“But, I Don’t Have Time To Play…”

by | Sep 3, 2020 | Commentary

No Play

By Lisa Forbes

You know what really grinds my gears? When people devalue and dismiss play in adulthood and in higher education. This quote by Stuart Brown from his book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul should be a lesson to us:

“In addition to being pulled away from play, we are pushed from play, shamed into rejecting it by a culture that doesn’t understand the human need for it and doesn’t respect it. Play is seen as something children do, so playing is seen as a childish activity not done in the adult world. The message is that if you are a serious person doing serious work, you should be serious.” ~ Stuart Brown

The core of my being is playful. I don’t like formal things. I don’t like serious things – solely serious things anyway. I teach mental health counseling and I am a Licensed Professional Counselor so I know seriousness. It’s not that I’m a clown that goofs around all of the time but it’s my belief that somehow, as adults, we think that if we play, it’s a waste of time, that it isn’t serious enough, or it’s counter to productivity or “success.” [I say “success” with air quotes because I also have a problem with the standards of success being defined by a culture that values overcommitting, overworking, stress, and “busy-ness” — but that’s for another blog]. When I talk about play in higher education a common reaction I get is: “My discipline is too serious for play” Or, “There’s too much to cover in my course so there’s no time for play.”

I’d like to argue that by allowing play into our lives and into our classrooms in higher education, it allows students to approach the seriousness from a more centered and prepared place. It allows us to engage with the seriousness for longer durations of time and with more focus and compassion then if we disallowed play. Based on the data from my research study on play in higher education, I found that when we spend a little time on play in teaching, it cultivates trust, community, vulnerability, risk taking, passion, intrinsic motivation, and more. And all of those things make learning easier. So, I’ve found that if I am brave enough to “waste some time” on allowing play in my classrooms, it actually generates more learning. 

Play is like ‘learning lube,’ if you will. 🙂

Play makes the students more invested and ultimately willing to work harder which actually makes teaching them easier. Instead of me being solely responsible for teaching all of the things to empty and passive vessels, with play, a lot of the learning ends up being generated by the students’ own effort and motivation – in addition to mine. 

I think of it as instead of working against students’ resistance or barriers to learning, through play we can work with the barriers they have coming into learning to work with them. My step-uncle died of cancer a few years ago and he was an avid white water rafter. His nephew wrote this beautiful story about how my uncle taught him how to navigate the waters by working with the power of the currents instead of fighting them. I remembered this story as I was trying to find a metaphor for play in teaching and working with students’ barriers to learning. I think it fits pretty perfectly…

“The water is always stronger than you are, organize your tools and effort, and work with the current. Your goal isn’t to steer the boat so much as putting it in a beneficial position for the currents of the river to steer it.” 

In this metaphor, the water is the student’s stress, trauma, barriers to learning, lack of motivation – in my opinion, traditional education (strict, hierarchical lecture-based teaching) is like fighting those currents to try to “steer” student’s learning. But, the way I see it is, the use of play is organizing your tools and effort to work with the current. Play reduces stress and anxiety, makes students feel safe, and allows them to concentrate in order to access the content in a way that is like “putting the boat in a beneficial position for the currents of the river” to steer it toward success. Instead of expecting students to come into the classroom motivated and free of challenging currents that you must fight against and expecting them to readily be intrinsically motivated, play allows you to work with them and provide a more integrated and humanistic form of education that opens students up to learning.

To close, I will provide some of my students quotes from my research study. Here they talk about how play helps them approach the seriousness of the class more effectively.

“We [students] bring the seriousness, we bring the stress – in mountains – to class so the play and fun lightened us up, but it never detracted from the class or the seriousness.”

“Play and games makes the seriousness more approachable.”

“Play allowed me to take my education seriously without having to take the stress of it seriously.”

So, go ahead, “waste some time” and play a little. 🙂

 

 

Unboxing

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Commentary, Resources

Unboxing

Unboxing for Building Connections and Community in Online Learning

By Lisa Forbs

You all might have seen our call for participants in the Professors at Play Fun Fall Pal Package (FFPP). It was an opportunity to send and receive a physical fun package with fellow P@Ps. Something playful and tangible to represent our virtual community. Something fun to start of the new semester. 

