Monthly Archives: June 2017

What is NASAGA?

NASAGA Logo

The North American Simulation and Gaming Association

We will be talking a bit about NASAGA over the course of this blog. NASAGA has had a tremendous impact on us (and our ideas and methods for creating the class as well as other aspects of our work.) So, I feel we should introduce what NASAGA is.

NASAGA is the North American Simulation and Gaming Association.  From the website, “The North American Simulation and Gaming Association is THE home for trainers, teachers, and educators who use active learning methods to increase engagement, enhance retention, and improve performance.”  When people hear I’m going to a “gaming conference” for professional development they frequently question whether I am attending a professional conference and whether it is worth the university’s money. After seeing the results of what I have produced after attending the conference those questions quickly vanish. I can also point people to NASAGA’s Why Use Games page to help explain why our approach works.

My first trip to NASAGA was in 2012. Part of the ability to attend was it was close-two hours away in Columbus. While there I not only met some fantastic people but also was rejuvenated and blown away by the ideas and approaches that were being taken for training and learning. I had previously attended another excellent conference roughly 20 times (NACA-the National Association for Campus Activities) which I enjoyed but rarely hit my particular learning style. Someone I had met through NACA suggested I consider NASAGA and it was amazing. I felt awkward at first attending a conference where I didn’t know anyone and knew little of what to expect but quickly was enveloped into the fold and made to feel like I was home.

I attended every session slot and all but one (where the technology didn’t work) were excellent. If you would like to see what I attended at the conference you can view the report on the sessions I attended I turned in when I returned to campus. Notice one of the sessions is “Mining for Gold: Discovering Board Games’ Principles for Learning.” Greg Koeser (Founder/Game Designer for Short Attention Span Games) and Scott Nicholson Professor of Game Design and Development at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario presented a session about using board games to learn. While I did find a few games I eventually bought for personal use at that conference, I think it goes without saying this was one of the things that helped with the idea behind the class launching this fall. I was excited, energized and ready to make an impact with what I had learned.

NASAGA 2012

Part of the final presentation at NASAGA 2012

I did make an impact from that first trip and had a desire to begin attending annually, but things stopped me both personally and professionally from returning (or doing as much as I had intended.) Part of that was a new supervisor who also didn’t understand the value I found in going to a conference for gaming. However, when it was again just a couple of hours away, I was able to go along with two others from Miami; Bethany, who has been wowing you with her blog entries on here and Aidyn, who may be eventually as he is possibly also teaching a section of this class in the spring.  This semester we presented on the conference instead of writing a full report but I can tell you for all three of us NASAGA has revolutionized what we are doing in all aspects of our careers. Aidyn and I are working to create a number of breakout boxes/escape rooms with materials from Breakoutedu to use for training and team building. Bethany and I are creating this class. And that is just a couple of the things that have come from the conference. Trainings we have conducted, work with colleagues and our staffs-they have all been changed for the better by NASAGA. This fall Aidyn, Bethany and I will be returning as a trio to NASAGA…and this time it is not two hours away…it is in Reno, Nevada. (Side note-I’ve never been further west than St. Louis, so…adventure!)

Miami trio at NASAGA

The Miami Trio took NASAGA 2016 by storm.

This isn’t meant to sell you on attending NASAGA (although you should attend NASAGA-we hope to see you there!) This is to show you where we got a lot of the ideas and inspiration for what we do. Also to say take a risk. There are opportunities out there to revolutionize your work in ways you would never expect. NASAGA has twice done it for me and will be again this fall. Bethany and I are presenting on the class (more on that in a future blog) and Aidyn is presenting as well as helping plan part of the conference. Find those tools that help you do what you do better. We all did with NASAGA. Hopefully you find your way to do so also!

Wait, there’s a name for this?

As much as I would like to claim that JS and I are super famous researchers (NOT!), it is important to situate our philosophical foundation for the course and giving credit where credit is due.

We used 4 main philosophical views to build our course. (Although, JS would say we just made it and named the researchy-things later…) I will take a moment to share each of these philosophies, theories and models for those of you who are interested in the more technical side of things:

  1. Bloom’s Taxonomy: This model is in the shape of a pyramid and believes that students move towards the top of the pyramid as students better understand and comprehend the material. At the bottom of the pyramid is the remembering stage. A student is at this stage if they are able to regurgitate a piece of information. However, moving up the pyramid, we find application. If a student can apply the knowledge they previously could regurgitate to a new solution, they are believed to be at this stage.We chose to use Bloom’s Taxonomy because we believe it is important to meet students where they are and want to provide opportunities for students to grow no matter where they are on this pyramid throughout the experiences while providing the necessary support along the way. Throughout the course, the students have the opportunity to read the rules of the games (remember rules), play the games (understand), submit blogs on their assignments/reviews of home games (apply and analyze and evaluate), and even create their own game as a final assignment (create). The students choose how quickly they move along the pyramid based on previous experience and desire for deeper learning.

