Poll Results: Learning Visions' Readers

The poll results are in. Thanks to the 34 of you who responded.

You are:

Male 38% (13)
Female 52% (18)



Under 20 5% (2)
21-30 23% (8)
31-40 26% (9)
41-50 26% (9)
51 + 17% (6)




None of this surprises me very much. Except for the two readers who reported they are under 20.

Otherwise, the results are fairly evenly split among age group, with 79% of readers falling in the 21-50 range.

Does this better explain the results of my gaming or second life polls? Maybe. Maybe not.

My fabulous graphic chart above was created from the Create a Graph page at the Kids' Zone: Learning with NCES (National Center for Education Statistics).

College Women on Gamers: They Giggle

I came across this on Wired: Giggling Girls Fail Videogame-Related Quiz, in which college-aged women are asked a series of somewhat spoofy questions on games and gamers. The responses are generally preceded by a giggle and a "what's that?"

According to Wired, this video is from the folks at PurePwnage.com


I find these young womens' clueless responses interesting, especially in light of the rise in gaming culture and the onslaught of Gamers that is about to hit the corporate workplace (and perhaps is, right now, as we speak) -- at least according to Karl Kapp who wrote an entire book on it! (You can read my review of Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning).

Will young women be speaking a different language from their male counterparts? Will they be left out of the Guild Master corporate cult?

Women Gamers on the Rise

According to an article today in Times Online (Nintendo's women gamers could transform market) , Japanese women gamers have overtaken men to become the biggest users of the Wii and DS.

"If the change repeats itself around the globe, said analysts, it could force a complete change of business model for many of the world’s largest games makers."

I don't doubt that women's use of the Wii will be on the rise, especially with games like Wii Fit on the way (although, I wonder if that's really a "game"?)

"Wii Fit, which uses an innovative floor-based sensor to register body movement, takes players through a daily regimen of yoga, balancing exercises and other fat-fighting activities."

So maybe the Guild Master Ceiling will get replaced with a Wii Ceiling?

Check out the full story: Nintendo's women gamers could transform market at Times Online.

Photocredit: "Eva" by milopeng from Flickr.

Women, Gaming & the Guild Master Ceiling

This post is an addendum to my first review of Karl Kapp's book, Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning.

A basic premise of the book is that gamers are on their way into the workplace and will be changing how we do business. Karl and I have had lively discussions about whether or not girls are gamers. Of course they are. But I would argue not in the same numbers as the boys.

Karl sites statistics that "Seventy percent of the players of the social interaction game The Sims are women under twenty-five," and that the number one game from May 2004-July 2006 was Princess Fashion Boutique.

"Gamer traits are cross-gender traits, because young girls play video games and are growing up in a culture influenced by those games." (p. 25)

Yes, girls play Princess Fashion Boutique in record numbers. And this will change how they think and learn to some degree. Young girls are digital natives. But gamers?

Recently, I conducted a series of interviews with college-aged women. They all had gadgets, relied heavily on their laptops, checked Facebook constantly, and considered themselves "digital natives." But very few of them were/are active game players and, as a rule, did not consider themselves gamers.

I'm concerned that women will be excluded if such a focus is put on gaming skills -- or at least the gamer label. Have you heard the urban legend regarding the big executive who was hired because he was a World of Warcraft Guild Master who had attained some really high level?

The traditional Glass Ceiling will be replaced with a new, but invisible and invincible Guild Master Ceiling.

This past Saturday, there was a Women In Games International (WIGI) Summit at the Austin Convention Center.

In Gamasutra, John Henderson has posted about a summary of a presentation by Dona Bailey. Dona was an early Atari employee (and the only woman at the time) and spoke about women in the gaming industry and provided some specific ideas for getting girls and women more involved in games and gaming.

DebySue Wolfcale, senior brand manager for Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) participated in a panel on Diversity in the Workplace.

As for how to include more women, Wolfcale said her employer, SOE, has realized women players make up a significant part of massively-multiplayer games, the sort they make, and for their sake female game developers are necessary to build the games to attract and keep women playing them.

Furthermore, women are often in roles that hold communities of players together, Wolfcale said, acting as socialite players and leaders of player groups, or guilds. “If we want people to keep playing and paying,” she said, “we have to make sure we're building games that attract women.”

I don't have a conclusion here. I'm just raising some questions.

Second Life and Gender

There's been a great conversation about Second Life and gender and the bleeding edge in the comments on my recent post. Be sure to read and ponder and offer in your own two cents. As e-Learning strategists and practitioners pushing these cutting edge tools, we've got to make sure that the tools suit the audience. As Cathy Moore suggests, will SL alienate female participants? Should we be looking at alternative virtual worlds such as Protosphere?

Talk amongst yourselves. I'm going to Maine.

How Does Gender Matter in the e-Learning Brain?

A post at the Eide Neurolearning blog on Gender Matters in the Learning Brain.

Studies of students show that boys and girls and men and women tend to differ in terms of intrinsic motivation, study strategies, and learning strategies - females tend to prefer cooperation, note-taking, and task mastery, whereas men are more likely to prefer competition and independent work, and challenge, and avoid note-taking as a study strategy.

Another important reason to understand your audience when developing e-Learning, even along gender lines.

I'm wondering if any e-Learning designers out there consider these differences when creating courses. I know I've asked the question about gender split, but I can honestly say I've never designed a course with a specific gender in mind.

I may have the opportunity soon to do some design for a strictly-female audience, and I'm just starting to think about different tactics to take....suggestions?