This idea was inspired by some colleagues of ours (and also Professors at Play!) Andrea Laser and Dennis DeBay at the University of Colorado Denver. This past Spring, they hosted a workshop series to unveil their “Unboxing Pedagogy” that suggests sending physical boxes to online students.

They believe there is something about sending and receiving tangible items that builds connection and promotes interaction in interesting ways. Their hope is to make the online learning experience come to life and be more connected and meaningful– in a time when distance learning can feel isolating. They believe that mail and boxes might do the trick.

Check out this video: https://sehd.wistia.com/medias/h8xfyna6av

We love this idea because it breaks the barriers of online learning. Maybe you might adopt a similar approach to your online or virtual classes. . . 

If you have more questions about Unboxing Pedagogy feel free to contact Andrea or Dennis!

Dennis.debay@ucdenver.edu

Andrea.laser@ucdenver.edu

 

I Heart Stickers

by | Aug 18, 2020 | Commentary

A Playful Path

I ♥ Stickers

by Lisa Forbes

Sometimes simply playing games in a higher education class is all it takes to increase engagement. But sometimes you might need to provide a little incentive to get students actually invested in games and play. If you can spark engagement (from either games/play itself or incentives to increase appeal of the games) then you increase the chance students will be more engaged and interested in the overall content.

Therefore, a part of my approach to playing games in the classroom is having prizes for competitions. I went on Amazon and found packs of 50 or 100 stickers for under 10 dollars so they’re not all that expensive but they’re really cool stickers that students are actually excited to win. The pictures of this blog are an example of some of the stickers I have. 

After a winner or winning group of a game has been determined, I spread out all of the stickers on a table to let them choose. The amount of excitement my adult students have for these stickers is so awesome to me. Sometimes they have a hard time choosing just one. Anyway, when we were forced to transition to virtual learning due to COVID-19, I decided that I would keep playing games and keep giving sticker prizes but I gave the students an option if they won a sticker: I could mail their sticker to them or they could wait until we are back in-person and on campus to pick it up. My students have said they really love the fact that they can still win these stickers and get them via snail mail even during a virtual class.

I am aware that incentives are an external reward which aligns more with extrinsic motivation but I think if the reward is small enough and it’s not the only way you try to fiddle with students’ engagement and motivation, in my opinion, it can be an awesome tool to increase the excitement and fun in your classroom. 

Small stickers are just one idea of incentives, the types of incentives could be endless! What are some you have used or might consider using?

 

Dynamic and Unpredictable Online Learning

by | Jul 20, 2020 | Commentary

by Lisa Forbes

Maybe it’s just me but if I do the same thing for too long, I get extremely bored. Maybe I’m projecting this issue onto my students but I assume they feel the same so I try to design classes so students never know what is going to happen next. I believe that the ever-changing nature keeps them more engaged because they don’t want to miss what is going to happen. They never know when there’s going to be a shift in visual scenery or when they might be asked to do something entirely different than what they were asked to do in the last 15 minutes. 

I recently studied my own teaching and the students involved in my study said that due to the highly interactive nature of my classes, if they weren’t paying attention they feared they would let down their peers if we suddenly began a group competition or activity. I’ve never required my students to be “on-camera” in Zoom but all of them always are. Maybe that’s normal for other faculty too but if not, I wonder if it has to do with the fact that my students feel that it is important to be engaged due to the unpredictability of class time or that I expect them to be co-constructors of knowledge instead of passive learners. 

Back to ever-changing environments – It might not seem as though you’re able to “move around” a lot while sitting in front of separate computer screens, but think about it as moving visually rather than physically. Think of the main Zoom room as one setting, breakout rooms as another setting, then different components of digital technology as other settings (i.e., videos, games, websites, etc.). From small group discussions, you can instruct students to go back to the main Zoom room to consolidate smaller group discussions then you can take a break, maybe play an optional 2-minute video of a guided deep breathing exercise (because virtual learning is stressful!) and then assign them to breakout rooms again but this time with a different set of peers. See, ever-changing. I try to never stay in one virtual environment for too long so they do not disengage.

