Did you miss “Who Makes The Rules? Who is Getting Played? Games, Play and Decolonising Ed” by Luca Moroni? Good news! We have the recording so you can dig into this fanstastic presentation on this important topic.
Also, you can access Luca’s interactive slides here: https://app.mural.co/t/lucasworkspace1497/m/lucasworkspace1497/1611222682554/a5d606d521b5ea871a9c893cce2d3a6af7f8437d
by David Thomas
What is holding you back from playing? In our experience, lots of professors want to play. But many don’t because they are held back by their fears. During the 2021 Shaping EDU conference, Lisa and I explored the things that hold us back from implmenting all the benefits that play can offer to our teaching. I call those barriers the “fun wall”. Lisa likes to talk about fear and shame. But whatever you call it, you have to get out of the serious mode of thought we are all trained in to start thinking about your teaching in a new way.
Check out the recording of the workshop to see how the group tackedl this important topic!
by David Thomas
So, want to use a game in your classroom. And you want to give prizes to the winners. Great idea! But before you go out and buy those trophies and Starbucks gift cards, let’s take a moment to consider the problem with prizes.
What problem, you ask? Doesn’t everyone like to win prizes?
The answer is yes! But also no. And to think through why this might be and what we can do about it, let’s go back and look at some classic sociological play theory. We’ll get back to prizes in a miniute
In 1958, Roger Caillois wrote a perfectly insightful, if problematically titled, book Man, Play and Games. In trying to understand the hows and whys of play, Callois invented a rubric of play with four basic types.
Setting aside the interesting combinations of his play scheme (like alea and agon, aka Poker), something should stick out to you. Of the four fundamental play types in Caillois schema, only one has anything to do with winning, with prizes. In fact, this was one of the points that Caillois wanted to make, that we conflate agon with play. We think that games with winners are the only kind of play. Not surprising then, games with winners remains our classroom-go-to when it comes to making teaching more fun.
Agon has it’s place. Games of contest are fun. The Superbowl or Jeopardy wouldn’t be popular if everyone got a medal. We love our competition, and in some contexts, it’s absolutely the right kind of play. In education, we need to be as careful as we need to be gentle. Too many programs and disciplines are already set up as quiet contests, competitions for grades on curves, for scholarships, for graduate school seats and eventually, jobs. There’s already a lot of agon swaggering around the halls of the ivory tower. So, when we bring competiion into the supposedly safe zone of the classroom, it’s no wonder that some students complain or, just as likely, zone out.
Which leads us to the question: What to do about prizes?
Fortunately, there are several good options.
First, look at Caillois’ four categories. You can invite play into your classroom through the non-agon doors. We know about classroom roleplays for a start. How can you enliven those acts of mimicry by making them more imaginative, more playful? And what of chance? Could a roll of the dice to select students in the class to respond to questions increase the playfulness of a typical classroom Q&A? Or what of Ilinx? Are you brave enough to have your class standup and twirl around? Or how about moving the desks around? I ran a class one semester where every class I set up the desks in a different configuration. My favorite was a long snaking line of desks like a rollercoaster. And then we watched roller coaster videos at the start of class. Disorienting? You bet. That was the point.
But what about prizes? What do you do when agon is the right flavor of fun? One option, the favorite of pee wee sports worldwide, is to give everyone a ribbon. If you finish, you win. That’s easy enough. However, that can be very unsatisfying.
A better solution is to pick a prize that is desirable, but relatively cheap. My fellow Professor at Play Lisa discovered that stickers are the perfect solution. They are cheap, so winning a sticker isn’t so much about the joy of beating other people as it is winning the game and getting the prize. And since students have laptops and water bottles, winning a sticker provides a visible way of showing off the accomplishment. And since stickers are cheap, Lisa is able to have lots of contests with lots of winners. It’s not so much that everyone gets a ribbon as it is that anyone has the chance to win.
Contrast this approach of having lots of contest and prizes with an approach that offers an iPad to the top student of the year. Which one is going to motivate the most learners? Clearly, the more likely it is that I can win, the more likely I am to want to play. When you think about it this way, there is no problem with prizes. Done right, prizes encourage play and play, well, makes learning fun.
by Amy Nichols, M.A. Ed., Guest Author
I remember an illustration I was once told. In the story, a group of kindergartners are asked, “who is a good dancer”. All hands fly into the air, students jumping out of their seats to demonstrate their dance moves. Okay, Okay, wait a minute”, said the teacher, “how many of you are good artists?” Again, hands shoot to the sky waving the air like miniature flags -but this time heads duck as students reach into their desks to grab their art supplies to draw a new masterpiece for the teacher. “Wait a minute,” the teacher laughs, “I need to know who is a good singer.” Once again, all hands reach for the sky, only this time accompanied by little voices singing, “MEEEEEEEEE”.
