The Worked Example 1

Running Head: Worked Example

THE WORKED EXAMPLE: INVITATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP IN SERVICE OF AN EMERGING FIELD1 Sasha Barab, Professor of Learning Sciences, Indiana University Indiana University, 1900 East 10th St., Eigenmann Hall, Room 543, Bloomington, IN 47406 Ph: (812) 856-1553, Fax: (812) 856-0862, sbarab@indiana.edu Tyler Dodge, Doctoral Candidate in Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University tdodge@indiana.edu James Gee, Professor of Education, Arizona State Technology james.gee@asu.edu --------------------------------------- Submitted for Publication to Educational Researcher. Abstract In this essay, we begin with a theoretical articulation the worked example as a form of invitational scholarship that provides new media scholars, in particular, an important outlet for their work. A worked example leverages 1 This work has been supported through multiple

meetings and grants from the John D. and Catherine

T. MacArthur Foundation initiative as part of their

Digital Media and Learning initiative. We wish to

thank all the colleagues who attended those meetings

and inspired our thinking.

purposively-selected instances and multiple modes of discourse (e.g., videos, pictures, expositions, games, quotes, etc.) to establish an invitation, in response to which readers can engage theoretical claims along with contextual particulars that reflexively illuminate a class of phenomenon. The presentation both serves as a contextual instantiation of a theoretical conjecture and, by scaffolding discussion among peers around the example, invites verification or refutation of the conjecture. It is in the “working” of the example that the design affords the likelihood of a particular resonance, illuminating the designer-intended conjectures, while simultaneously allowing for further discovery. And it is in this way that we regard worked examples as offering a scholarship not of exposition but of invitation. Here, we provide an overview of the “why,” the “what,” and the “how” of the worked example. We frame the discussion in terms of the core tensions that both challenge the production and make the worked example such a powerful form of scholarly contribution. Introduction Today, scholars interested in new media and learning are working from the perspectives of different disciplines to construct a new and interdisciplinary field. This field is devoted to how interactive multimedia can enhance learning within and outside of schools. These scholars are presenting important new ideas about learning and literacy in the modern world, but each of these ideas stems from a different school: each is embedded in different theories, approaches, and disciplinary languages. Further, these ideas find implementation in different sorts of specific educational interventions, both in and out of schools, in contexts meant to serve as “plausibility proofs” for the ideas. To draw these

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diverse endeavors together to constitute a new field, a coherent enterprise, there is a pressing need to afford collaboration across these various practitioners and radically different forms of work.

To further complicate this endeavor, the stories being told among new media scholars transpire in multimodal formats and by collaborative processes more sophisticated and powerful than the scholarly outlets available for sharing findings. It is our conviction that a novel form of academic dialogue must be facilitated: one that allows new media scholars to share insights and findings in ways that afford multimedia representation, ongoing discussion, evolving manifestations, and distributed meaning-making. Such an enterprise demands a solution that has only begun to be established. Scholars advancing this field have published standard academic work embedded in their own disciplines and journals, of course. The issue we address is how to move our work forward in ways that cross disciplinary boundaries and lead to a common language, logic, methods, norms, and values. These diverse endeavors in service of an emerging field of science are still too fledgling to be judged only by standards of verifiability appropriate for more established fields. Rather, they are at the stage of making plausibility arguments and offering illuminative proof-of-concept instantiations; the focus is less on presenting patterns and offering predictive claims and more on revealing mechanism and process to afford insight, promote dialogue, and inspire change. Nonetheless, such arguments and implementations must now begin to converge upon a set of overlapping warrants for claims to provide a foundation both for collaboration and, eventually, for more formal standards for the field. How, then, should we proceed in building this new field, especially in scaffolding collaboration? In this essay, we describe the worked example as an invitational form of

scholarship that bears the potential to transform conventions of academic publishing, especially for the field of new media. The worked example as a form of scholarly publication and discourse begins with the assemblage of annotated examples and contextual framing that collectively establish an invitation to explore a body of work in relation to a theoretical conjecture. Not fossilized in print, but ongoing and adaptive, the worked example should be created to inspire a conversation or dialogue. Just as the thesis of the work represents the class of scientific conjecture, and the worked example represents the instance put forth to disseminate the class, so do the iterations of the example instantiated by successive additions, comments, and replies represent the progressive manifestations of the instance (Hofstadter, p. 351–352). The dialogue conducted around the example constitutes a form of discourse arguably more useful, if not authentic, than an authoritative written argument—especially in relation to new media. And if one of our goals is to communicate across disciplines, the worked example is designed to present hypotheses and the conditions from which they emerged in a manner that is not overly constrained by localized technical language that prevents others from entering the dialogue. Participants in the conversation around a worked example access content tailored to their degree of involvement, expertise, or interest; in this way, the worked example, including the appended comments and reflections, are differentially accessible. As such, we view the worked example as invitational and as inclusive. It is inclusive in that it allows for the publication of both tentative hypotheses and substantiated assertions, and does so in a manner that allows people to converse across disciplines. This is in part because when one designs a worked example, one is trying to go “meta,” explicating publicly the logic and value of what a research team has

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accomplished as well as the conditions within which such processes have value. Such work even bears emancipatory potential in that it liberates academic publishing from the fossilizing medium of printed text and instead situates scholarship in a context that invites, if not encourages others with various expertise to engage in, learn from, and contribute to ongoing manifestations of the work. Invitational Scholarship Games and New Media scholars occupy an interesting time, working with compelling and consequential ideas that radically transform notions of literacy, theories of learning, and engagement with the world more broadly (Gee, 2003; Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005). According to Jenkins (2006), we as a society are experiencing “technological, industrial, cultural, and social changes in the ways media circulates within our culture” (p. 282). Specifically, media use has changed such that youth (1) engage in transmedia participation, (2) operate as both consumers and producers of media, and (3) collaboratively interact such that local and geographically distributed affinity groups assemble around the media. Accordingly, notions of literacy and authority have changed (Lankshear & Knobel, 2001; New London Group, 2000), and, at its core, this is a change from a cultural logic that privileges centralized, authoritative accounts to one that values collective participation and meaning making. Such a change is evident in the popularity of a range of sites, ranging from community-held resources like Wikipedia and media outlets like ReveNews and CNET, to public–private spaces like My Space, YouTube, and Flicker, all of which represent hugely popular venues based on distributed voice, collaborative meaning making, and a multiplicity of voices. They serve as modern-day “commons”: fields fertile but not finely cultivated, with rights and responsibilities shared among those who use them, and with

