So you want to bring a little fun into your classroom and games seem like the perfect way to do it. How do you start?

 It might be tempting to Google “gamification” and see what comes up. But let me steer you in a different direction. Gamification has a mixed reputation in the world. For many, it’s a cheap way to paint a little games on your learning content. Ian Bogost has called this approach the Mary Poppins remedy—a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Less generously, this is the chocolate covered brocollii approach. At the worst, it is simply BS.

 So while there is nothing wrong with adding points or levels or power-ups to lessons to your teaching any more than it is an issue bribing a class to study with cookies or an early class release, gamification tends to take all the fun out of playing games.

What’s the other way?

I think there are four basic approaches to using games in your classroom:

1. Play games
2. Talk about games
3. Modify games
4. Make games

Let me take each in turn.

PLAYING GAMES 

If you want to bring games into your classroom, the easiest way to do it is just pick a game and play it. A game doesn’t have to have anything to do with your teaching and learning domain to provide healthy connection and priming benefits to your students. Play Duck, Duck, Goose. Or a triva game.  Or set up a Nerf basket in your classroom and let students shoot freethrows for candy. It will make a difference. And without much effort, you have managed to bring games into your classroom.

But what about play that is directly relevant to what you teach? These days, there are learning games in almost every domain. A little web searching  can go a long way. So, for example, if you are teaching coding, maybe you could introduce your students to Code Combat. This game will teach you Javascript and Python in an entertaining package. It’s fun, it’s a game, and it’s relevant. 

 TALK ABOUT GAMES

Too often, teachers get stuck on the idea of playing games to teach a subject when they miss the obvious—talking about games can be as much fun as playing them. Teaching a class on ancient Egypt? Have the students play Assassin’s Creed Origins—a fully realized 3D world set in a mythical time of the Pharos. But rather than let the game do the heavy lifting of teaching about an ancient culture, let the students play the game then come back to them and have them critique their expereince. What did the game get right? What did it get wrong? What could be improved? What did they learn about ancient Egypt from a game?

I used to teach an urban planning class. And yes, we used SimCity. But it turns out that SimCIty is a terrible game to teach much about planning beyond the idea that there is such a thing as zoning and that cities are complex. In the real world, there are laws and citizens get to vote. You can’t just blow up roads and buildings when you like. SimCity is, at best, a simulation of totalitarian rule. And since I was not preparing the future Stalins of the world, it turned out the game was better as a tool to stimulate conversations about what it took to design and run a city much more than a software platform that taught anything practical to would-be planners.

Games are fun to play. That’s a start. Talking about the experience is a wonderful way to carry that fun forward, directly into the learning objectives for your c lass.

MODIFY GAMES

Closely related to talking about games is the idea if getting your hands dirty and making changes to games. You can do this as a design exercise, having students describe what changes they would make to a game. Or you can do this as an actual making activity—having students break a apart a game and put it back together with a purpose and point.

But, you might say, I don’t teach a computer class. My students don’t know how to program! And fair enough. But who said we were only talking about videogames? Crack open a copy of Monopoly. Perhaps you are teaching a class on social justice. Have the students fix Monopoly to have a socially just message. All the parts are there. All you need is note cards and an imagination. Or have student propose a Fortnight mod that teaches supply and demand. The sky is the limit with modifications.

I used to have student reskin Chess to be about something else. Are you teaching about the Civil War? OK, what historical figures map to which chess pieces? Are you are teaching a wine appreciation class? OK, reskin the graphics of chess to be red versus white. May the best vintage win!

The point of modifying games is to get students engaged in a critical practice where they are thinking about the system of the game and thinking about whatever content you want them to explore. Maybe there are no good games out there in your subject area. But what games are close? What happens when you ask your students to play with games to find that instructional purpose? You end up with play with purpose. 

