Launching my new class on gaming, design, and education
Tonight starts the first class of my new seminar on gaming, design, and education. Georgetown University’s Learning, Design, and Technology program is the seminar’s home.
In this post I’d like to introduce the class. I’d love to hear your thoughts, as while this is by far not the first time I’ve taught about gaming, it’s the first time I’ve had a whole semester to focus on that topic. Suggestions are welcome.
Here’s the class description:
This class explores the intersection of gaming, education, design, and technology. We will explore both digital and tabletop games as students play, study, and build them, combining scholarship, creativity, and reflective analysis. This approach lets us explore a series of major themes, including: the nature of games; storytelling; access and accessibility; interactive design; how we learn through games. The class structure combines hands-on work (and play), discussion, computer-mediated conversation, and presentations.
The syllabus:
May 18
- introduction to the class: logistics; classroom democracy; cocreating rules of the road; meta design aspects
- introduction to gaming: history and theory
- games: Keep Teaching; The Thing From the Future
- technology: download and install Steam
- writing in Canvas: student self-description character sheets, 1
May 20 Tabletop gaming
- readings: on the history on Monopoly; on the sociology of tabletop gaming; on the affordances of gameplay
- games: Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis (on Steam); The Quiet Year
May 25 — Memorial Day
May 27 Role-playing games
- readings: Dyson et al, “The effect of tabletop role-playing games on the creative potential and emotional creativity of Taiwanese college students”; Fuist, “The Agentic Imagination: Tabletop Role Playing Games as a Cultural Tool”
- writing in Canvas: responses to readings
- student self-description character sheets, 2
- games: either Dungeons and Dragons or Fiasco
June 1 Computer gaming
- technology: Twine (download and install)
- readings: TBD
June 3 Education and gaming
- reading: James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.
- games: Spent; pick one from Molle Industries; Chair the Fed (or Economia); A Game of College; Quantum Game
June 5: final project pitch due
June 8 Education and gaming
- reading: James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, continued.
- games: Reacting to the Past; Bondbreaker
June 10 Gaming and design
- video: making one Mario level
- reading: on empathy and game design; Daisy Abbott, “Modding Tabletop Games for Education”
- technology: Game Maker 2 (download and install)
June 15 Design for education and gaming
- reading: one university ARG; Resonant Games (selections TBA)
- Students collectively determine next week’s topics and work
- optional: a Renaissance LARP
June 17 Storytelling and games
- readings: Eric Gordon et al, “Civic Creativity: Role-Playing Games in Deliberative Process”; Alexander, “Gaming: Storytelling on a Small Scale” and “Gaming: Storytelling on a Large Scale”, from The New Digital Storytelling, pp 97–127.
- games: The Thing From the Future; TBD
June 22 Student topic picks
- readings, games, technology to be collectively determined by students
June 24 Student topic picks
- readings, games, technology to be collectively determined by students
- student project presentations
July 3: final projects due
What are those student presentations, you ask? Final projects are educational games, either tabletop or digital, accompanied by explanatory essays.
I’m very excited about this class and its potential. I hope the students learn a lot, stretch themselves, and have fun.
(thanks to John Farquhar and others for asking; cross-posted to my blog)