authority bound up in collective participation, not fossilized in the words of a few. In part technological and in part cultural, these changes have transformed all aspects of life, from work and commerce to entertainment and healthcare, to name but a few. However, and appertain to the present thesis, assumptions regarding what constitutes credible scholarship in formal institutions has not changed significantly. For the most part, academic scholarship remains print-based, neither suited for nor adapting to the literacies of multi-modal and interactive technologies (Kress, 2003). As a consequence, the scholarly community tends to engage in arguments that remain insular, hierarchical, parochial, and rather impenetrable to the very people whom the work should serve. Further, academic scholarship fails to benefit from these powerful technologies, thereby limiting the creation, evolution, and distribution of the work. A central tenet of this argument is that if the scholarship around new media literacies in particular—and, we argue, many other young, interdisciplinary or multimodal fields—seeks to make significant progress, then we must develop innovative means of publishing scholarly work that leverages multiple modalities of representation, that functions in interactive and dialogical ways, and that allows both formal and informal negotiation of its meaning. It is with the goal of providing a new form of distributed scholarship that we employ the notion of the worked example as a significant methodological tool for promoting scholarly discourse. A worked example leverages purposively-selected instances and multiple modes of discourse (e.g., videos, pictures, expositions, games, quotes, etc.) to establish an invitation, in response to which readers can engage theoretical claims along with contextual particulars that reflexively illuminate a class of phenomenon. That is, in a worked example, an expert provides a “meta” take,

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narrating an instance of a phenomenon in terms of mechanism and process as well as providing contextual framing, to illuminate a class of similar phenomena. The presentation both serves as a contextual instantiation of a theoretical conjecture and, by scaffolding discussion among peers around the example, invites verification or refutation of the conjecture. It is in the “working” of the example that design affords the likelihood of a particular resonance, illuminating the designer-intended conjectures, while simultaneously allowing for further discovery. And it is in this way that we regard worked examples as offering a scholarship not of exposition but of invitation. Whereas the worked example has been discussed by others as a pedagogical tool that makes expert thinking evident to the novice learner in a form that reduces cognitive load (Moreno, Reisslein, & Delgoda, 2006; Sweller, 1988), our interest concerns the discourse occasioned by this presentational mode. In traditional instructional contexts, the worked example serves as a scaffold for interaction between a tutor and student or, more generally, as an occasion for dialogue “resulting perhaps in some sort of co-construction of knowledge” (Chi, 1996, p. S37). It is this interchange, this collaborative knowledge construction, occasioned by the worked example that, in part, characterizes our work. Additionally, we are interested in the worked example as a rhetorical form that allows for the assemblage of multiple communicative forms to establish an experiential trajectory that facilitates dialogue. Such a tailored or condensed experience, we posit, may be more useful than engagement with the entire context from which the excerpts were derived because that context could span extended time frames, involve numerous other particulars, or require unfamiliar strategies that, though appropriate to elicit engagement for the target user, may nonetheless fail to usefully

illuminate the particular theoretical claims for which the worked example itself was developed. The assemblage is critically important, because it is from this assembly that meaningful dialogue does or does not ensue, and it is in the experience of engaging these assemblies that one can define work as useful. Said succinctly, it is in terms of the dialogical and experiential affordances that one judges this work. Such a criterion for scholarly work—one that privileges plausibility, resonance, and subsequent engagement—differs markedly from the scholarly canons of validity and reliability. There are three foci to which the scholar must attend when producing a worked example: (a) the example itself, that is, the particular; (b) the broader thesis of which the example is but one instance; and (c) the manner in which the example is being constructed such that both the example and the thesis are illuminated, thus establishing an invitation. It is the responsibility of the designer to purposively select particular data and to position these data and their contextual and critical framing such that collectively they both allow others to appreciate their theoretical importance and, at the same time, engage in their own framing of their meanings. This process should be approached as both a science and an art, involving, appreciating, and balancing a number of tensions—some of which are discussed below. This recounting deviates from the linear analytic structure standard for research reports in favor of a chronological organization characteristic of some case studies (Yin, 1994) or process analyses (Elbow & Belanoff, 1995; Hacker, 2002). Indeed, we consider this form of expression as a novel hybrid of rhetorical strategies bearing affordances akin to those borne by contemporary interactive, immersive media: new literacies and new modes of discourse are fostered, even demanded (Ong, 1982), though still characterized by a family resemblance to traditional modes—especially in

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their outcomes. While not a narrative per se, the arrangement suggests a dramatic unfolding in the users’ performing actions and witnessing results, in their making decisions and undergoing the outcomes. Additionally, as a form of new media scholarship, the identity and meaning of a particular worked example does not stop when the designer finishes his job, but continues to evolve as others come and leave their comments. There exists an interplay between the designed meaning and the audience’s engagement with the worked example because the work is augmented—or derailed—based on the participation of others as their comments come to be integrated into the actual work. And, we argue, this ensuing dialogue conducted around the example constitutes a more authentic form of discourse than the authoritative essay dominant in scholarly publication. Risk and Rigor It is with the goal of advocating a new form of scholarship—one that is both rigorous and flexible, both narrative and expository, both art and science; one that challenges notions of author and audience—that we make use of the worked example as an important scholarly tool. This work adopts the stance that contemporary scholarship must reflect the prevailing paradigm of knowing as participatory—as situated and distributed, and reflecting an interpretivist epistemology (Barab & Plucker, 2002; Bruner, 1990; Duffy & Cunningham, 1996; Sfard, 1998). Indeed, in countering positivist and post-positivist approaches to research, our thesis aligns with current debates regarding scientific claims and evidence (e.g., Eisenhart & Towne, 2003). Our central claim is that the construction and interpretation of scientific scholarship is conducted by both the researcher and the audience; it must reflect the epistemologies, experiences, and intentions of all parties.

