Gaming Research: Digital and Futures Research Basics

Knowledge creation is rapid fire and the world wants it now. The digitization and automation of knowledge content, creation and distribution is changing the way we perceive and perform research. Many scholars today continue to test and create emerging research approaches to question existing realities and alternative ways of knowing.

The mainstreaming of digital technologies, the emergence of alternative ways of knowing, peer to peer social innovations and the localization of content has intensified the debate that question existing theoretical and research methodologies’ and their applicability to local contexts and developing economies.

The inequality of access to knowledge, connectivity, the English bias and the hegemony of the North have, in so many ways, placed developing countries like the Philippines as recipients of their knowledge. This resulted to the inability of developing nations to create and internationalize local knowledge and content.

Today, the intensity of creating the knowledge society is getting more intense and researchers tend to collaborate using social media tools and emerging on-line research technologies to automate the gathering, circulation and diffusion of knowledge. These communities has prototyped a variety of emerging research practices and one amongst many are digital and futures research.

This seminar workshop aims to introduce emerging research approaches and methodologies to faculty and institutional researchers of Northwestern University. It aims to “game” the process of learning alternative research approaches. Gaming here means making the process more interactive, re-creative and fun. It will immerse participants to the process of “creative and experiential questioning” and expose them to the process and context of futures research method particularly scenarios and causal layered analysis.

Developing an engaged research culture is a long-term project and this workshop could serve as a catalyst to enhance existing approaches to improve research quality and output in the university.

Shermon Cruz, Romelene Pacis and Karl Benigno will facilitate the University Center for Research and Development organized workshop on August 28-29, 2013.