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"That is what Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of emerging technologies at the Indiana University at Bloomington, told a somewhat wary audience here at the 2010 Educause conference on Thursday. "Games are absolutely the best way to learn," she said. "They are superior to any other instructional model." Smith-Robbins prefaced her remarks by reminding the audience that she was taking an intentionally strong position in order to stoke debate. But she nevertheless argued that games - as simple as tag or as complex as World of Warcraft - can accomplish an array of teaching goals that more traditional pedagogy says it wants to achieve, but often does not."

"Instead of logging onto Blackboard to complete homework this spring, students in one class will enter the "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life" to study the culture of online virtual environments. "Discourses, Community, and Power in Virtual Worlds," or ENG 654, is open to students of all majors and interests. The course intends to adapt to an increasingly technological environment. "We want them to get the experience of playing together with different characters that have to take on different roles to really get an experiential sense of how complex game play is in that environment," said English professor Elisabeth Hayes, who will teach the class with law professor John McKnight. The class will meet in a physical classroom for half of its sessions and the rest will be held virtually in "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life.""

A researcher at University of California at Irvine got $100,000 from the National Science Foundation to study how Americans play the popular online game World of Warcraft

"WoW matters because it creates a powerful platform for learning, without a training program in sight. Many of the approaches used by WoW could be very helpful to business executives as they strive to improve performance more rapidly in their own organizations."

"Climbing the scales at Digg this week is a story on How Stuff Works about World of Warcraft. Most intriguing was Section 2 of the article, entitled, "World of Warcraft Players." Here, author Tracy V. Wilson lists a variety of research efforts focused on WoW, currently the most popular MMORPG."