Postsecondary Play: The Role of Games and Social Media in Higher Education

10. Implications and Applications of Sociable Gaming for Higher Education

nicole b. ellison, donghee yvette wohn, and carrie heeter Over the past few years, games that are played on social media platforms have garnered attention from game designers and game scholars—and, most recently , from higher education scholars and practitioners as well. Because they are embedded in social media platforms, these games have been dubbed social games (although, of course, any game that involves interpersonal interaction is inherently social). We thus use the term sociable gaming to refer to gameplay that is accompanied by some type of social interaction. This social interaction, which lies at the heart of sociable gaming, can take various forms. It can occur within a game or outside of a game and can be synchronous or asynchronous, verbal or nonverbal, co-located or remote. In this chapter, we focus on social network games—games that are embedded as applications in social network sites such as Facebook. We argue that academic institutions and especially those who work with students (administrators, faculty, and staff) should consider the social capital benefits of sociable gaming for students and capitalize on their social and technical affordances in order to help young people be more successful in their pursuit of higher education. How can social network games help students successfully apply to, attend, and graduate from college? We believe the primary explanatory mechanism is communication. Communication enables student socialization processes through activities such as making friends on campus, accessing information, and developing social support networks. Most games encourage communication ,butgamesthatareplayedonsocialnetworksitesareespeciallygoodatsupporting social interactions because they enable players to easily connect and Implications and Applications of Sociable Gaming for Higher Education chapter ten implications of sociable gaming for higher education 237 communicate with friends, friends of friends, and strangers. Social network games provide a low-barrier context for interaction (Wohn et al. 2011) and can act as a “social lubricant” (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2011) giving players something to talk about. These conversations can then lead to interactions that are not game-related, potentially supporting relationship development and interaction among players. Teens from different social circles may start talking about their crops in the Facebook game FarmVille move on to chatting about something that happened in class that day, and end up talking about a class assignment. Research shows that many college students use Facebook to get class-related questions answered (Lampe et al. 2011), and we suspect that students benefit twice from this practice—once when their informational needs are met, and a second time when these exchanges become social. Social network sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter are extremely popular among young people. Social network games can benefit from social featuresandpracticesthatarespecifictothesocialnetworksitetheyarehosted on. For instance, people who play games in Facebook can identify others with shared interests through their profiles and find common ground (shared experiences and affiliations) with one another (Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe 2011). We believe these interactions can provide the foundation for exchanges of informationalandsocialsupport ,whichareimportantinthecontextofstudents’ psychosocial development and college success. Although they are more complicated to measure than explicit outcomes like grades, interpersonal communication skills and the ability to maintain a supportive social network are important for college students to master. Social capital gives us a framework for describing the benefits of social relationships in regardtoemotionalandinformationalsupport ,andresearchhasidentifiedsocial capital as being an important factor predicting successful college access and persistence (e.g., Coleman 1988; Dika and Singh 2002). Social Capital Socialcapitaldescribesthedifferenttangibleandintellectualresourcesheldby people we know, such as a friend’s knowledge about plumbing or a parent’s ability to help with a down payment. Social capital does not speak to the resources held directly by an individual but rather describes the resources in one’s social connections that have the potential to be accessed when needed. Bourdieu (1986) and Coleman (1988) introduced the concept of social capital as a new 238 what do we know about games? dimensionofcapital,inadditiontohumancapitalandphysicalcapital.Physical capital is material that helps create a tangible product (e.g., natural resources, money), while human capital refers to the knowledge and skills held by people (Coleman 1988). Social capital describes an individual’s ability to tap into both physical and human capital through networked connections including friends, family, acquaintances, online communication partners, and neighbors. Social capital reflects not the resources (such as access to information or funds) an individual possesses directly but those available through his or her social network . Of course, we both...