In a guest post for the Institute of Play, Camillia Matuk shares experiences on a new summer institute offered in Summer 2016.
The institute partnered in-service and pre-service teachers together with graduate students of education and design. For two intensive weeks, we modded, created, playtested, and critiqued educational games. Ultimately, teams of institute participants created unique games for learning, and on our last day, we invited youth to unleash their inner critics in a playtesting event hosted at MAGNET.
Among other things, Camillia discusses the value of co-design teams for bringing together unique perspectives (something that doesn’t always happen in the everyday education world), as well as the learning opportunities that games and game design offer to students, teachers, and designers.
Here’s an excerpt from the whole post:
As a final project, Wechsler’s team created The Magical World of Opportunity, a board game about privilege. In it, players are dealt cards that determine their place in a hierarchy, which in turn determines the jewels they may receive. Dragons receive more than elves, for example, and male dragons more than female ones. Greater wealth allows players to complete more tasks, such as graduating from knight school, defeating an evil sorcerer, or ending a drought. The first player to become King or Queen of the world wins. But not everyone has the same opportunities. Sometimes, players must pay tolls, or are prohibited from advancing due to insufficient wealth.
Wechsler’s team expected players “to modify this game in terms of contemporary society and make concessions for institutional injustices that they think will address the needs of the underprivileged so as to better understand the duties that accompany privilege.” They may add scholarships or free college, for example.
“I tested it with my son, who’s 8, last night, and he loved it,” Wechsler said. “He liked the jewels and he liked the imagery of the dragons.” While the concept of societal privilege was too abstract for him, Wechsler believes that playing such a game can be a good way to begin conversations about difficult issues. One young playtester at the course’s culminating event gave a glimpse into the game’s potential. “I don’t want to sound racist,” he said, hesitating to articulate the parallels he saw between the game’s fantasy world and contemporary society. To this, Wechsler replied: “That’s exactly what I want you to do. You’re not racist for recognizing something […] recognizing is actually a first step in eliminating [racism].”
Such moments demonstrate how games can offer safe spaces within which players can develop and practice important life skills. “I’m not telling [players] what to think,” Wechsler said. “I’m giving them the opportunity to think for themselves.” A large part of who you are in the world, she explained, “is just luck. It’s not something that you can strategize. You have the cards. What are you going to do about it?”
This course kicked off a new partnership between New York University and the Institute of Play, which aims to support and understand teachers in designing game-like learning experiences.