Discussion 8: Educational Role-playing Game Design
Watch Josefin Westborg’s “Learning and Framing” (30 min) and Sarah Lynne Bowman’s “Mixing Desk of Edu-Larp” (12 min).
Read Michał Mochocki’s “Edu-Larp as Revision of Subject-Matter Knowledge” (20 pages), David Crookall’s “Engaging (in) Gameplay and (in) Debriefing” (12 pages), and Erik Aarebrot and Martin Nielsen’s “Prisoner for a Day: Creating a Game Without Winners” (5 pages).
“Prisoner for a Day” Content Advisory: Emotional abuse, forced labor, imprisonment, human rights violations
Review slides for Sarah Lynne Bowman’s “Mixing Desk of Edu-Larp” (3 pages),
Then, answer the following questions:
1) In what situations do you think might intellectual or educational debriefing be necessary to achieve certain learning objectives after an RPG? Use specific examples, hypothetically or from your experience.
2) What faders on the Mixing Desk of Edu-Larp were surprising to you or had you never considered before, if any? What faders would you add to the Mixing Desk, if any? In both cases, explain why these faders might be useful to consider in educational RPG design.
3) Choose two (2) faders from the Mixing Desk of Edu-Larp. Describe how these faders might be relevant to your nanogame design, even if your game design is not educational in nature.
- What decisions did you make with regard to these faders, whether consciously or unconsciously?
- How might moving these faders affect your design? Be specific.
Finally, respond to at least two (2) of your peers in Ask a Question, Answer a Question format.