This document discusses the concepts of ludic and social media and their applications in learning and innovation processes. It defines ludic media as media that incorporates playfulness, and ludic interfaces as interfaces designed to connect users to technical systems in a playful manner promoting freedom and creativity. Social interfaces and social media facilitate social interactions and community building. The document explores how elements of play, games, and participatory culture can support learning, problem solving, and knowledge sharing in both formal and informal contexts.

1. Ludic and Social
Media in Learning
Innovation Processes
Patrick J. Coppock
Department of Communication and Economics
University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Italy
patrick.coppock@unimore.it
http://game.unimore.it
http://facebook.com/patcop
Twitter: Pat_Coppock

2. Defining Ludic and
Social Media
• Ludic Media
• Ludic Interface
• Social Interface
• Social Media

3. Ludic Media
• "Ludic”: from the Latin “ludus”, meaning play, game,
sport, pastime
• Most contemporary media consumption/fruition
practices are to some extent playful and thus ludic
• Skills we acquire through play may have implications
for how we learn, work, participate in the political
process, and connect with other people around the
world (Henry Jenkins)

4. Ludic Interfaces
• Ludic Interfaces:
• are devices designed to connect human interactors in a
playful, functional manner with complex technical
systems like computer programs, databases, game
consoles, web applications, mobile apps, and even whole
buildings, their exteriors and wider urban spaces.
• seek to offer users a high degree of freedom of action and
multiple access options.
• are expected to contribute to an increase in accessibility
of complex technical systems, and of user creativity and
self-fulfillment.

5. Ludic Interfaces
• share methods and knowledge from computer games,
artistic experimentation, interactive media, media
conversion, social networks and hacker culture
• result in tools offering ease of use and playfulness.
• tools and concepts endowed with ludic interface
principles differ from traditional technological systems as
they are playful, user-generated and user-driven, flexible,
low-cost and cooperative

6. Ludic interfaces

7. Ludic interfaces

8. Ludic interfaces

9. Interface Art
• Game Art Interfaces:
• innovative, application specific
• custom-built, locative
• rich in connotative power and surprise
• playful
• critical
• invite co-creativity, user-generated or user-driven content
Mathias Fuchs http://www.creativegames.org.uk/art/projects.htm

10. Interface art

11. Interface art

12. Urban space as
interface
http://www.codedcultures.net

13. Urban space as
interface

14. Urban games

15. Urban games

16. Live action role play

17. Social interface
• In general (sociology):
• a social interface is a critical point of intersection between
different life worlds, social fields or levels of social
organization, where social discontinuities based upon
discrepancies in values, interests, knowledges and power,
are most likely to be located (Long,1989, 2001)
• In the field of (user) experience design:
• a social interface is one designed to facilitate as wide a
range as possible of mediated social interactions between
individuals and groups, and the development and
symbolic representation of virtual (and actual)
communities

18. Social Media
• mediated means of interaction enabling people to create,
exchange, share and comment on, a wide range of
content matter forms in online virtual communities and
networks
• take many different forms: online journals, internet
forums, mailing lists, weblogs, micro-blogging, wikis,
social networks, podcasts, photographic and video
archives, performance rating and social bookmarking, etc.
• a key ludic (but not only) characteristic of social media
practices is the ideation, production, sharing and
appraisal/rating of user-based remix/remake content
matter

19. Social Media

20. Social Media

21. Social Media

22. Media & identity
• Personal ID v.1
• Personal ID v.2
• Digital ID v.1
• Digital ID v.2

23. The joys of
traditional
educatioin

24. Games and play
• Peppino Ortoleva (University of Torino):
• new technologies, reorganization of leisure and work
time, and other less visible cultural factors have brought
significant historical modifications to the traditionally
separate ludic sphere.
• new game types are emerging, and the threshold between
play and reality is being redefined to include aspects of
social life that may seem unrelated to play activities.
• in the area of ludic practices, where games are played,
new, previously marginalized, play spaces and practices
have emerged: theme parks, surfing, reality shows, casual
games, social networking, etc.

25. Applied play
• Some examples:
• informal and formal learning activities in schools, at work,
art games, urban games used to explore unknown sides of
city spaces and build new relationships
• gamification strategies in training, marketing and commerce
• flying military drones that kill people in other lands far away
• brainstorming sessions in business and science
• ludic interfaces for public information and archive systems
• play as resource for creatively confronting situations
requiring unplanned adaptations or improvisations

26. Three learning types
1. Formal learning:
• Institutionally structured, learning objectives, certification,
intentional
2. Informal learning:
• Not institutionally structured, derives from work, family or
leisure activities, no explicit learning objectives, no certification,
rarely intentional
3. Non-formal learning:
• Learner interest & community based, structured, knowledge,
skill, experientially, emotionally oriented objectives, ±intentional

27. Life long learning
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD): Life Long Learning for All
(1996)

28. Mobile vs desktop

29. Participatory
Learning
• Henry Jenkins, James Paul Gee & others
• Media Convergence > Participatory Culture
• Knowledge Communities > Collective Intelligence
• Problem solving as exercises in teamwork
• “Ad-hocracies” (Cory Doctorow) vs Bureaucracies
• Just-in-time open learning
• Knowledge as process, not product
• Critical thinking and information quality
• Fact/fiction; argument/documentation; real/fake;
marketing/enlightenment

30. Knowledge
communities
• group ownership of work/knowledge vs. autonomous
problem solvers
• cooperative games/work with different roles assigned
according to problems to solve and individual
competencies
• just-in-time collaborative data/knowledge sharing

31. Multimodal
literacies
• Composition seen as informed choices regarding the
relative qualities and efficacy of different media types
and communication strategies in getting a message
across
• Literacy seen as a broad set of competencies in reading
and writing through images, texts, sounds and
simulations
• Games and play as active problem solving
environments, challenging traditional educational
models

32. Research on ludic
media and education
• James Paul Gee, Arizona State University
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGd1URORsoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwouueYlwGo&feature=endscreen&NR=1
http://www.edutopia.org/james-gee-video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmcgMK46nfg (debate chaired by Tracy Fullerton)
• Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California
http://henryjenkins.org/
http://www.macfound.org/programs/learning/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmcgMK46nfg (debate chaired by Tracy Fullerton)
• Elena Bertozzi, Long Island University
http://myweb.cwpost.liu.edu/ebertozz/vita.html
• Rick Ferdig, Kent State University http://www.ferdig.com
International Journal of Gaming and Computer Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS) http://www.igi-
global.com/journal/international-journal-gaming-computer-mediated/1125

33. A few ludic theory
references
• Johannes Huizinga “Homo Ludens”
• Roger Caillois, “Man, Play and Games”
• Brian Sutton-Smith “The Ambiguity of Play”
• Ian Bogost “How to Do Things With Games”
• Jesper Juul “Half real”; “The Art of Failure”