in a recent writing session, rexadoodle received numerous “cheers” from spectators. During this break, two spectators competed for the title of “Top Cheerer.” This week, over 10000 bits ($126 in value) had been given between the two, earning rexadoodle an $100. 

While I don’t anticipate such vying for tutoring attention, it’s tempting to consider what sort of alternative economy this opens up for those in higher education, many of whom are poorly paid and/or insecure in their field. Being one of these, I’m currently experimenting with a system where I offer tutoring services across a live-streaming platform. One of the numerous issues that has inhibited this is the intellectual property rights of both myself and students. Another is ensuring that the system of communication maintains privacy, compliance with FERPA regulations, as well as pedagogical ethics. Much of my own hand-wringing occurs where the public institution meets the capitalist platform. How to preserve a creative commons license on my intellectual property on a platform where that’s unavailable?  YouTube provides this option but is a much less accessible platform focusing even more on games than Twitch.

Other live-streaming experiences have continued to reinforce my predication that live-streaming will be a tremendous boon for higher ed. In June, I was able to play Occupy White Walls with Dr. Kyle Bohunicky (University of Florida) and the Looking for Good streaming group. This was an incredible experience that demonstrated just how potent live-streaming can be for education and collaboration.

For my most recent experiment, I live-streamed one of the panels I presented with at the Computers & Writing conference, held at Michigan State University in June of this year. With the approval of Dan Hocutt and Megan Mize, we broadcast the entire panel on Twitch. Most in the audience were unphased (or unimpressed) with this – a few (notably younger) in the audience were far more intrigued by the motivations of streamers and how those “desires” could be tapped into by educators.

Still, we didn’t receive any questions across the stream, as I had hoped. Yet there were a few viewers and the tech held up on the conference center’s WiFi. Let’s chalk that up as a win for now.

Based on these experiences, it seems clear to me that there is great potential for live-streaming in higher education. While streaming my dissertation, people would join the stream to see how much progress had been made. I maintained a word count and shared daily and weekly goals as it was one of the more common;y requested updates. As I mentioned, other scholars suggested works to pick up – some of which turned out to be invaluable to the project. In addition to revealing the raw writing process, streaming can also potentially dispel the fog of higher eds more cryptic practices. After live-streaming my defense, one person thanked me for sharing the experience noting that it had helped him understand what exactly a defense was. But what other rites and rituals of the academy can be opened up through live-streaming? How can this service, for example, enable participation by those with limitations of mobility (or funding)?

Given the rapidity that live-streaming has developed into a lucrative platform of considerable breadth, it might be surprising that the medium has not branched its way into more fields. Yet Twitch, which once offered a vehicle for everything from gaming to performance art, is no longer interested in catering to a diversity of interests nor providing a stage for participatory culture. Categories are limited to those that possess the better capacity for providing Amazon the most profit. So while this motivation it not surprising, what is odd is that Amazon hasn’t taken more steps to usurp education in some way: “Want to pick up this work being referenced by StarLord789? Here’s a link to a used copy.” 

Setting aside this low-hanging critique for the time being, we may want to ready ourselves. There are opportunities to be had on both sides of the lectern. Yet there are also numerous considerations and concerns. Admittedly, the ones I offer here are only those encountered in my own experience, which is limited in scope. Despite this trepidation, I find it difficult to imagine any other future than one where one can receive a humanities degree from Amazon.edu or Google Online University, where the curriculum is bound to products and proprietary services.

Given the current state of higher education, maybe this future isn’t much different after all.

Slides from the presentation can be found here. This presentation was also live-streamed via Twitch and can currently be found on my YouTube channel.

Works Cited in Original Paper

Rexadoodle. Twitch.tv. Accessed 17 June 2019. https://www.twitch.tv/rexadoodle

Looking for Good. Twitch.tv. Accessed 17 June 2019. https://www.twitch.tv/lfgatuf

“FAQs on Photos and Videos under FERPA.” FAQs on Photos and Videos under FERPA | Protecting Student Privacy, studentprivacy.ed.gov/faq/faqs-photos-and-videos-under-ferpa.

Hamilton, William A et al. “Streaming on Twitch: Fostering Participatory Communities of Play within Live Mixed Media.” Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 2014

Handrahan, Matthew. “Any Henning: Streaming must be more than ‘just an invisible console.” gamesindustry.biz. 24 April 2019. Accessed 14 June 2019. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-24-amy-hennig-streaming-must-be-more-than-just-an-invisible-console

Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. De Capo Press, 1999.

Payne, Keith, Schuetzler, and Giboney. “Examining the Learning Effects of Live Streaming Video Game Instruction over Twitch.” Computers in Human Behavior 77.C (2017): 95-109. Web.

Spangler, Todd. “Twitch Will Let More Streamers Earn Money, After Users Spend Over $12 Million on Cheering Emoji.” Variety.com. 21 April 2017. Accessed 19 June 2019. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/twitch-affiliate-program-cheering-12-million-dollars-1202392024/