Seminar by Professor David Williamson Shaffer (University of Wisconsin-Madison & Game Scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research)

In this talk, Professor Shaffer argues that the future of learning in the age of smart machines requires integrating new theories of cognition and culture, new approaches to curriculum design, and new modes of assessment.Professor David Williamson Shaffer is a game scientist and quantitative ethnographer, known for his work in epistemic frames, epistemic games, and epistemic network analysis.The theory of epistemic frames suggests that complex thinking is best understood not in terms of knowledge and skills, but rather as a network of knowledge, skills, values, identity, and epistemology.Based on this theory of learning, Professor Shaffer and his lab have developed virtual internshipssimulations of real-world practices such as engineering and urban planningto promote the development of epistemic frames.Data from these simulations are analyzed using Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA)- a method of quantitative ethnographic learning analytics that focuses on whether and how students link the skills, knowledge, identity, values, and epistemology of a real-world practice into a coherent way of thinking about complex problems.