The Games+Learning+Society Center and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are excited to announce that the 11th annual Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference will be held on July 8-10, 2015, in conjunction with the GLS Playful Learning Summit and the GLS Doctoral Consortium on Tuesday, July 7.
The GLS Conference is the premier videogames and learning event. Now in it’s eleventh year, our event continues to be one of the top destinations where the people who create and research high-quality digital learning media can gather to discuss and help shape the direction of the field. GLS is best known for its high quality program, top notch attendees list, and playful atmosphere. Each year, we foster in-depth conversation across diverse disciplines including game studies and culture, game design, learning sciences and education research, industry, and policy. Our aim is to connect, learn, and explore.
We have a great line-up of keynote speakers this year, including industry leaders Brenda and John Romero and digital media and learning innovator Nichole Pinkard. We will also have an interactive performance of Coffee: A Misunderstanding by Dierdra “Squinky” Kiai. This year also marks the 2nd annual GLS Games Showcase, an awards show honoring the year’s best educational games from top studios and game labs across the country.
GLS hosts a variety of different session types, including interactive workshops on game research and game design; individual and symposia presentation sessions; fast-paced speed run micropresentations; and special Well Played and Working Example sessions. Evening events like the poster session and GLS Showcase Awards Show include dinner and an open bar with beer, wine, and a variety of desserts.
We encourage submissions ranging from traditional paper presentations to innovative formats focusing on gameplay. This year’s conference seeks to engage discussion of the following questions and issues:
- Diversity and inclusivity are important topics of discussion for game communities everywhere. With a plethora of different platforms and a variety genres available, more people play digital games than ever before. The growth of games has brought with it provocative conversations about what it means to be a gamer. We invite papers exploring these issues. What roles can educators in the games for learning community play in efforts to foster diversity and inclusivity in game communities? How might games promote equity and diversity in the games industry and the games for learning community? In what ways are they failing?
- Play has historically been considered the work of children and a reward for adults for a job well done. With the proliferation of digital tools in work and learning spaces and movements like gamification, the relationship between work and play has shifted. What is the nature of the relationship between work and play, and what productive roles can play take in work and school environments? What features of play are currently under theorized or under-designed for in the digital games space?
- Design is at the heart of the GLS community. Games for learning has proven to be a lasting area of research, not necessarily because of the games and technologies in themselves, but because of the myriad possibilities that games bring to the design of learning environments. How does research on learning drive game design? How can games inform emerging theories of learning? What roles might games play in encouraging learners to engage with the world as designers and problem-solvers?
Submissions are due online by February 10, 2015, 11:59pm central standard time. Formatting guidelines and other details can be found on the conference website glsconference.org. When your submission is ready, please go to https://precisionconference.com/~gls to submit.
Questions? Contact us at chair@glsconference.org.
Constance Steinkuehler & Amanda Ochsner, GLS Conference Co-Chairs
