Understanding esports as a STEM career ready curriculum in the wild

Craig G. Anderson, A. M. Tsaasan, Jason Reitman, Je Seok Lee, Minnie Wu, Holly Steel, Tom Turner, Constance Steinkuehler

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

There are myriad ways to participate in esports that go beyond just competing on a team: event organizing, legal protections, web development, shoutcasting, game analysis, and many other integral activities. These roles are paramount to the growth of the tournaments and surrounding community. They also have strong ties to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics related content and careers that are rarely made explicit, even though they develop skills valued in high tech careers at the intersection of STEM and Entrepreneurship. In this paper we present a framework for understanding the Esports Ecosystem from the perspective of diverse and divergent roles within high school and collegiate esports communities. Based on two years of qualitative participant observation of esports communities in Southern California, we detail the ways in which these forms of participation connect to valued high school academic and career ready curriculum standards that together represent STEM Entrepreneurship. It is on the basis of these connections that we have developed a year-long high school course that ties the skills esports participation fosters and the careers that they lead to.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2018 10th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications, VS-Games 2018 - Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781538671238
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 15 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event10th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications, VS-Games 2018 - Wurzburg, Germany
Duration: Sep 5 2018Sep 7 2018

Publication series

Name2018 10th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications, VS-Games 2018 - Proceedings

Conference

Conference10th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications, VS-Games 2018
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityWurzburg
Period9/5/189/7/18

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.

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