While the work of falsification allowed for scientific advances that logical positivism would not, it also secured the distinction, motivated by Reichenbach (1938), between scientists’ actual cogitation (the “context of discovery”) and their presentation of theory (the “context of justification”). It framed the process of discovery and the methods of justification as temporally or, perhaps more importantly, normatively discrete (Hoyningen-Huene, 1987); ostensibly, the distinction privileges empirical investigation over discovery itself. In contrast, we maintain that the two contexts are not so distinct and that, further, descriptions of the discovery serve to establish knowledge claims even apart from their [subsequent] evaluation. Moreover, in design-based research, the formulation of theory co-evolves with its verification and iteration (Barab & Squire, 2004). As such, our interest lies in scholarly work that process invites the reader into this co-evolution and at the same time adopts a theoretical stance and intentionally leverages the instance to advance theoretical claims that transcend the particular. To illustrate our understanding of the simultaneous production—generation and justification—of scientific knowledge, we make reference to the form of inquiry called self-study (Feldman, 1995, 2003). To begin, an ethnographic inquiry into, say, the work of a studio artist may lead to understandings inferred from observation, and even when no more general than the particular instances, these understandings may nonetheless represent the formation of theory. For instance, Giopulos (1979), discussing the work of a potter engaged in his craft, emphasized the situated nature of the activity for not only the potter but also the observer, who “takes an enriched horizon to the next potter’s world, cautiously, not seeking to generalize about all potting” (p. 12). That is, the observer makes not a “grand generalization” but only “petite generalizations” (Stake, 1995, pp. 7,

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20), emphasizing how assertions beyond that context “[make] the generalizability of any naturalistic findings highly suspect” (Barab & Squire, 2004, p. 11). Still, such inferences may nonetheless represent the production of scientific knowledge. Significantly, this same form of inquiry may be undertaken by the artist himself. Sullivan (2005), for example, discussed the “artist–theorist” as engaging scientific inquiry through his studio work. Similar to our own orientation, the interest of the artist-theorist is “to investigate how knowledge is created in the process of making art,” and to do so, he participates as “both the researcher and the object of study,” using “self-study protocols…to formally investigate and subsequently communicate the outcomes of an inquiry” (p. 79). Indeed, in the contexts of both discovery and justification, the artist–theorist may employ not only traditional but innovative means, perhaps not verifiable but certainly plausible. Cahnmann (2003), for example, similarly advocating an arts-based approach to scholarship, discussed the role of poetic voice in both inquiry and reporting, and like poetic voice, Sullivan’s “inclusion of sidebars and images (always presented with commentary)” were “consciously designed…to honor and accommodate…multiple points of entry [and] invite active reading” (Thompson, 2006, p. 9) It is our argument that the viability of this research, that is, the potential for it to advance scientific knowledge, lies largely in its mode of dissemination. Specifically, rather than simply report our findings to promote their verification or refutation—indeed, rather even than present the context wherein we discovered such results—we advocate for a structured and contextualized account of the context from which the theory finds interpretive value. This recounting should remain situated in the system of activity whereby it arose, including not only the instruments used by members in such

activities but also the social, cultural, and historical relationships of those engaging in the activity, as well as the purpose and results of those activities (Barab, Evans, & Baek, 2004; Engeström, 1987). Such a contextualized presentation accords with our commitment that scientific discourse must redefine the minimal ontological unit for framing an experience (Barab & Roth, 2006); an authentic account must embody the environment and the emergent experiential states. Such work must balance experimentation with scrutiny and must emphasize the responsibility of the researcher (Feuer, Towne, & Shavelson, 2002). Because “research on anything will yield findings that mirror its procedures for observing or measuring” (Bruner, 1990, p. 104), in order to ensure the rigor of our scholarship, we must concern ourselves with the credibility, trustworthiness, and more general rigor of the work—even if we are advocating participation over generalization (Fiske, 2002). Referring to design-based research, Barab and Squire (2004) argued that “such a system of inquiry might draw less from traditional positivist science or ethnographic traditions of inquiry, and more from pragmatic lines of inquiry where theories are judged not by their claims to truth, but by their ability to do work in the world” (p. 6). The examples that we present in association with our research, then, represent an opportunistic leveraging of observed instances such that the instances lead—not inexorably but at least quite likely—to the audiences’ discovery of overlapping, or even refuting of posed, conjectures. The Worked Example: Plague World, A Modern Prometheus Conceptual Play To demonstrate how a worked example can advance scientific conjectures, we present our exhibit of the Plague World mission. This

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case centers on the worked example of our adaptation of Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818, 1831) as a context for scientific reasoning and ethics. Specifically, this worked example presents our theory of conceptual play and invites the scientific community to consider its plausibility. Again, the worked example represents an opportunistic leveraging of observed instances such that the instances lead—not inexorably but at least quite likely—to the audiences’ discovery of the same conjectures that we posit and that the account is intended to support. More generally, the worked example includes multiple types of data (child quotations, screen shots, video walkthroughs, researcher conjectures, etc.) with the goal of illuminating the notion of conceptual play (see Figure 1; cf. http://inkido.indiana.edu/workedexamples/plague/)

Figure 1. Screenshot of the worked example of

Plague World.

The relationship between commercial games and instructional design, especially in terms of design decisions aimed at affording user engagement, has been advanced in the literature (e.g., Dickey, 2005), but our work has not only successfully leveraged commercial strategies but conjectured and refined a model of design strategies corresponding to different modes of critical engagement. In particular, our model of conceptual play involves a sense of legitimacy (through conceptual engagement), intentionality (through immersive engagement), consequentiality (through impactive engagement), and accountability (through reflexive engagement). Significantly, a user’s recognition of these qualities in the mediated experience reflects their value in practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). A core goal is that through conceptual play, the designed environment can simultaneously narratize disciplinary content and disciplinize narrative content—the latter referring to the need to help students engage conceptual tools as knowledge for transforming problematic storylines (Barab, Zuiker, et al., 2007). “Plague World” Worked Example Though we have developed a number of worked examples around our work, including exhibits of virtual worlds addressing curricula ranging from statistics to ecology, the discussion in this section elaborates upon an example around Plague World, A Modern Prometheus, a virtual space adaptation of Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein. Begun in collaboration with Douglas Thomas at the University of Southern California, Plague World was developed to study how the different modes of engagement afforded by a conceptual play space can scaffold students in developing a critical appreciation of classic literature and the meaning such canonical works may bear in contemporary society. The curricular unit aligns with national standards regarding persuasive writing and decision

