My research focuses on collaboration and play in informal learning environments, with a primary emphasis on gaming, game design, and gaming culture.
Intersecting with digital media and learning research, I investigate informal learning in interest-driven learning communities, looking at the forms of collaborative learning, design thinking, and complex reasoning that I see as being part and parcel of engagement with media. My work crosses the learning sciences and literacy studies, incorporating perspectives that value the out-of-school forms of learning that are embedded in digital media use.
I have recently conducted studies of design thinking in online gaming communities, and am currently conducting studies of childhood digital gaming practices, collaboration and computational thinking in board game contexts, and am developing new studies of social expertise in online communities. I have presented work recently at the American Educational Research Association, the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, Games+Learning+Society, Digital Media & Learning, and Internet Research. I am the co-editor (with Elisabeth Hayes) of the recent book
Learning in Video Game Affinity Spaces, published by Peter Lang.
For my personal website and blog, please visit
se4n.org.