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Colleen Smith
One of the questions I kept asking us, because it was a dissertation and practice, how do you get your research into the hands of people who actually do these things, that you’re wanting them to take the research and implement best practices? So in my way, you know, I was like, we’re gonna blog, I’m gonna talk about it, I’ll do the conference circuit, it’ll be great. And that just wasn’t enough for me. Because I was like, I can always go to a conference and talk to people, but I’m only one person, right? So how do I integrate in that impact? And how do I bring things to people that may not know what best practices might be of teaching online or creating and setting up an environment online to be inclusive for all identities, right. So I ended up making this card deck, which, like I said, was a sorting card deck. It’s based on the model that I created from my research and is published out there. But it takes faculty or administrators through a series of questions to collaborate with their colleagues to think about what is it that makes this environment inclusive for everyone?

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we have a group of folks who dance in the space of games play and learning will be able to learn about the products they have developed and what they have learned along the way that we can apply to foster learning and students success. Thanks all of you who are joining me today this should be really fun. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcasts and online learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode or browser archives studentaffairsnow.com This episode is sponsored by Huron, a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice. And this episode is also sponsored by Routledge Taylor and Francis, view their complete catalogue of education titles at routledge.com/education. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, author and coach helping higher ed leaders power transformation for a better tomorrow, particularly around leadership, learning and equity can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. And I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral and current homelands about the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Thanks to all four of you for being here. Let’s go ahead and start with introductions. Andrew, why don’t you tell us all a little bit about you? Sure.

Andrew Peterson
My name is Andrew Peterson. I’m the Director of Educational Technology at Ferris State University. And here I help a lot of faculty. I’m in the eLearning department, we help faculty introduce games into their curriculum. So it’s been a constant conversation with a wide variety of different faculties departments, curriculums expertise, to gamify and introduce game based learning into their classrooms. Awesome.

Keith Edwards
Thanks for being here. And Tracy, how are you?

Tracy Fullerton
Oh, hi. Yeah, I’m Tracy Fullerton. I’m a professor at USC games, and the director of the USC game innovation lab where we create very disparate palette of Games for Learning for art, for politics, for culture for many different types of interventions. But really, our goal is to sort of change the dialogue around play and where it fits into our lives.

Keith Edwards
Oh, fantastic. And Colleen, tell us about you.

Colleen Smith
Hi, everyone. My name is Colleen Smith, I am an Instructional Designer at North Carolina Central University here in Durham, North Carolina. It’s an HBCU. We are currently in the office of elearning. And I primarily work with faculty members right now. But we have just added on a new project for badging with our TRIO programs. And what’s interesting is that actually combines my research with culturally sustaining instructional design, working with student programs, like FYE, or TRIO programs, in order to help students feel supported in and out of the classroom. Right.

Keith Edwards
And, Tricia, this is all your fault. Yeah, you started this. And we’ve been trying to pull together an episode on this for actually more than a year. And thank you for bringing these wonderful folks and recommending them and bringing them here. But tell us about you.

Tricia Siefert
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. My name is Tricia Siefert. And I am Dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Development at Montana State University, where I also serve as a professor and adult in higher education. And I’ve been interested in games and how games can help in the college readiness and College Success space from literally watching my nephew’s and they’re serious gamers. And I watched what they were learning. And I thought, oh my gosh, there is an opening here. And let’s look into it. So, so glad to be here. Thank you.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Great. And, and each of you has at least one product. Some of you have many. So we’ll leave it to you down. But tell us a little bit about the game or the card or the product or the products. Triciaha, let’s start with you. What is it that you’ve kind of created?

Tricia Siefert
Sure. So literally, I did start watching my nephews and several holidays ago, I took over my family’s holiday vacation and by asking my nephews, hey, can you help me build a game to help students make the transition from high school to college, and I have all of their original drawings and ideation and it’s always been conceived of as a video game, but I actually got feedback from some of Tracy’s colleagues at USC who said, first and foremost, you’ve got to test out your ideas in a lower fidelity manner. And so that’s what really got us on the track to building a board game. It was never intended to be commercialized. But success prints. Crash Course, is a board game that challenges players to figure out how they’re going to manage their time strategically, so that they can earn GPA, make social connections, stay as stress, free as they can be, and still earn enough money to pay tuition and fees. And it really is sort of a simulation of all of what you learn in our challenge with doing in your first college semester, including learning about the resources that exist on a college campus to support students learning and development.

Keith Edwards
I’m imagining kind of on a monopoly journey and trying to navigate all these things is, am I thinking about this? Right?

Tricia Siefert
Yeah, it’s kind of like Monopoly, The Game of Life in a college context. And they’re

Colleen Smith
little people, for your little people.

Tricia Siefert
Yeah, there aren’t actually like the meatball people. But there are these blocks of time and you make your play by allotting your time to different parts of the game board, including doing your assignments or going to a social event. And so you have to figure out literally tangibly how you’re going to spend your time during a given week of gameplay. And what’s fascinating is when students say I’ve never thought about my time, in that way, but when I can put it in my hand, and actually have to move it, it makes time management really real.