  2. Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning: Building from Bloom’s Taxonomy, we wanted something that supported the how of what we were doing. Bloom gave us many base-level ideas of what we wanted to achieve, but we needed to know how- which is where Kolb’s model comes in to play. Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning shows how students can approach a experience to get the most learning out of it. The first step is to have an experience- the actual event happening. The next step is to have a reflective observation: write or communicate exactly what happened. Next, there is abstract conceptualization. Here, we ask why something happened when we participated in the experience. The last step (although, it is encouraged to repeat the whole process) is active experimentation. During this step, students are encouraged to think of ways to alter the experiment that would alter the outcome.This model (as well as our love of games) is the whole basis of why we are using actual games and gamification in the classroom. Hands-on experience where the students control their experience points (grades) and how the games play-out in the classroom. Students are playing together, recording what happens through writing weekly observations, reflecting on their thoughts, and altering the games through their home assignments are gaining these experiences tenfold!
  3. Gamification: Okay, this is where it starts to get tricky. Did you know game-based learning and gamification are different? Gamification is using gaming concepts in the experience you are creating. For example, our course has opportunities for students to earn more XP (gradepoints) by choosing their own quests (assignments) they want to complete. Additionally, we have created a Rule Book rather than a course syllabus that outlines the journey (course) they are about to embark on throughout the semester. Gamification helps to motivate even those who are not self-proclaimed game-nerds (as JS and I claim to be) become more motivated in whatever experience we take part in. Motivation by gamification seems like a stretch? Check out this article from Forbes.

    Player's Handbook

    The Player’s Handbook (Syllabus) for EDL 290T.

  4. Game-Based Learning: Now, for the other half… Wikipedia may say it simplest: Game based learning is game play with defined learning outcomes. (Seriously- why doesn’t this site get more credit for how helpful it is?) JS and I didn’t program the games we chose only because we liked them… We chose these games because we had certain outcomes we want students to come to discover and believe they best provide the experiences that help students get there! For example, we are using the game Ladies and Gentlemen. Yes, the students are learning to play the game in particular. However, we also have specific reflection questions that speak directly to sex, gender, and racial roles that are presented and appropriated throughout the play of the game. Is this okay? How could this be changed in future printings if they were the producers? Is this seen in other games they’ve played before? There is so much to learn from gaming experiences!

For those of you who survived this post, congratulations! Similarly to a personality test, you may have a brain more built like mine than JS’s. As I have said in previous posts, he’s the creativity and I am the structure. It takes both to build something as awesome as this class!

I talk a lot about the how in this post, but still, a large how is missing…. how we paid for the class coming to fruition. However, this is a “how” that will need to wait for fresh (digital) paper.

Curriculum Wizarding

“Here is a map for your journey. This map will guide you to scenarios where you will gain experience points by conquering a newer field of gamifying leadership concepts. At the end of your journey, you will find a treasure beyond any physical reward– an inspired group of undergraduate students that go forth into the world to further develop their understanding of their personal leadership style,” the mighty wizard with a magical curriculum map said.

Truth be told, there was no magical wizard that visited JS and I in our shared office. As a matter of fact, we were never gifted a magical map either. However, we did have a shared vision of inspiring undergraduate students through gamifying leadership topics and inspiring personal growth and development.

Our curriculum started at the end: We started with our goal and worked backwards to the details. What did we want to accomplish? (See our above stated vision.) What topics did we need to cover in order to reach that goal? What games show these topics? What activities or dialogues can we have that accompany these topics? And, when we got to these smaller levels, we always had to stop ourselves and ask, “what is the why?”. If this didn’t match up to the larger goal, it was back to the drawing board.

What did this look like? Well, like I said in a previous post: post-it notes are my favorite thing in the whole wide world. We went from our spider web chart to two, side-by-side, large post it notes separated into columns and rows. The rows were the 14 weeks of the semester and columns included the what (leadership topic), why (how this enhances leadership), and how (specific games).

