Fair Play

This evening I completed another online interactive course for employees of the University of California. Unlike the similarly employer-mandated Internet sexual harassment training that I completed over a year ago, I didn't find myself forced to use time too unproductively while the clock ticked the time, and the narratives thankfully didn't assert cartoonish norms in which gays and lesbians were always distant others and the male gaze on the female body was privileged. This tutorial also incorporated slightly more dynamic content, in that there were embedded videos of UC policy makers thanking me for my attention to the subject matter.

Nonetheless, I agree with persuasive games specialist Ian Bogost that such required ethics training for large numbers of public employees would be a natural design challenge for developers of serious games and that more embodied narratives in which relative outcomes express relative mastery of the material could make the lessons more engaging.

As important as I think ethical conduct as a public servant is, I may not value my virtual ethics sheepskin as much as my paper degrees, since I have received several such diplomas in the past from even more frivolous distance learning experiences, such as this one for my knowledge of cosmetology from the FDA website for kids.