Andrew Peterson
Right? As soon as time becomes a currency, you’re like, I can spend time.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Yeah, totally. And making it a game helps us sometimes get out of being too serious, too stuck to enter way and kind of holding it lately? Well, we’re going to tell you at the end, where you can access all of these things, and all these products where you can find them. And so if you’re interested, we’ll make sure we include that at the end. And of course, it’ll be in the show notes. But Colleen, tell us what you’ve got. What have you developed?

Colleen Smith
Yeah, um, so I have a sorting card deck here that is specifically used for faculty or directors of programs, or anyone who’s trying to create a culturally sustaining online learning environment. So this card deck is really just the fruition of my dissertation research for my doctorate program. One of the questions I kept asking us, because it was a dissertation and practice, how do you get your research into the hands of people who actually do these things, that you’re wanting them to take the research and implement best practices? So in my way, you know, I was like, we’re gonna blog, I’m gonna talk about it, I’ll do the conference circuit, it’ll be great. And that just wasn’t enough for me. Because I was like, I can always go to a conference and talk to people, but I’m only one person, right? So how do I integrate in that impact? And how do I bring things to people that may not know what best practices might be of teaching online or creating and setting up an environment online to be inclusive for all identities, right. So I ended up making this card deck, which, like I said, was a sorting card deck. It’s based on the model that I created from my research and is published out there. But it takes faculty or administrators through a series of questions to collaborate with their colleagues to think about what is it that makes this environment inclusive for everyone? How do I create either assignments or assessments or interactive and engaging exercises for the students so that they feel like they belong in this learning environment. So that is really where it came from. And it’s just a card deck, there’s been a couple of different use cases, some faculty have bought it. Some people who are creating their online orientation have bought it to think through each part of orientation. And some other people have used it because they teach graduate students and learning design and instructional technology. And they want them to start thinking about this. Because honestly, once our graduate students are out, they’re going to be thinking about creating this new environment. And to me, like, this is where this ripple effect starts to evolve. And that is truly why I did the research that I did with my dissertation.

Keith Edwards
Well, I’ve already come up with two card decks that I want to create. So yeah, my ideas are popping. That’s super cool. I love that you’ve turned this research and expertise into something tangible and useful and engaging with folks. That’s really great. Tracy for people who can’t see you, you have a USC game shirt on and you’ve got a really cool title and a really cool Well, Senator, but you’re you’re you’re a thinker and a researcher about this, but you’re you’re also doing it. So tell us a bit a little bit about some of the products you’ve done.

Tracy Fullerton
Well, I’m just listening to the other folks. And so now I don’t know which product. I mean, I don’t call them products. So which game to talk about? Because I, I’ve worked in some overlapping spaces.

Keith Edwards
You’re walking dimension multiple? Yeah,

Tracy Fullerton
yeah, for example, we made a suite of college access games, where students in high school and middle school take on the role of trying to achieve goals that will help them when they’re trying to get into college. So for example, mission and mission was a card game that you were you played as a applicant, and you had to manage time and figure out, you know, how do I get letters of recommendation? What is a letter of recommendation on how to fill out the FAFSA form? What is that right, and sort of set some goals and respond to a lot of different challenges that face students, especially in the you know, where we are right now with a lack of, of College Counseling in schools, right. So many students are faced, you know, especially first time in families where they’re first time applicants to college, they’re faced with understanding this really complex game, if you will, of applying to college on their own. Right. So that’s what the sort of that series was about. We also made a kind of introduction game for freshmen coming into our own program, which was a what’s called an alternate reality game. And it was secret, no one was allowed to talk about it on the faculty or staff, but the students were invited through secret codes that they had to solve and cards that they found in and games that they were challenged to play, to enter into this new world of college and in our case, a making space around media. And if they were good at it, and they were invited to be mentored by some of our alumni. So it’s a very interesting underground kind of game, which we don’t actually talk about is called reality. And it will keep your secrets. Well, if you asked me about it on the street, I’d say I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Andrew Peterson
First of all, reality game is you don’t talk about reality game.

Tracy Fullerton
We don’t Yeah, that’s exactly right. Don’t talk about reality game. So I made a lot of games. And and the most recent one was what I was going to talk about, which is Walden a game, which is an adaptation of Henry David Thoreau’s experience at at Walden Pond. And we’ve made a series of modules for literature teachers at both high school and college levels, to help students live the philosophy, if you will. And so I won’t go into any of them in depth. But if anyone is interested, I can certainly go deeper into any of the kinds of games that that we’ve been working on over the years.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, I love that. And we just see that the breadth, right and breadth of car games and sort of Seeker gain, orientation and onboarding and sort of also sounds like identifying folks with high potential right. I’m reminded you reminded me of the book and one of my favorite books in high school, which was book called Ender’s Game. We won’t talk about it, we won’t ruin it won’t ruin it. But check it out, folks. Andrew, tell us about you and what you’re what you’re creating.