[JS to insert picture here]

From these charts, we moved to something a tad more condense that my teacher friends might be able to identify as lesson plans. (JS prefers to call them “session outlines“.) We created these outlines to serve as a helpful guide to those who may teach the course without us down the road, as well as an opportunity for us to share through writing what we were hoping to achieve through each class lesson. Each of these outlines included a brief description of what was happening that class session, learning goals, materials needed, reminder to take attendance, a topic introduction, brief game(s) overview, possible debrief suggestions, and homework reminders (learning how to play the next session’s game) for the next class. You can view a sample of our lesson plan here.

Rather than being gifted a magical map of curriculum development, we crafted one. How did we know we weren’t just creating some random collection of games that we wanted to play but also had intentional teaching moments? By using educational pedagogies and models, of course! However, we will save that for another adventure…

Why We Chose What We Chose

So-we had a concept for a class. As Bethany discussed we used the spider web concept shown in her post to come up with the original concept and the grid to come up with the layout. Part of all of that was what leadership concepts do we want to cover and what games work to get to those concepts?

We had a few key things we were looking for when we started discussing the games. (We discussed the games without any idea if we would have money to buy them.  Bethany will discuss that in a future post.)  Most importantly the games needed to fit the concept we were looking at for that week. Some were easy and immediate. I knew that Ladies and Gentlemen was what I wanted to use to discuss identity. (Interesting note-I’ve only played as a lady in the game, and have no clue how the gentlemen’s side operates.) Not all games would be as easy as this one to fit with topics.

Ladies & Gentlemen Box Art

Ladies and Gentlemen was an easy selection for discussions of identity.

The games needed to be engaging and, for the most part, they should be part of the modern board game renaissance. There wasn’t going to be Sorry or Trouble or Uno. We wanted more modern games. As a matter of fact, our oldest game is Survive: Escape From Atlantis (1982) and only one other game (Once Upon A Time 1993) was released before 2004. We also wanted games that weren’t too complex (Twilight Imperium: Third Edition is a great game and you can discuss a ton about leadership, but there is a bit much going on for it to be accessible to a larger audience.) Speaking of TI3, we also needed the game to be completed (with time to discuss and for anything else we wanted to do) within one class period, which for us was an hour and forty minutes. Two games push this…but for those two games if people don’t complete the games, it works to the nature of the lesson for the week.

Speaking of those games, those two were the hardest ones to choose. We had a topic we wanted to discuss. We named the session “House Rules and Victory Points” but the overall concept is that even if you accomplish a goal in leadership, that isn’t the end. You may celebrate your success, but then you are on to what is next. There is no “end game” in leadership. You just have new goals and something new to accomplish. Dane actually came up with the game options for that week. We were struggling (and looking towards a role playing game like Dungeons & Dragons where even if you complete the quest the next one lies around the corner) when Dane gave us the two games that fit exactly what we were looking for (T.I.M.E. Stories and Pathfinder Adventure Card Game). With both games just because you accomplish your task that doesn’t mean you are at the end of the line. Both have more stories and the option to keep trying if you fail the first time. Those were perfect for what we were looking for.

T.I.M.E. Stories Box Art

T.I.M.E. Stories perfectly illustrates that leadership never ends and is a continuous quest.

Some games we put on the list got cut. An example is Escape: Curse of the Temple was a bit too expensive for the number of copies we would need for 24 people. Others were cut for various reasons. We also were not concerned with how much we liked the game-none of our favorite games made the list. (Mine is Battlestar Galactica-too long and too complex; Bethany’s is Carcassonne, which we didn’t even discuss as a potential that matched the class.)  We wanted a good variety of mechanics, even though no games with one of my favorite mechanics (deck building-though Pathfinder is similar) made the list. We also needed some games for what we called “Collective Game Play” days, which were days where people chose any game they wanted to play and then discussed the topics they had covered over the past few weeks in relationship to those games.

We decided for most weeks to have options for what games to use (with the other games being available for collective play weeks). This was important in case we saw that the class responded better to certain types of games, as well as to give the class options. If the class does not respond well to hidden role or hidden information games, we have other options on a future week, for example. Another is one week we have Secret Hitler as one option. With the nature of that game I did not want to force people into playing it, so there is an option for those who don’t want to play a game with that theme.

Overall, I think we did a good job of choosing a good variety of games. You can see our list with BoardGameGeek rankings, play time, and release year if you would like. It should be an interesting year.