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making, and the context in which this instruction is situated entails narrative themes evident in Shelley’s original. For instance, one of the designers reflected that “the themes of ‘dangerous knowledge’ and ‘secrecy’ are present in Frankenstein as well as in Plague World…. Through the missions, we intuit that the scientific knowledge the Doctor has, that led him to create the monster, is dangerous and not ethically sound.” Six missions comprise the Plague World trajectory, initially establishing a problem—both narrative and curricular—to be investigated, and ultimately challenging the student to commit to the decision of whether the Creature, Frankenstein’s “monster,” should be saved or destroyed. The student role-plays a visitor to the doctor’s home, in a village ravaged by disease, and in doing so inherits the character’s history and motives, ultimately witnessing the consequences of the actions taken and choices made while costumed in the fiction. The worked example serves to convey to an audience the experience of a user engaged in the unit; it offers a structured exposition of that experience and does so efficiently, not demanding the same investment in terms of time or imagination, or degrees of prior experience or similarity with target users. It is designed as six frames, each of which leverages multiple media to involve users in the designed storyline, student experience, and engagement in conceptual play. As an illustration of how the worked example offers peer reviewers critical insight into the experience from the perspective of a student, the text accompanying the fifth mission includes several layers of evidence and interpretation. Augmenting the introductory material that describes the narrative situation and the curricular challenge is, at the next level, a sample student response. Arguing that the Creature “should be afforded the right to live amongst us,” the student elaborates on the injustices that it had suffered, including “being

hidden away from the world” and denied “some of the simplest of our human experiences, i.e. eaten any chocolate.” This latter detail derives from the story character Tina’s third journal entry, where she wrote of the Creature, “I had some chocolate with me, so we shared it, and he really liked it! He said he had never eaten chocolate before, but he likes honey, too.” Representing yet another level of elaboration, the commentary by the design team explicates that the student response offers not only a rather sound argument but also evidence of the student’s affective involvement: “this Quester’s developing sense of compassion is evident. He relates the ‘monster’ to a being in his own right, who has been denied a lot of simple pleasures like eating chocolate.” In short, the worked example offers the peer reviewer (1) a description of the narrative situation and curricular challenge, (2) a sample student response to the situation and challenge being posed, and (3) an explication by the design team of what the response suggests about the level of the student’s curricular performance as well as the nature of her engagement with the narrative. A further layer of interpretation, exemplified later in this discussion, presents commentary by peers, including teachers and peer researchers. Significantly, the detail about chocolate elicited from the student both fulfills the intent of the author of the journal entries and actualizes the narrative engagement component of conceptual play. As recorded in the design document associated with Tina’s journal (but not presented in the worked example), “strong characterizations were necessary throughout these narrative installments.” Specifically, the document explains of the Creature that “his inexperience…makes him worthy of compassion,” and of Tina, “minor touches serve to characterize her more concretely, in ways potentially familiar and interesting to children: she writes that she ‘told a few jokes’ and ‘gave [the Creature] some chocolate.’” A peer expert

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engaged in the actual Plague World experience may or may not find the mention of chocolate as provocative as the author intended, as emblematic of the Creature’s disenfranchised condition, but by presenting a child’s own response, and by explicating what that response suggests about the child’s experience, the worked example offers even a reviewer without a child’s interests and concerns some insight into the design and the outcomes it occasions in target users—all of which may be irrelevant to most curriculum designers but which are paramount to those designing for conceptual play. Or, as a briefer illustration of how the worked example mediates differences between a peer expert and a child user, one member of the GoodPlay project (Principal Investigator: Howard Gardner, Harvard University) commented on the worked example, “I have spent little time in cyberspace, almost none in games, so this is new territory for me”; accordingly, as testament to the value of the worked example, the member commented that the experience afforded by the worked example made him feel “involved in the plot and curious about what I would do” [online commentary, May 19, 2008]—a sense of involvement otherwise likely inaccessible to him given the time investment and challenges of actually playing the game. Expert Response Such timely and unguarded public peer response, a staple in such communities as those of writers though more rare among researchers, is a hallmark of the worked example’s capacity to afford an audience understanding of the experience of the target user. Such vicarious but not impoverished participation, in turn, occasions authentic and promising commentary, which itself becomes part of the worked example as well. The success of the worked example, however, lies not simply in the extent

of elaboration that it garners but in the ways that elaboration challenges and develops the thesis central to its purpose, and this, in turn, depends on the thesis being evident, relevant, and reasoned. The GoodPlay Project demonstrated the saliency of the theses embedded in the worked example around Plague World. For instance, early in that group’s response, they commented that “the tensions/conflicts come through quickly and sharply,” including acknowledging what we posited in the example as a central theme, namely that of ethical dilemmas. Indeed, they elaborated on this theme in connection with their own philosophical perspectives, thus advancing the conversation we intended to initiate and, further, bringing their own concerns to bear upon our work. To illustrate, they contrasted various perspectives regarding ethical reasoning and behavior, and they articulated a relationship between ethics and empathy: “if a gamer does not empathize with his or her character…such ethical content won’t have much impact” [GoodPlay Project, online commentary, May 19, 2008]. Significantly, we have likewise considered the relationship between ethics and empathy to inform our work pertaining to educational outcomes (Martin & Reigeluth, 1999) and responses to narrative, both written (Keen, 2006) and pictorial (Styles & Arizpe, 2001). Again, this overlap between their comments and our conceptual framework suggests that the theses embedded in the worked example bore a salience and resonance evoking members of the GoodPlay project to connect with and elaborate upon it. That is, reflecting their foundation and perspectives as scholars, and moreover addressing the self-same themes and theses that we intended to advance, this peer response shows the efficacy that a well wrought worked example affords researchers concerned disseminating and elaborating their findings. Expert response can not only affirm that the claims being posited are evident and

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meaningful to the audience but, further, provide the authors of the worked example with a critical reflection, informed and constructive, challenging them to reassess their design and their estimation of its success. In Plague World, a central challenge facing the design team was to infuse the virtual fiction with purposefully selected themes from Shelley’s original, such as foregrounding that of “ethical knowledge,” “companionship,” and “secrecy.” The attention awarded to “companionship” does not go unnoticed: indeed, James Gee commented that such an artifact or episode of the mission as Tina’s Journal “brings up a good deal more than ‘companionship’—she plays with the issue of what makes a human human” [online commentary, May 1, 2008]. Gee reviewed the nuanced perspective with which the Japanese culture regards “companionship” and concluded that “Tina’s journal triggers all these issues, but somewhat collapses when a canard familiar to all children—‘don’t talk to strangers’—steps in to trump any real response Tina could have given to her father.” What brought about the design team’s concession to such a commonplace as “don’t talk to strangers,” and how might the design team have instead capitalized on the momentum reflected in the larger part of the episode? Perhaps they too early settled on an easy interpretation of “companionship” in the context of the novel. To illustrate, Spark (1987) commented regarding Shelley’s novel that