MAKE GAMES

Or, why not just ask your students to make games? Again, you don’t need to be a programmer or a game designer to take a pile of note cards, some dice, a few tokens and lots of imagination and turn it all into a game. Sure, a lot of the games might be more Candyland than Grand Theft Auto. But the practice of making, designing and digging into domain content to create teaching games is a process that rewards with deeper insight. So, you teach the novels of Emily Brontë and can’t find a solid game to bring into your classroom? Great! Give the students a go at creating a game that lets you play in Brontë’s literary university. The World of Wuthering Heights? You might be surprised what your students can do. 

CONCLUSION

 This quick tour should give you a sense of the different ways to bring games, whole games, into your classroom. Gamification borrows bits and pieces of what makes games pleasurable and too often leaves the fun at the classroom door. By embracing games for what they are—designed systems to invite play and generate fun—and you have unlocked real power of play.

 Wow. What a year.

Since Professors at Play is a diverse organization with people from all over the world, we know that what is winter for many of us is summer for others. Some of you are about to celebrate Christmas, others have already enjoyed Hanukkah, the Soltice or even just enoying a break from work. We are all different. But what brings us together is play. And even in face of the ongoing stress of Covid and health issues wiht our loved ones and remote teaching and uncertainties from every corner, we have all found time this year to play.

So whatever your faith or tradition, remember to light a candle and share that warmth. For us, that’s what play is, a small flame that can call people out of the darkness and can build a fire that brings us all together and ignites our common hunamity. Too much? Nope, not even a little. We need play now more than ever.

That is all to say: Happy Holidays and we can’t wait to working and playing with you all in the new year!

David & Lisa

One of the important lessons of play is to take a break. Sometimes fun is just kicking back and not doing anything. As the summer lingers and the fall term approaches, we have been taking time to do just that–relax!

We’ll be back with regular posts and lots of cool news soon. In the meantime, run through a sprinler. Ideally, run through someone else’s. It will be fun. We promise!

by David Thomas

The other day this popped up in a student assignment:

“I also agree when you spoke in the lecture about how there is ‘Play Shaming’ in education. I have always been told to never say ‘play, or playing with an iteration’ and instead use  ‘experiment, iterate, and explore’ since ‘play’ is not serious, and that architecture should be serious to be more creditable.”

 First, a little background. The class I teach is an online class called the Architecture of Fun. I teach architecture students about how to design more playfully and how to create more playful buildings. So, in one of my lectures, I was talking about the idea of design can benifit from a playful approach. My point was that they could use the principles from the class in more serious work—whether designing homes or shopping mall or hospitals. I also warned them that a lot of “serious” architects were pretty playful. But they didn’t often use the word “play” or even”fun”. They might use words like my student mentioned: iteration, experiments, explorations, experiments…the list goes on.

So, what surprised me to read this feedback from my student was that she was specifically being taught what I warned them about. Or as I shared the wisdom of Bernie Dekoven with the class:

“We have been taught to distrust play. Worse, we have been taught that we are not and should not be playful….”

 Here was confirmation from my students that they are, in fact,  taught not to play. It’s not an accident. They are being taught codewords to use to camouflage play. They are advised, in no uncertain terms, to be serious, even when play is the answer.

 I’m tempted to go into a rant about why there is so much ugly and non-functional architecture. But that would distract from the real concern here.

 Higher education is ashamed of play and as a result shames students who play. And unless we do something about it, the same depressing cycles of entitlement, radical individualism, lack of curiosity and dogmatic faith will continue. If higher education wants to continue to help students develop into empathic, curious and courageous citizens, then we need play. Through play we learn to take chances and risk vulnerability, we learn manners when playing with others, we embrace failure and celebrate success. We take the good with bad and value a smile after effort.

All of that is to say, what my student told me was why Professors at Play exists. We are here to change the world with the tools we have at hand as educators. We are here to play and teach others to play with us.

by Lisa Forbes

Someone recently asked me: “what makes you a different kind of learner?”

