April 9, 2008
Rochester Institute Technologist Invents Online Game to Build Social Connections
Games aren’t just for fun. They also can be used to motivate people in their workplaces and their homes, says Elizabeth Lane Lawley, director of the laboratory for social computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
At a keynote address today at the annual Computers in Libraries conference in Arlington, Va., Ms. Lawley described a game she helped to create with Microsoft called Social Genius. The goal of the game is to encourage people in an organization to become familiar with each other and socialize more. They’re presented with online photographs of colleagues. The more faces they correctly identify the more points they accumulate. People also accumulate points for updating their online photos and biographical data.—Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Wednesday April 9, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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That sounds like a load of laughs. I’ll try that one this afternoon, but at the moment I’m having fun counting paper clips.
— Arthur H. Rankin Apr 10, 10:49 AM #
Sitting in front of a computer is a method for increasing socialization? How about hosting social events? Just because I can memorize names and faces doesn’t mean I know the people.
— Dan Apr 10, 11:02 AM #
As a Dean of Students, I have become much more aware of just how much current undergraduates use social networking to get to “know” each other in positive and negative ways. If this game were to promote positive contacts, perhaps it can be of some help. I am less cynical about the possibilities of this game given the reality of youth and their on-line activity.
If nothing else, it certainly sounds more appropriate to me than some of the other games students play on-line (I am thinking about Grand Theft Auto and such other anti-social games that already exist and are played by many young people).
— Rick Apr 10, 02:22 PM #
The question is whether students would play such a “game” when so many exciting alternatives exist (Halo, Call of Duty, etc.). I suspect that they would lose interest quickly, and any positive effect would not be realized.
What if we were talking about television—are we saying students will watch anything and nothing just because it’s on? If we video professors’ lectures and replay them over cable in the dorm rooms, will any students actually watch them? I suspect that the A students would watch because they are prepared to earn their A. The activities in which they engage on Facebook and the others are not work or study-related, it’s just chit-chat and cutesy stuff. That’s why they like it.
— Phillip Aiai Apr 10, 03:03 PM #
I’m sure that it could be used as a game for students, but the article seems to read that it would be meant for the employees, rather than the students, of a school .
— Anonymous Apr 14, 07:47 PM #