One important factor in the unfolding of [the Creature’s] character is his lack of emotion. What passes for emotion—his need for companionship, his feelings of revenge toward Frankenstein—are really intellectual passions arrived at through rational channels. He is asexual, and demands his bride as a companion, never as a lover or even merely a mate; his emotions reside in the heart of

Frankenstein, as does Frankenstein’s intellect in him. (p. 178)

Such an insight might have informed the reported exchanges between Tina and the Creature as well as Tina’s conception of the latter. The canard critiqued by Gee might have instead been developed as an entanglement between Tina and the Creature, one decidedly intellectual and, moreover, one again bringing to the foreground the cluster of issues identified by the design team as most important for the project at hand, namely involving ethical knowledge. A final example of expert response will illuminate the unfortunate potential for the layered commentaries to insufficiently align with the thesis of the worked example and potentially undermine its purpose. Embedded in a sample student argument for the humanity of the doctor’s creation, Henry Jenkins posted a reflection concerning readers’ identification with different characters, their response being guided in part by what intentions readers attribute to Shelley’s authorship. Audiences of this worked example, encountering this annotation, are implicitly invited to comment on his posting and, given its ample consideration of various perspectives on the novel, steer the conversation in directions aligned with their own interests. For instance, one might elaborate on “the issues it raises about knowledge, about the social responsibilities of scientists, and about the ethical choices one faces when one pursues your work” [Jenkins, online commentary, May 12, 2008]. If this is the concern of the curricular designers, why turn to Shelley’s work? Given the flaws and lapses of prior knowledge that students bring to the story, such as that “Frankenstein” is the monster, indeed a heartless unintelligent one (Heller, 1992; Smith, 1992), why add to their work the need to correct their misunderstandings? Indeed, given the adult and dated nature of the original, why not instead adapt or author material more resonant with children’s lives and interests?

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This question was relevant to the pragmatics of enacting conceptual play usefully, but the ethical issues that Jenkins identified were not the raison d’être of the project. Primarily, Plague World “was developed with the goal of better understanding the potential of converting a classic piece of literature, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, into a conceptual play space” (Barab, Ingram-Goble, Jameson, Kizer, Hickey, & Akram, 2008). A thread of commentary challenging the choice of Shelley’s work as the vehicle for fostering a critical ethical stance in children, while ensuing from material woven into the example, might nonetheless work against the broader theme and thesis that the worked example was created to advance. Still, as will be shown, a discussion of ethical issues—as experienced by students through the conceptual play space—deserves scrutiny, to advance the thesis and even the design presented by the project. So, while seemingly a distraction from advancing the theory of conceptual play, these comments proved to be quite useful to the future development of the work. More importantly, this instance exemplifies how, when one opens up the work to commentary, the direction of the example can begin to lose the original author’s intent—for better or for worse. Design Iteration The design-based research method prompts its practitioners to derive theory from their designs and, iteratively, revise the designs in accordance with the theories, with the aim that this process generates robust knowledge and innovations. The development of Plague World has entailed several iterations and continues to do so, driven by usability testing within the team, critical feedback from expert peers, observation and outcomes from field implementations, and so forth. For the present discussion, tracing a specific revision may illuminate how the worked example occasioned it. In the exhibit of the

second mission, the worked example explains that the virtual experience “provides [students] with the first ethical dilemma of the unit.” As demonstrated above, a next layer of evidence or experience for the audience of the worked example may present sample student responses, framed by the worked example as representing “how many of the [students] feel as they begin to grapple with ethical and moral situations more and more inside of this unit.” More specifically, the exhibit includes two samples of student work composed as letters to the role-play character’s mother, and one includes the confession,

Sometimes I lied but that was what I had to do to complete the mission. Telling the truth is not always the right thing to do. Sometimes you have GOT to lie. Not for yourself, then it would be wrong. You have got to lie sometimes for what you believe is right. I've learned that lesson the hard way, mom, and I hope this all turns out for the better.

As before, representing another level of elaboration, the design team interprets the student responses as evidence of an “emerging understanding of ethical decision making” and of the “struggle with truth-telling and telling lies.” More generally, it is an example of conceptual play. The worked example provides a platform for additional layers of interpretation as well, namely commentary by other professionals. Some of these include entries made by teachers implementing the curriculum. For example, one noted that the aspect “the kids [talk] about the most is that they were actually forced by the cemetery caretaker to lie in order to be able to take the package for the doctor. Many didn’t want to lie, but found that sometimes, it is necessary” [Beth Spataro, online commentary, June 1, 2008]. Again, through sample student work and annotation made by those close to the student experience, even

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audiences considering the material from a distance are provided multiple perspectives close to the experience. These audience members, in turn, have both the opportunity to comment further and, accordingly, the potential to advance the conversation. The GoodPlay Project, among others, did comment on this matter, and significantly, the worked example occasioned different reactions from various members of their group. One “was bothered by the implication that lying can be OK, and that ends can justify the means…. Put differently, they or their mentors need to spell out reasons why lying is NOT justified, and why the ends do NOT justify the means…,” while another “was not as perturbed…by the role of lying within the game…. I like how the stakes around lying are raised as the game goes on…. In all of this, the risk lies in the potential and unknown transfer to non-game situations” [GoodPlay Project, online commentary, May 19, 2008]. The question they raised—“How can teachers be scaffolded to skillfully discuss the question of whether lying is acceptable in real-world scenarios?”—guided an important aspect of our revision. We agreed that for students to successfully transfer in-game choices and consequences to their life outside of the shelters of the virtual space and, moreover, school itself, they would benefit from guided reflection at teachable moments; they would need to scrutinize the relationship, often incongruent, between their evaluative stance regarding ethical matters and their behaviors and practices. If teachers were to intervene at the moments surrounding the critical decisions posed by the game, if they prompted students to assess their positioning, motives, and expectations, their students might be more deliberate in their choices, even if those choices reflected not their natural tendencies but experimental ones or even ones belonging to the role-play character into whom they projected themselves. So fruitful has this solution seemed that we have revised

