Game-Based Learning
An initial word on how and why we will incorporate games into our class this year.
Games can be fun, but they can also be serious. But whether playing in earnest or not, games teach you lots. You learn the rules, how to use the rules to win (usually), and you learn to imagine yourself in the world of the game. In this class, I hope to make use of games to lighten the mood of (presumably) one of your first university classes, but also to encourage real learning.
Why Games?
University is a bit of a game. When you first come here, you need to learn the rules, and then over the course of your undergraduate degree you pick up tricks and strategies that help you do better and better at it – like learning to play boardgames or videogames. One of words of advice from one of my professors that really stuck with me was that all students need to "Fake it until you make it", by which she meant that you need to put up a professional facade or appearance of doing well in order to do well. This is not to say that you need to feel like you should never show weakness (wrong!), but rather the first stage of learning is making an effort to try to feel like you are a student and to try to believe that you belong in university. The advice was especially helpful to me when I was in grad school because it made realize something important: that even though I might feel like a fake for not knowing everything, I didn't need to know everything at the outset. University is about testing the limits of your knowledge, maybe failing at something, and then playing another round to do better by learning more.
Maybe imagine yourself as a new initiate at a venerable school, "The Academy" in a parallel world where scholars are the last line of defence against encroaching forces of darkness.
Or just play games each week to deepen you sense of history and your awareness of how games work to represent the Middle Ages.
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