A few decades later, this same class, now adults, gathered for a reunion. The teacher, beloved by all, was the honored guest. She wanted to see how her students had developed. “I have a question for you,” she said. “Who is a good dancer?” The teacher was bewildered to see that one hand sort of raised in a half hearted way to the hip of its owner. The teacher was surprised because she knew that at least two of the students had danced on Broadway. “OK, who is a great artist?” She asked with more expectation, she knew that two of the murals in the school had been painted by a few of these students as adults. She was shocked when not one student raised their hand. Perplexed, she asked her final question to her former students, “who is a good singer.” One proud student raised her hand, she was a Tony winning actress, so not totally unexpected, but the teacher knew there was a successful songwriter and a voice teacher also sitting in the audience. Mystified, the teacher sadly left the podium, remembering each adult as a child, frantically waving their hands in the air, desperate to be chosen to show off their talents, and she wondered “what happened?”
This story reflects some hard truths about life. We all believe, as children, that we have so much potential to achieve, and somewhere along the line we learn that we may not be that good. How sad for those students who take those barbs into their hearts and stop following a passion. We as educators need to provide time for students to explore and play! We need to let them find their passions and work on them.
As an education professor, I am frequently asked by my students, “why don’t my other professors teach me the way you do?” One of the reasons is we have forgotten to play. We have forgotten to build into our lessons engaging ways for our students to learn, ways to make them laugh and learn at the same time. We expect our students to sit and listen as we spout words of wisdom. The problem is that after a while, we start to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Play and movement bring life to the class, it encourages students and gives them a vehicle to explore their passions. Play engages and reignites passion for potential and for product. This year has been difficult for all, but more difficult for some. I fear that this year, and possibly next, will be known as “the lost years of education”. We need to pursue our students relentlessly, affirming that we believe in their gifts, allowing them to be creative, and encouraging them to play. This pursuit will produce adults who are stronger and more fearless as they step into the world that is waiting for them.
by David Thomas
I want to talk to you about your inner child.
Or at least the concept that you have an inner child and that child ought to get out sometimes.
Go ahead, have an extra scoop of ice cream. Jump in a puddle. Fly a kite. Dive into a cool stream on a hot summer day. Your inner child is calling to you.
I like that idea. I like that idea that we have this built in system that tells us it’s OK to play. At the same time, the idea that this system is somehow a child, or childlike, fuels this ongoing issue adults have with play. We ought to channel our inner playfulness. We don’t have to return to childhood to claim that part of our humanity.
Yes, children are experts in fun. The whole world is strange and surprising for them and they play through it from minute to minute. Children are so playful that we feel the need to teach and train that playfulness out them. Sit there. Eat this. Read that. Don’t enjoy any of it. No pain no gain. Welcome the Protestant Work Ethic. Our dour Pilgrim forebearers would nod in solem approval.
And while learning the grit and disciple that comes with a life well-lived is a noble goal, drumming the play out of kids, or pounding it down into something we will eventually call the inner child, seems like a big mistake. Come to think of it, the Pilgrims also almost starved to death. All that work and no play might not have helped them so much after all.
Now while there’s certainly a lot to be gained by honoring children’s play, I have become much more interested in integrating play into the life of adults, young and old. I have found that play can inspire creativity and innovative thinking in students trained to fear for their next grade. I’ve coached successful adults in organizations top play to increase employee engagement and motivation. I’ve had architecture students unlocking their deaign skills by developing a more fun hamburger and seen corporate manages in peals of laughter while rethinking the office potluck. Play isn’t in the way of productivity. It’s a pathway to enjoying your work. Whistle while you work? It worked for everyone but Grumpy because, well, he was grumpy.
I’m a convert because I’ve seen first-hand the restorative power of fun to open minds, heal broken hearts and light up a dull room. As a professor I’ve found giving people permission to play is one of the most empowering things I can do to help individuals enact change and learning in their lives.