several others of our virtual space curricular fictions to alert teachers of the critical moments occasioned therein, to enable them to leverage these moments and foster student reflection. With an understanding of the Plague World design, and with insight garnered from studying student work samples as well as reflections on that work by both the design team and the students’ teachers, peer researchers were able to compare the design decisions and its outcomes with their own—and each others’—axiological stances. Bringing these to bear upon the worked example in turn prompted the design team to better recognize the issues, possible perspectives on them, and potential revisions to enhance the efficacy of the designed experience. Design Tensions In this section we present a series of design tensions that we have struggled with in our research and that we believe others developing worked examples of their efforts are likely to encounter. In each of these dynamics, one force naturally aligns itself with science as we know it, but though customarily biased toward one force or the other of the two that constitute each dynamic, we mustn’t consider scholarly work as necessarily involving one at the exclusion of the other. The scientific community has historically tended to do so, so a core motivation for our argument was to communicate the possibility of and need for the other force to constitute a legitimate form of scholarship. First, we discuss the tension of showing versus telling, and we convey our explorations of providing readers the opportunity to experience for themselves the underlying concepts such that they can more meaningfully engage (and possibly refute) the argument. Secondly, and related to the first, we contrast the traditional presentational tone of academic publication with a more participatory tenor, inviting the reader into an experience through which they engage in meaning making,

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leaving traces of their journey and echoes of their musings for subsequent readers. Thirdly, we address what arguably represents the greatest challenge, namely advocating a scholarship of plausibility, in which demands for verifiability are deemed inappropriate for a new field and, indeed, potentially damaging to innovation. And finally, we juxtapose the duty of the exemplar as a cornerstone of established fields with the play of the worked example as primary evidence of the process of discovery, shared openly among the vanguard of a new field of study. Show versus Tell Our work deviates from the traditional literature regarding worked examples in that we seek not to scaffold novice learners in adopting expert modes of problem solving; we do not seek to “teach them” but rather “[show them] how to construct plausible interpretations of their own, using the tools we have provided” (Cunningham, 1992, p. 41, emphasis added). It begins with the assemblage of multiple types of discourse, including quotations, images, screenshots, videos, and even expositions offered by the creator of the worked example. The focus, however, is to engage the audience in a dialogue, in which they not only understand the theoretical claims but come to struggle with how the data illuminate or refute those claims. One of the challenges facing our own work is communicating that which we are observing or designing to an external audience who has not entered Plague World or played a game like World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004). At the same time, we do not expect each person seeking to understand our work or emergent theories to play the game: the technology of our worked examples allows us to integrate multiple forms of data, but the methodology of invitation requires that we arrange these to afford discovery. The methodology of invitation is an art, one that draws on the power of narrative, the

immersivity of multimedia, and the consequentiality of interactivity. Moreover, embedded into these accounts are numerous commentaries, most prominently those of the principal investigator but also, and more populously, those of peers in the field, who share their experiences with and critiques of the work. From this conversation, effectively a workshop conducted around the example, ensues what we consider the true exhibition of the research; that is, the worked example serves as the platform for dialogue. In this way, the initial challenge is to purposively select happenings that illuminate the underlying theoretical argument for which the worked example is designed. The worked example serves as a springboard for the reader, allowing and even prompting petite generalizations (Stake, 1995) as the reader discerns relations to her own work; the experience should invite the reader’s own discovery process, even allowing her to pursue alternative claims and meanings.

The consequentiality inherent in such an experience demonstrates a story arc dependent on the interplay between the designed narrative and the multi-user collaboration. Significantly, the story presented in a worked example is recounted not from the point-of-view of the users as characters, nor even from that of a narrator concerned chiefly with the characters’ actions. Rather, the example is related by a meta-narrator who recounts the chronology purposively, commenting on the users’ experiences, the designers’ intentions, and observers’ reactions, and inviting the peer audiences’ own elaborations, reflecting their own histories, interests, and agendas. Again, this ensuing dialogue conducted around the example arguably constitutes a more authentic form of discourse than an authoritative written argument. The power of these forms of inquiry is harbored in the deliberate coupling of the context of discovery with that of justification and, ultimately, with the context of application.

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Invite versus Present Historically, authorial status was awarded to the individual, the author itself, the one who originally established and taught the matter at hand; indeed, the etymology of the term author traces back to the Latin auctor, bearing such meanings as “producer,” “inventor,” and “founder.” Significantly, during the development of Western civilization and, coeval with it, the written word, the term authority bore meaning as “the book or quotation that settles an argument,” emphasizing how conventional knowledge was associated with, indeed located in, the printed word. Through the worked example, knowledge finds liberation not only from the rigid corpus of text but from the bound insularity and abstraction of the individual; it becomes adaptive and distributed, organic and multifarious, ironically bringing knowledge back to its origins, namely the community whose history, culture, and practices once articulated what it knew to be true and right. The worked example remains incomplete upon its release. The process of building a worked example is ongoing, but it entails stages stipulating explicit responsibilities of the lead author. The first stage concerns preparation, with the burden of the selection and elaboration of the worked example lying in the hands of its author. The assemblage, however, should be oriented as not a presentation outward but, rather, an invitation inward, synthesizing multiple data types and reflexively analyzing the meaning of these data in relation to the core argument. In the second stage, specific colleagues are chosen to critically interrogate the meaning of the work. These invitees should include both allies and skeptics, theorists and practitioners, though the initiating author retains responsibility for integrating their comments into the work. The final stage involves open commentary in which multiple voices are

engaged, allowing the work to grow organically in relation to community uptake. And, we argue, it is the responsibility of the author to revisit the evolving manifestations on occasion, answering and potentially removing comments that derail the intent of the work—the latter case being controversial but necessary given that, ultimately, the worked example remains the exhibition of the initiating author. From another perspective, however—the emic one, personal and individual—the invitation also provides enough space for others to personalize their experience, to shape it to fit with their own priorities; what was before only personal can grow public. Here the authorship of a worked example becomes emancipatory for its initiator and the academy more generally. It is one thing to make scholarly work more accessible so that others can learn about our work; it is quite another to offer the work such that others can transform its meanings. Just as some regard the real digital divide (Pippa, 2001) as concerning not simply access but, more importantly, the ability to use that access, the worked example offers “outsiders” a legitimate place in the dialogue, to comment on the work and potentially impact its future manifestations. It is in the final stage of the worked example, where the original author learns from the commentary and incorporates these voices into future iterations of the work, that the full impact of an emancipatory scholarship is realized. Plausibility versus Verifiability A worked example can be thought of as a reflective documentary bearing the qualities of both case study (Stake, 1995) and self-study (Feldman, 2003) but with the additional constraints of inspiring discovery and illuminating possibility—a process which usefully draws on the discursive form of narrative. As discussed above, we seek to involve the scientific community in the course of our work, thereby inviting participation in the

