This month I sat down with Dr. Carly Kocurek from the Illinois Institute of Technology to discuss gaming and the classroom. 

This interview serves as an introduction to our February survey on Gaming and Pedagogy. Dr. Kocurek discusses using games in the classroom as tools for teaching and how they fit into the classroom experience. She also talks about teaching game design and development and how to give students the chance to understand what game development looks like in a small scale environment.

Dr. Kocurek's book Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade is coming out in Fall 2015 from University of Minnesota Press. She is also editing a new book series titled Influential Video Game Designers with Jennifer deWinter coming out from Bloomsbury Publishing. The first book in the series, focusing on Shigeru Miyamoto, will be out in May.