The power of play might start in childhood. But as long as we continue to demote it to some juvenile habit only useful when no one is looking, then we’ve lost that power for good. Call it channeling your inner child if you want. For me, I’d rather talk about summoning that glittering and glimmering force of fun.
Play like your life depends on it. Because it really does.
by David Thomas
Rarely do you find academics willing to seriously think about fun, much less publish about it. But in their pursuit to find ways to make learning more engaging, authors Nicola Whitton & Mark Langan have produced a fine piece of scholarship both summarizing some of the big themes in fun in higher ed as well as suggesting some interesting possibilities for future study.
In “Fun and games in higher education: an analysis of UK student perspectives” Whitton and Langan propose five themes they distilled from interviewing 37 students about fun and learning: stimulating pedagogy; lecturer engagement; a safe learning space; shared experience; and a low-stress environment. The bulk of the paper details these findings and shows the complex ways that play and fun can support meaningful learning.
The paper is worth a read for any Professor at Play. It’s insights are many and it provides quite a bit of fuel for the playful fires we discuss in this network. For example, the lit review in the paper starts out with a clarifying claim:
“The role of fun in childhood education, particularly early childhood, is uncontroversial. Learning through play is accepted to support learning, imagination, and creativity, but as learners progress through formal, education, a greater emphasis is put on performance and measurable outcomes, and the relationship between fun and education becomes detached.”
Why this happens and what we can do about it is touched on in the paper. But the real value in the research is teasing out what students actually think. The N might be small, but for my money, I bet you’d find similar outcomes in your classes.
Fun is fundamental, and this kind of research into the nature of fun and learning both helps set guideposts for future exploration and adds to the small, but growing scholarship that underlies the Professor at Play belief in the transformational power of play, games, fun, joy and wonder in the higher educational setting.
You can find the paper here:
by David Thomas
The first time I saw Ken Robinson speak was at an academic tech conference–probably an eCollege gathering.
Like the rest of the attendess, I wandered into the keynote to hear a speech by an affiable Brit that I had never heard of. Robinson took that stage and in his gentle, humorous and quite emphatic way told us how broken education was, how we squeezed out the talent and creativity in an assembly line of conformity.
Perhaps it was the ironic combination of someone who commanded so much authority on stage with such a revolutionary message. But whatever it was, I left a changed person. What Robinson said connected to everything I always thought about education but didn’t feel qualified or brave enough to articulate.
There was more to teaching than textbooks and standardized tests. A lot more.
If you’ve seen Robinson talk or read one of his books, I am sure you know what I mean. He was a professor at play before most of us were even willing to test a game out in our classes.
If you are not familiar with Sir Ken, check out any of the ample videos of his talks. Here’s a particularly good one:
Bring on the Learning Revolution @ TED
Robinson passed away this week. And while the world will miss his wit and charm and tireless focus on his mission, we can all carry on a bit of his playful spirit and ensure the revolution isn’t over.
By David Thomas
If you listen to the dire warnings from the finance office, the gnashing of teeth of faculty and rending of cloth across higher education, you’d get the idea that the COVID pandemic has really put a strain on higher education.
And, of course, it has.
But just as quarantine helped many value their friends and family more, realize that making bread was more satisfying than a trip to Burger King and, yes there was a limit to the distractions that Netflix could provide, there have been some silver linings for educators as the virus rages on.
To put a fine point on it–COVID made us stop and think about what it means to teach. This plague triggered a personal inventory of how, what, and why we teach. As the Professors at Play mail list has grown, we have noticed a trend. We are gathered here to have fun, sure. But we all feel the need to improve out teaching. We need to reach out to one another and ask: How are you doing and how did you do that?
We are now swapping tips and tricks. We are open to trying things that–gasp–might make us look silly. We are craving a connection with our students over Zoom and discussion forums, and all of a sudden the idea of making a wacky video, or throwing pop culture into our teaching seems like–a lifeline.
As someone whose academic field of study is fun (yes, fun. F-U-N, fun. What it is. How it works. How to make more of it), I can assure you that your instincts are on target. In this uncertain, ambiguous and kind of crazy time, fun is a natural ointment. And that’s because fun itself is based on uncertainty, negotiation, ambiguity and being a little crazy.
We play to feel free. We make believe to push reality back into a place where we can deal with it. We laugh to blow off steam and throw ourselves into our sports, hobbies, games and pastimes because they keep us sane.