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ongoing manifestations in which the work takes on meaning. More specifically, we refer to this documentary as a form of worked example, an incremental explication of our process of research and development. The operation of this discourse and the underlying challenges may be further illuminated by discussing its rhetorical function. “Just as deductive reasoning has its rhetorical equivalent in the enthymeme, so inductive reasoning has its rhetorical equivalent in the example. In inductive reasoning, we proceed from the particular to the general. Hence in a scientific demonstration or in logic, we arrive inductively at a generalization through observation of a series of particulars” (Corbett, 1990, p. 68, italics in original). Again, we invite the audience into not only the context of justification but that of discovery: they participate in not only the validation but the formulation of theoretical understanding. Accordingly, our presentation of the example deviates from common modes of exposition in favor of a mode or genre that is chronological in organization, akin to an expository process analysis or even a narrative account (Elbow & Belanoff, 1995; Hacker, 2002). Scientific claims to truth represent the thrust and parry, so to speak, of falsification, the work “of conjecture and refutation; of boldly proposing theories; of trying our best to show that these are erroneous; and of accepting them tentatively if our critical efforts are unsuccessful” (Popper, 1962, p. 51). Our ontological commitment considers truth not as absolute but, given the fundamentally contextualized nature of meaning (Geertz, 1976), as dynamically and communally perpetuated by praxis. We adopt a pragmatic view, suggesting that the trustworthiness of a worked example is bound up in its potential to generate dialogue and impact future work and not solely in the validity of its underlying constructs or the replicability of the methods from which it was derived. And while not all

research to be shared through worked examples need focus on developing designed interventions—it may concern generating theory without concrete manifestations—even the uptake of theory itself can be considered consequential and can become manifest in the types of comments and iterations that the worked example does or does not engender. One challenging aspect of new media or, we would argue, much contemporary research is how to characterize the complexity, fragility, and messiness of the presented examples such that they are illuminative and thus valuable to others in thinking about their own work. In other words, when we use particulars to illuminate the general, how do we present the work so that it transcends the particulars of the example? This poses a key challenge in designing the worked example, and one that other non-positivist methodologies have faced (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The initiating author cannot merely present interesting examples; she must also interrogate the example, describing the context of its origin—that which the example endured—and relate the example and its historical making to the underlying theory (Isaac, 1997). A fundamental challenge in presenting these narratives lies in uncovering and explicating the example and its surround so that the reader understands its complexity but can still attend to its meaning: the thesis must not be obscured by the argument.

While this process requires rigorous and substantial research, the worked example need not be presented in a manner that necessarily meets the criteria of verifiability. As argued by Bruner in terms of research more generally, the power of the worked example as a methodological tool rests upon the platform that plausibility is sufficient to justify the value of an exhibition. Contesting this, Shavelson, Phillips, Towne, and Feuer (2003) argued that

There is nothing in the use of narrative form, by itself, that

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guarantees the veracity of the content of the account or which vitiates the need for the usual epistemic warrants used in science…. As Olson (1992, p. 30) put it in his review of Bruner’s recent books on mind and narrative, “just because a doctrine is ‘full of comfort’ is not an argument for its truth.” (p. 27)

Consistent with Bruner (1990), however, we believe that scholarly research “must venture beyond the conventional aims of positivist science with ideals of reductionism, causal explanation and prediction” (p. xiii, italics in original). In his argument, such methods for uncovering and publishing causal explanations require us to artificialize the phenomenon of interest to the point where one ends up with much to say about nothing. In contrast, the value of the worked example and the claims that it advances are bound up in the ways that it gets taken up by community members, not in some inherent truth. The veracity and generalizability of the claims lie in their functioning, in the practical consequences ensuing from the ongoing translation and adoption of the work (Latour, 1987). We argue for the importance of claims and styles of presentation that remain entangled within those contexts from which they were derived, claims and presentations less about advancing general patterns and more about revealing mechanism and process (Gresalfi, 2008). Indeed, the meaning of the worked example lies in part in how the research team assembled a contextualized account such that colleagues with diverse backgrounds are able to recognize, understand, and engage its explanatory framework. This is because a worked example is not necessarily predictive in nature; it does not necessarily produce generalizable knowledge. Rather, a worked example serves as an illuminative case that

affords insight, promotes dialogue, and inspires change. Play Examples versus Exemplars In a worked example, an expert chooses a well-formed problem and publicly displays for learners how that problem is approached, thought about, worked over, and solved (Sweller, 1988). The worked example models for newcomers how an expert thinks, values, and acts in a given and well established domain. In turn, newcomers can conduct the solution for themselves and perhaps discover novel ways to solve problems in the domain as they “play” with various modeled approaches, since the model can also serve as the basis for variations. This is because an effective worked example does not simply elucidate the thinking of a single expert. Rather, it exemplifies the conventions of a domain, discipline, or field: it depicts the ways its practitioners approach problems, recruit theories, and overcome dilemmas (Atkinson Derry, Renkl, & Wortham, 2000; Chi, 1996). Thus, worked examples are not associated with emergent fields, fields still looking for exemplars to serve as rites and credos for new members of the field; they are associated with established fields. At first, then, the use of worked examples as a means of promoting scholarship seems problematic, but here is where they connect: exemplars (or paradigms) emerge later in history, to be regarded as “worked examples” that serve as foundations for the field, not just for newcomers, but for full members. At that point, once the new field is established, exemplars represent both historically founding moments and, in the present, core examples of what counts as central and defining work in the field. In a sense, exemplars, as they historically engendered the discussions and debates that eventually led to their acceptance as exemplars, served in the process as proposed worked examples for a field that did not yet exist. They

