Pedagogical Implications

Technological Proficiencies

Besides collaboration and the purposeful creation of an online identity, students who engage in gaming fan-fiction have the opportunity to develop other 21st-century skills of communication like technological proficiency, which is becoming increasingly essential in the modern world. As Hui-Yin Hsu and Shiang-Kwei Wang (2010) noted, “The young generation now uses new literacies to encode and decode meanings through non-printed text, such as animation, music, video, and games” (p. 401). With meaning-making processes being defined through digital tools and applications, it becomes increasingly important for composition instructors to provide context for evaluating and experience with manipulating these texts. Because gaming fan-fiction combines the digital proficiencies of gaming literacy with the communication skills of fan-fiction, it can offer instructors the opportunity to hone the technology skills their students already possess.

By using familiar literacies to construct new meaning, students will be able to critically assess how their outside literacies can benefit them in the classroom. More specifically, by allowing students to recognize that their digital skills are part of a literate practice, instructors can help foster confidence in the composing practices of their students. Noting how students’ gaming literacy, in particular, is related to digital writing can be the first step to achieving this level of confidence and construction. Hsu and Wang (2010) explained how new literacies—which they define as “the ability to use ICTs [information and communication technology tools] to successfully function in the 21st-century workforce”—are similar to gaming literacy:

Both new literacies and gaming literacy are cultivated, facilitated, and mediated through computer technologies and share many features, including those related to computer-operation skills, basic knowledge of computer technology, and multimodal meaning construction. (p. 402)

Essentially, gaming literacy skills parallel many of the technological communication skills that students would need in more real-world settings. Because gamers use ICT tools to share gaming media and defeat difficult levels, they have a unique familiarity with the digital tools used in 21st-century communication.

Unfortunately, the benefits of these skills aren’t necessarily transformed into meaningful academic skills. Student gamers may post on The Verge about their favorite games or share a cheat about how to unlock maximum health and armor for Grand Theft Auto V at GameFAQs, but they may still be unable to write a cohesive paragraph in the composition classroom. As Hsu and Wang argue, it is, therefore, important to “help learners connect their gaming experience to authentic learning tasks” (2010, p. 402). These tasks will even draw upon DeVoss, Eidman-Aadahl, and Hicks’s (2010) perceived need to make digital writing visible to students (p. 7). Finding a way to incorporate digital communication into the composition classroom will not only help students become aware of the writing they do on a frequent basis, but also offer students the chance to be experts in an academic setting. That is, because they are already familiar with digital writing, students will be able to showcase their skills, and those who have more experience with these digital spaces will be able to act as teachers to those who don’t.

By using online sites like Fanfiction.net in the classroom as part of their assignment requirements, instructors can aid students in acquiring proficiency in digital communication, as students navigate the online forum for posting original texts, reviewing stories, and editing their profiles. This process-driven approach to writing is something that many students are already familiar with; however, recasting this approach through a digital construct can make the process more accessible to students, who are already comfortable with updating digital gaming profiles and character stats. Besides familiarity with composing skills inherent in writing, reviewing, and revising a given text, this interaction with the website can also help students become more comfortable with the public nature of online writing. Though becoming proficient with technology doesn’t insist upon public composition, it is important to help students see how real-world digital communication works.

By providing students with the chance to produce a more “traditional” alphabetic text related to their gaming experiences, gaming fan-fiction enhances students’ digital fluency and expertise, offering them the chance to use their 21st-century skills in a more formal, academic setting. While composition classrooms are beginning to update their vision of what writing means in the 21st century (Selfe, 2007; DeVoss, Eidman-Aadahl, & Hicks, 2010; Bowen & Whithaus, 2013; Lutkewitte, 2014), we still need to find innovative ways to engage students in ways that grant them easy access to writing in the digital generation. Gaming fan-fiction can be one possible venue for this kind of access and exchange. As Josh Gardiner’s gaming experience exposed, “the literacy…acquired” through gaming can be “active, challenging, and intellectually engaging” (Selfe, Mareck, & Gardiner, 2007, p. 24). Similarly, enhancing this gaming literacy with fan-fiction writing can even further challenge our students to make intellectual contributions to the field of composition.