I am a different kind of learner because I am a disabled learner. The way that formalized education approaches teaching and learning never worked very well for me. I struggled to learn for a very long time (and still struggle actually) in the way in which learning was forced on me in formalized education. I experienced learning as lacking engagement, creativity, and flexibility. I experienced it as valuing only certain forms of intelligence and excluding others. But what makes me a disabled learner also makes me an effective professor. I can’t say for certain but I believe I would approach teaching much differently if learning had always come easy to me. If listening to a lecture allowed me to soak in all the information. If reading a textbook was an easy way to remember the content. If taking tests was simple and a successful activity for me. Those things, which I consider typical aspects of traditional and formalized education, do not come easy to me and so I would never rely on those things to teach my students. I think my struggle with learning has helped me approach teaching in a way that steps outside of traditional modes of education. What makes me a different kind of learner has led me to value and utilize play in my teaching. 

Because I had, what I will call a traumatic past with education, I mostly believe that what I know isn’t all that profound, so lecturing never made much sense to me. As a faculty member, I have always been more interested in getting people connected, engaged, and co-creating knowledge. I have content expertise in my discipline and clinical experience to draw upon but in no way do I feel that I am the only human in the classroom that has all the valuable things to say. I believe in my students. I value their lived experiences and I think the learning is more impactful when it’s collective and social but also when it is personal to them. 

As a young academic, I was quickly bored with how I was “supposed” to teach – what had been modeled to me. What was “typical.” So, I spent a lot of time searching for more engaging approaches. Because my history with education as a learner was something that gave me stomach aches and low self-esteem, now as a faculty member, I have this desire for my students to enjoy class, to be highly engaged where they are energized, active, passionate, and feel like a valuable member in the learning community. I want all the humans in the classroom to be invested in the learning process – not just the knowledgeable instructor teaching passive and empty vessels. To find this magical approach that made students love learning, I searched in many places. I did my own research on pedagogy. I utilized our center for teaching and learning on my campus and consulted with their expertise. I looked into active learning approaches, socratic dialogues and discussions, and played around with ideas from Bloom’s Taxonomy. I had the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning to observe my teaching on multiple occasions to provide feedback. I asked for students’ feedback. All contained valuable lessons for me but nothing really made me feel excited or as though I had hit the nail on the head for what I was looking for exactly.

Then I found play..

I stumbled upon it, really. At first, I didn’t quite know that it held the answers to all the pedagogical problems I was trying to solve. To be honest, when I first started infusing play into my teaching, it was largely for me. Play fits better with my personality and it made me excited and energized to plan and teach classes. But I didn’t initially realize how impactful it would be for students too. This time, I quickly learned. 

I just received my students’ feedback in the university-administered Faculty Course Questionnaire that is sent out to students to collect feedback on the course and professor at the end of the semester. One student said:

“I have never learned more in any class from 5 years old to 30 years old. I was completely engaged, vulnerable, and finally feel what it may feel like to be a counselor.”

This feedback has little to do with me as an instructor. It has everything to do with play. I am just the person who values play and has the courage to bring it into my classrooms. Play is responsible for making learning so valuable. I am a person that believes everything happens for a reason. Sometimes that reason doesn’t reveal itself right away. In this case, my traumatic history with being a disabled learner has negatively impacted me in many ways and has been a long, hard journey if I’m honest. But I am starting to see why I went through all of that. I can see how it gave me a different perspective about learning and I can see how it has led me to find a different approach to teaching that lives outside of the status quo. Maybe, if it wasn’t for my learning disability, I wouldn’t have found play.

My learning disability made me do it…

Are you In Search Of student engagement?

The Educause Exchange Podcast proposed that topic to a number of higher education leaders and Professors at Play Lisa and David. Listent to thie 11 minute discussion of how to encouarge student engagement, and what playful proessors have to say!

https://er.educause.edu/podcasts/educause-exchange/techniques-for-student-engagement