Finally, we are admitting that all those good feelings belong in the classroom too. When we play, we learn, we make sense of the world. When we learn that it’s okay to play while we learn, we finally reach the point where we come alive and leap beyond the curriculum. We do that thing we always want our students to do–self-actualize.
Seriously this COVID thing sucks. But if it makes us more playful and more adaptable and more open to change and challenge, then we’ve truly turned a loss into a win.
by David J. Tanis
Professor at Play Kevin Kelly posted a link in our Google Group to David Tanins’ 2012 disseration discussing play in higher educaton.
While I have not had a chance to read the dis, the abstract is compelling and on point:
“The findings revealed that educators associated the following elements with play and playfulness: fun, spontaneity, relationship and connection, silliness or goofiness, creativity and imagination. Furthermore, play and playfulness were most frequently manifested in the classroom through risk taking, storytelling, and physical activities. Students identified cognitive gains in terms of engagement, retention, and understanding. More significantly, students indicated that play and playfulness created a unique learning environment that felt safe and encouraged risk taking. Additionally, play and playfulness iv created positive affect such as fun, enjoyment, and laughter in the classroom environment.”
Wow.
One goal we have for the Professors at Play site and group is start collecting this kind of research in one discoverable place. We are seeking a critical mass of reviewed evidence that fun in higher education, is fundament!
— David
We all need a reminder sometimes. You want to play. You believe in the power of play. But the day gets away from you and you forget to play or you tell yourself you will play later.
Well, just remember. It’s OK to Play. Bring a smile to someone’s face. Reignite their fire. Share some joy!
Print our IT’S OKAY TO PLAY! graphic and post it for everyone to see and share the fun.
Please hold the date for a virtual Symposium on Friday, November 6th, 2020 between 8 – 4 MST (10-6 EST, 7-3 PDT).
We envision a single-track Zoom conference, with all of the sessions recorded and put on YouTube. We will set up a form soliciting presentation proposals and ideas in early fall – around the same time we open registration.
At this point, we anticipate that the Symposium will be free and open. But we may seek some sponsorship to help us purchase fun Professors at Play schwag (stickers anyone?) for those who don’t mind receiving physical mail at this time.
The comments provided some key takeaways of what you want from the symposium:
The programming will be a practice-focused mix of roundtable discussion, deep dives on techniques and approaches and, of course plenty of play! We will explore the idea of hosting one or two longer keynote style talks. But most of the sessions will be led and programmed by members of the Professors at Play community.
Do you have other ideas and feedback? Let us know! Until soon, have fun for the rest of the summer and here is to a playful Fall term!
“Playfulness matters because it brings the essential qualities of freedom and personal expression to the world outside of play.
Miguel Sicart, Play Matters p.30
Whether you Zoom or Teams or Facetime or something else, talking to class through your computer gets to be, well, a drag.
What if you could add some fun to your videocalls and classes? mmhmm.app is a new Mac program currently in beta that shows the promise of desktop production tools that allow teachers to play with their presentations and generate a little visual fun in the process.
Watch out John Oliver!
What do you do when COVID forces your writing courses online and then your LMS crashes? For Kristen Bailey, Thomas Bullington, and Luke MacIver of Mercer University, you crack open your Players Handbook and improvse with a little D&D flair.
Check our their playful teaching post mortum for details on their approach to blending game metaphors and alternative technologies:
The Emergency Campaign: Discord, D&D, and Distance Learning
While the Google Group is a great place to stay up to date on playful tips and tricks, our resource page collects the best in one handy location.
Have resources to contribute? Let us know! Head over to the Google Group to share your contributions!
On this site you’ll find many quotes. One of our favorite places to find inspirational quotes about play come from Bernie Dekoven. Bernie was a preacher of play in all of its transformational qualities. Bernie saw that the simple act of having fun could change how you see the world and connect with your fellow humans.
If you’ve never read anything by Bernie, check out his book A Playful Path. It’s available from his site in both a printed, and free e-book edition. https://www.aplayfulpath.com/
“Playfulness is a gift that grants you great power. It allows you to transform the very things that you take seriously into opportunities for shared laugh-ter, the very things that make your heart heavy into things that make you rejoice, it turns junk into toys, toys into art, art into celebration. It turns walking into skipping, skipping into dance. It turns problems into puzzles, puzzles into invitations to wonder.” — A Playful Path