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were proposed worked examples, where the commentary on them originated not only from their authors but from debates in the emerging field; they were not for students of the field but for experts trying to establish a field in which there were as yet no real experts. This is why, for instance, once a field is well established, teachers often use exemplary work in the field as worked examples for new students, displaying the thinking of the exemplar’s author—thinking that is often discovered via historical research and which was, in actuality, a product of debate—as now the thinking of “the field.” Conversely, and especially in the case of the emerging field of new media and learning, we encourage the development of “play exemplars,” proposals of what exemplars might look like. Scholars would work up these examples in the same way that experts might do for a worked example for students, though here the “students” are scholars trying to establish the field. They would display publicly their thinking about how and why they did what they did and why it might serve as a guide for future work. This public commentary on the example—the continued “working” of it—would initially come from the author of the proposed exemplar but would then engender public discussion and debate, as well as response from the author. This public conversation would ultimately become a sort of communal public working of the example. We are, then, proposing a new sense of and use for worked examples: they represent attempts to imagine exemplars for a new field and ways to foster collaboration and debate around such proposed exemplars in service of hastening actual exemplars and the growth of the field. Thus, in this case, new media scholars, attempting to build the new field of media and learning, will publicly display their ways of valuing and thinking about problems as suggestions about what might be an exemplar or an aspect of an exemplar for the field. They will

do this to engage debate about what exemplars in the area might come to look like and, in turn, what shape the field might take. They will do this, too, to encourage collaboration that will lead to new worked examples—new proposals about what exemplars might look like—that are based on more shared criteria. We posit that an important part of an emancipatory scholarship is the opportunity for us to treat each other, and ourselves, as students working over problems as if they were well established; we do this so that we know concretely what each other think and value, as a starting point, not an end. We can then imagine together new ways to think and work and, if successful, end up with exemplars for a new field. We regard opportunities for such hypothesis exploration as necessary to engender collaboration and the emergence of common ground, not through the fiats of funders and established disciplinary journals but through interaction, debate, and dialogue. Conclusions and Implications In this essay, we have argued that scholarly publication must transcend the custom of printed texts published at particular intervals by central authorities, and instead we regard scholarship as an interactive exhibition of various data and theoretical claims and examples, carefully assembled to illuminate particular ideas, and treated as an ongoing manifestation that evolves in relation to critical dialogue with peers. Our interest in the use of worked examples as a form of invitational scholarship entails several related points:

♦ To advance plausible conjectures about contemporary society and culture, we must not simply present the context of justification but relate the context of discovery;

♦ To present these contexts in an effective and compelling way,

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we must employ various media in the sharing of our work;

♦ To invite the audience of scientific publication to participate in the context of discovery, we must employ not only expository modes of composition but also chronological exhibitions like narrative and process analysis;

♦ To engage a shared dialogue that advances scientific knowledge, we must select instances that may elicit or illuminate a class of phenomena;

♦ To critically engage and evolve core issues, we must not only advance the verification of our claims but invite the critical involvement and dialogue of others.

In leveraging the worked example as the means for advancing scholarly understanding, we position our work in contrast to traditional modes of scholarly dissemination. Indeed, “the familiar essay,” wrote Young, Becker, and Pike (1970), “has come to seem less relevant as a means of communication than, for instance, popular songs, group discussion, or articles written as tentative contributions to a continuing discussion within a large community of scholars” (p. 8). Thus, we advance the use of the worked example as an alternative mode of discourse, one reflecting a participatory and interpretivist stance. Our work is predicated on the understanding that truly useful scientific knowledge cannot be abstracted from the context of its origin, indeed, the context of its unfolding; these truths must remain situated in the human context, replete with histories, interpretations, and intentions (Lave, 1988). Part of the scholarship challenge, therefore, is to

maintain the coupling of the theoretical claims and the contexts from which those claims were derived. In other words, and instantiated in such forms of scholarship as design-based research (Brown, 1992), the context of discovery and the context of justification are not so discrete; rather, the formulation of theory occurs simultaneous with its verification, and the worked example serves as the vehicle for communicating this material. Additionally, the worked example represents a functional analog to the technology that it entails and serves to explicate; that is, the worked example exhibits media snippets, snapshots of engagement with those media, and spates of reflection, conjecture, and commentary around that engagement. More generally, for a new field or a new approach in an established field to gain traction and coherence, it is necessary for certain examples of work—for example, analyses of data, applications of methods, conjectures of theory, or inferences from theory—to come to be seen as “paradigms” (Kuhn, 1962/1996) or “exemplars” of what counts as “good work” or “accepted work” in the emerging field or approach. People may first come to share an appreciation for these exemplars as “good work” before they can articulate exactly why this is so. Indeed, such articulation by members of the emerging field or approach, as well as debate over what pieces of work constitute such exemplars, represents one way in which shared theories, methods, language, implementations, and even values can emerge. Of course, such exemplars arise historically through the allegiances, alliances, and disputes of academic research occupying the borders between disciplines. What concerns us about such exemplars is that they focus debate in an emergent field in such a way that people, through such exchange, come to articulate and share a common set of standards and values. These standards and values become, in turn, the foundation of the new field.

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In regard to the emerging field of new media and learning, developing exemplars necessarily poses a daunting task, one that would likely hinder the emancipatory and invitational scholarship that motivated our initial interest in the worked example as a useful form of scholarly publication. Therefore, we welcome worked examples in many shapes and sizes, from heavily worked arguments to more tentative conjectures intended to occasion dialogue and further thought. In fact, and consistent with the very type of learning that we are interested in supporting, one might produce more informal worked examples or what we referred to as “play exemplars.” In this way, not every and perhaps not most of the initial worked examples will address “big” things, like exemplars or even whole theories. Instead, we encourage the production of both tentative and more reasoned worked examples. An exemplar—and, too, the play exemplars worked over as worked examples for others to work over themselves—can be “small.” It can be one application or aspect of a method or theory, a bit of analysis, a way of combing a couple of ideas from different disciplines, one “move” in a proposed research project or learning intervention, and other things as well. The key point is that the author propose and explicitly comment on some way of working that she conjectures to be a shared element—maybe after much debate and transformation—of the new field. In this case, the point is to publically exemplify how experts might talk about this element if and when any experts actually arrive to the new field. It may be less important to “win” (to witness your work actually becoming an exemplar—history will take care of that for better or worse) and, instead, more useful to “lose,” to see one’s proposed exemplar so worked over by the community that it becomes fodder for collaboration that, in the end, has no single author and becomes not “you” but a new field of

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Worked Example 23

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