This is a continuous work. The first file is my work for milestone 1. The second png file is comments for milestone 1. The third file is the examples of milestone 2 of other students work.
Milestone 2
Milestone 2 serves as a proposal for the final stage of work that your group will submit in Milestone 3 (the actual analysis and reporting of findings). Ultimately, the final submission will present a 10 minute video presentation of the findings from the collaborative group content analysis that explains the frequency with which variables appeared, the characteristics of those variables, and whether any meaningful patterns emerged among the variables.
The purpose of Milestone 2 is to submit a plan for the final project that the instructors can provide feedback on to guide the execution of the research.
As you already know, the groups for these projects are large (10+ people). This is purposeful. It helps to distribute what would be a lot of work across a group of people to reduce the effort any one person has to make. It also means that the group is a think-tank of sorts, a group with people of varying orientations to and experiences with video games. Simultaneously, the project is designed so that everyone can participate either synchronously (if groups opt to do this) or asynchronously and get hands-on experience conducting research.
At the Milestone 2 stage, two to three group leaders have been identified by the instructors to facilitate the execution of final decisions about some aspects of the project. These group leaders have committed to having extra meetings with the instructors to learn more about the feedback and will serve as peer facilitators of those instructions to the group during team meetings. These individuals will have demonstrated a strong interest in completing this project at a high standard of quality and have agreed to take on additional complex tasks related to the project that are commensurate with their leadership role. The other individuals in the group will still have a say in guiding the project by participating during team meetings, analyzing content, and submitting contributing materials for Milestone 2 and Milestone 3.
Milestone 2 Steps
The group leaders will compile information generated from group members posts and interactions. In the week following the Milestone 2 deadline, they will submit the information and meet with the instructors to make final decisions on the direction of the project and then convey those decisions/directions back to the group. The instructors will reach out to the group leaders with details about what to prepare and bring to meetings as well as scheduling those meetings.
Step 1
Information gathering
Each group member should post the following materials in the group discussion by the Milestone 2 deadline:
Societal importance statement
Two to three sentence explanation of the societal importance of studying violence or sexualization in video games (i.e., in what ways can the research promote or support fulfilling, safe, healthy, or otherwise positive conditions for people?)
One credible source formatted in APA 7th style (Links to an external site.) that provides evidence for your statement. This material may be sourced form a non-partisan media outlet (e.g., APNews, NPR), a technology specific outlet that publishes in-depth, investigative journalistic pieces (e.g., Kotaku, IGN), or an academic journal or other scholarly source.
Theoretical importance statement
Two to three sentence explanation of the theoretical importance of studying violence or sexualization in video games (i.e., what do we learn about the human condition through this research?)
One credible source formatted in APA 7th style (Links to an external site.) that provides evidence for your statement. Typically, this will come from an academic journal or other scholarly source.
Step 2
Collaboration
Working collaboratively with your group, you will assist with the development of ideas that the group leaders and instructors will refine after Milestone 2.
Specifically this step challenges each group to define two variables in addition to the variables sexualization/violence (as determined by your groups topic) to analyze in the content, propose an approach to examining content by identifying one population of games, and use that information to form two questions that the group will seek to answer in the final steps of the project. You have all engaged in brainstorming these ideas to some extent in Milestone 1 and have received feedback, so you already have a starting point. Work together to find common ideas and draw inspiration from one another!
This collaboration may take place either in the Carmen group discussion or via some other platform of the groups choosing. Please post the relevant information to accessing the group discussion in Carmen if working outside of Carmen to ensure everyone has it. Additionally, synchronous collaboration (e.g., face to face, via Zoom meeting, etc.) is not required for this step, but some group members may opt to meet. If group members opt to meet and others cannot, then group members who cannot meet synchronously should submit ideas asynchronously to the group prior to the Milestone 2 deadline (via Carmen discussion board or other platform the group opts to use). In the event that the group does not meet at all synchronously, all group members are expected to contribute ideas asynchronously prior to the Milestone 2 deadline. This will work best if the group members do not wait until late in the week to begin collaborating.
Defining two additional variables
Variables are the things that you will all be looking for and either counting or describing in the analysis (i.e., data collection) portion of the project.
One variable is decided for your group:
The sexualization groups will analyze character sexualization using an established coding system of sexualization (the professor will provide in the next stage of the project)
The violence groups will analyze occurrences of violence using an established coding system of violence (the professor will provide in the next stage of the project)
Using the feedback provided to you on your Milestone 1 submission, work with your group to propose two other variables you would like to define and look for in analyzing content (e.g., whether a character is playable by the user or is a non-playable character; whether a game features guns or not). Essentially you will be looking at videos of videogame content being played (most likely sourced from YouTube) and assessing either whether a variable (e.g., sexualization/violence) is present or not or describing the nature of the variable (e.g., sexualized characters age; target of violence characters race). This may be the same or a revised/adjusted version of one of your or another group members variables identified in Milestone 1.
The group leaders will refine the coding system for these variables with the instructors after the submission of Milestone 2. Importantly, variables should be consistently knowable or observable (i.e., variables should not be player thoughts or feelings these sorts of outcomes are more appropriate for studying in surveys or experiments). Examples of variables are year of game release, genre of game, age of character, sex of character, but you should feel welcome to be creative here the instructors will work with groups to help refine ideas and avoid variables that are difficult/impossible to observe.
Identifying a population of games to analyze
The population of games that your group will source from should all be the same along some characteristic (e.g., they are all best-selling games, games released between 2010 and 2020, platformer games, etc.). Importantly, in the next step of the project, groups will identify the specific games for analysis and summarize those in a table prior to analyzing their content. All video games provided in the content analysis table must meet the criteria of being in the identified population otherwise this can present difficulties or inability in analyzing the content features the groups will be looking at.
Asking two questions
Using the feedback provided to you on your Milestone 1 submission, work with your group to provide two clear research questions about the relevance of these variables and population of games to the topic the group has chosen (i.e., sexualization/objectification or violence/aggression). This may be the same or a revised/adjusted version of one of your questions from Milestone 1.
One question should be about the frequency/prevalence with which a particular form of content appears in video games (e.g., How often do video games feature apples as items?)
One question should be about the qualities/characteristics of content that appears in video games (e.g., What color apples appear in video games?).
Tip: The variables should appear in the research questions.
Milestone 2 Deliverable Details
Format: Post information gathered in Step 1 to discussion board by deadline (group leaders and other members); participate in collaboration by offering suggestions and feedback to group based on Milestone 1 instructor feedback and instructions for Milestone 2 (by 10/29 deadline all group members should participate with group discussions/convey their ideas directly to group leaders; group leaders will submit a compiled version of the information from the discussions at a later date)