I like to think of my lesson plans as a big sandbox of endless opportunities. As I am designing a class, I sit down in the sand and start scooping, shaping, molding, using different toys to try and create a new and exciting piece. I think this is part of the fun in teaching – coming up with new and fresh ways to teach content and facilitate discussions. I have found that the more creative I can make my classes, the more excited I am to teach them. The more excited I am to teach, the more energy, enthusiasm, and passion I bring with me. I think students can see that. I’m not sure how that impacts their learning but I know it can’t hurt. So, jump in the sand and start building. 🙂

Academia Killed My Creativity

by | Jul 14, 2020 | Commentary

by Lisa Forbes

I’ve always been more of a creative type than a logical and linear thinker. I’m not intelligent in the traditional sense – I’m intelligent emotionally, kinesthetically, and interpersonally. I like to make things. I like to create. I like to think outside of the box, partly because I find it fulfilling but partly because I’ve never liked doing things a certain way just because everyone else does it that way. I dislike traditions and being told a new idea doesn’t hold value because “we’ve always done it this way.” I feel the most in tune with myself when I am walking through the world uniquely and in a way that fits my true nature. 

 

But then, I entered academia as a graduate student in my masters and doctoral programs and eventually as a faculty member and there was a subtle and slow decline in my creativity and free-thinking. It was so subtle that I didn’t even notice that I was being recruited into a linear, in-box, and like-minded way of being. It was kind of like this – do you know that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out to safety but if you put that frog in a cool pot of water and gradually heat the water to a boil, the frog won’t notice the subtle yet dangerous increase in heat and it will die. Graphic, I know, but that’s what was happening to me – but instead of a frog dying, it was my creativity. I have many theories about what it is within academia that kills creativity but that’s too much for this post. 

 

Over years of being in academia, I began noticing that I wasn’t thinking outside of the box much anymore. I noticed that I had stopped creating – both personally and professionally. The day I realized this was a sad day for me. A little later I came across the idea of fun in teaching and I felt like I had gone back to my creative roots except as I tried to think up fun and playful pedagogical ideas, I was having a hard time thinking beyond what had been taught and modeled to me. It was as if my creative neural pathways had shriveled from under-usage. But then, I found the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

 

This book was critical in re-strengthening my brain to think outside of the box and to become more creative and wacky. I highly suggest it to anyone who lost their creativity or believes they just “aren’t a creative person.” This book argues that all of us are creative, it’s just that somewhere along the way, we have been shamed for creativity and thus we shut it down and we learn to block it out. Either through being shamed for creative work you produced (e.g., “horses aren’t blue” or “that looks nothing like a spider, it’s a good thing you’re doing well in math,” etc.). Or somehow you were implicitly or explicitly sent a message that creativity isn’t valuable (e.g., “you can’t make any money being an artist so get a degree in something that matters and will pay the bills”). These moments of shame construct creative blocks that then prohibit us from “being creative.” Then we get into habits of not creating and we limit our mind and our creative potential. The Artist’s Way is a 12-week workbook that serves as a path to creative recovery. It asks you to do various steps and activities that are supposed to 1) unblock your creativity and 2) bring a flood of creative thoughts to you. 

 

I don’t want to sound dramatic but this book changed my life, not just as a creative being but also as a person. It encourages you to get back in touch with your “inner artist” which is essentially the child version of yourself that in many ways you have rejected. Ouufff, I know, it’s deep and scary stuff but if you are interested in cultivating your creativity and approaching your work (and life) from a new and expansive lens, give it a read! Even better, find a small group of people that will go through the 12 weeks with you as accountability partners and creative inspirations. The world doesn’t need more of the same. It needs people to challenge the status quo, to think outside of the box, and use creativity to solve and expand our ways of being.