Tech Writing, Meet Tomb Raider: Video and Computer Games in the Technical Communication Classroom

Abstract

This article examines the common genre of the usability study in technical communication courses and proposes the incorporation of computer and video games to ensure a rhetorical focus to this genre. As games are both entertaining and educational, their use in the technical communication classroom provides a new perspective on multimodal literacies that is appropriate to meet the needs of twenty-first-century learners. This article both describes a theoretical rationale for the inclusion of video and computer games in the classroom and also offers suggestions for their practical pedagogical incorporation.

Videogame Walkthroughs in Educational Settings: Challenges, Successes, and Suggestions for Future Use

“…Like Vie [34], we agree that walkthroughs share similarities with other technical documentation, including technical software texts. The ability to follow along in a text and then apply that information to what is going on in the screen is a significant information literacy piece that is currently missing from school curricula.…”

“…Vie [34] also provides an example of how walkthroughs can be mobilized in the classroom, in this case describing how writing walkthroughs serve as an exercise for college students to practice technical writing skills that might be more interesting than traditional technical writing assignments such as resumes or usability studies (p. 158). A similar project is assigned by Burn [7], who after having students design a game, has them write a walkthrough to reinforce peripheral literacies.…”

“…And finally, what are some of the potential areas of concern that must be acknowledged in order for walkthroughs to be an effective learning aid in the classroom? As games have made their way into a variety of in/formal learning contexts with both negative [31] and positive impacts [34] on the learning outcomes, it is increasingly important to study how to best support novice players and pedagogues. And, as reporting on this research remains heavily focused on gameplay and/or student interactions with the technology, there needs to be increasing attention paid to peripheral materials and cultural contexts that also constitute key components of the gameplay experience.…”

Game Design Tactics for Teaching Technical Communication in Online Courses

“…Some scholarship has also explored the connection between games and the technical communication classroom. For example, Vie (2008) argues for the inclusion of games in technical communication pedagogy, noting that games offer one possibility to “excite students about the fundamentals of technical writing, while also introducing students to the rhetorical notion of revision for a particular audience” (p. 158). Drawing from her experiences playing PC and console games such as Half-Life , Tomb Raider , and Metal Gear Solid , Vie explains how she created assignments such as group game walk-throughs and analyses focused on usability and revision.…”

“…In this essay, we argue that building oral and written communication assignments catalyzed by play can improve student engagement in the technical communication classroom and better prepare students for future industry careers. This builds upon prior research looking at commercial video games more generally, such as Vie’s (2008) work where she argues that using games in the classroom has benefits such as “the possibility of increased student engagement and learning; the ability to move beyond mere modes or genre-based writing to richer, rhetorically informed composing pedagogy; and the incorporation of multimodal literacies that may benefit twenty-first century student learners in particular” (p. 161). While Vie focused on the use of commercial video games in her own pedagogy, we maintain that allowing students to compose their own original video game ideas can lend even more excitement to games-based assignments.…”