Andrew Peterson
I’m pretty sure I cited Ender’s Game in my dissertation. So can I get a segue? Oh, we

Keith Edwards
we’re best friends. Yes. Yes. So it

Andrew Peterson
I love this group of people and kind of have that conversation here because I think I’ve kind of had the, the joy of being like halfway between Tricia is and Colleen, because it was very much a product of my dissertation, designing the board game. And it was we have a very traditional freshman year experience here at Ferris. And it’s very much designed as a one credit. Every week, there’s a different topic of Okay, today, you’re gonna learn about time management today, you’re gonna learn about and it’s very much here’s a PowerPoint, here’s a learning objective, click, click, click, click, sit and get kind of information. And as a game designer and player, you want something a little bit more engaging than that. And one of the core problems challenges with freshman year experiences is the freshmen have never experienced college. And so you want to be like, Hey, here’s a great opportunity to play college and learn all of these different things in a very safe and environment. So like, again, as far as board games go, it’s a worker placement game. Every turn, you just have to pick up a debt token. And it was funny to get the like the visceral reaction of students that are like, I don’t like picking up debt. Cool. That’s exactly why it’s in there. And then because really not much happens with that debt token, except at the end of the game in the story. And so it’s just one of those like, just as a reminder, there’s debt, there’s debt that here’s a there’s a financial literacy component to it. And then one of my favorite kind of mechanics in there is there’s the random events, stuff that happens between when you enroll and when you study things. And as I like to tell students, this is what the 40 plus year old white guy thinks is going to happen in your college experience, quite often, that’s either wrong or dated. And so giving the students the opportunity to make new event cards, with their expectations and what they think will happen or what they’ve already experienced, and kind of letting them completely break the game. But letting them kind of own the experience and the play and let them kind of validate their own expectations of it has really been kind of a a strong point of the play experience.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, some emergence there. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Very cool. I bet the I’m assuming that they come up with things and you’re like, oh, yeah, we’re gonna make that a card. We’re gonna make that a thing.

Andrew Peterson
So I try not to because I liked the talking point of it’s just the, you know, the 40 year old white guy, I think these are the things that I brainstorm. But it’s broken helped me fix it. Yeah. And that really leads into the, again, they can totally own the well, you’d never had online classes in the 90s. And, yeah, you’re. And so it kind of plays off that really well of it gives them that authority and expertise that they know, their experience, and anything that they say will be valid. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
I love that you’re even holding the design and the making of the game lightly and playfully. One of my favorite quotes is from meditation teacher, Jon Kabat Zinn, who says, This is too serious to take too seriously. And his point is that, you know, for the most pressing challenges we face, we need to lighten up and have some humor and hold it lightly. And that helps us think that helps us see new possibilities that helps us see around corners that helps us see what beyond what maybe feels at the moment limiting, but maybe has a little bit more expansiveness. So you’re all kind of pointing to that. I guess the big question that I think will focus most of our time here today in is I’d love to hear from you. Now we’ve heard a little bit of context of the many different perspectives you’re bringing to this, how do you see the role of games and play in learning, and whether that’s helping middle school students learn about what college and getting into college might be? Or coming into this program? Or helping faculty learn how to better integrate learning into what they’re creating? How do you see the role of games and play in learning and contributing to that tree? So we’re gonna start off with you?

Tracy Fullerton
Yeah, so I think this is a question we could probably talk about for months, possibly years. But for me, I think I want to point to something, which I think is related to what you were just saying about holding things lightly. Right? Many times in education, we are taught to have very clear goals, we are taught to lay out what is expected, and to communicate that clearly. No mystery, right? To the students, no mystery between us, right? And then and then we, you know, we’re taught to execute on that as as cleanly and efficiently as possible. Well, this is really the antithesis of how play works, right? Because in play, things are mysterious things are unclear. Things are not quite graspable. There are there’s slippage in systems, there’s slippage between what I think I need to do and what I really should be doing. It’s, that’s what play is right? It’s going the long way round, right? And discovering new things. It’s not efficient, but it can be super meaningful, right? So if I take the long route, and on that way, something hap new happens to me, that’s never happened before I’ll remember it, it becomes coated in with an emotion that taking the short path doesn’t. And so for me when I think about learning, and I think about play, and then I think about this other word education, which we haven’t talked about yet, but like, I think that we have been trained with some bad habits in education that can be helped by holding education a little more lightly. By including that Miss mystery, that sense of play that sense of, you know, not inefficiency, I’m gonna go jigs, zig and zag, and I’m trying new things. And no, that doesn’t work and figuring things out that non efficiency, that’s integral to an emotional experience of ups and downs and arcs that I think could benefit the world of education.

Colleen Smith
I see. I love that so much as an instructional designer, I’m programmed to think alignment, alignment, alignment of your learning objectives, stating it clearly making sure the students can see it clearly. And then now you have to deliver on that and then you have to measure it like it’s very point blank. So I love the the circle of storytelling that you brought us to because that’s really what it is we’re trying to simulate things, especially like some of your some of our games is that we’re trying to simulate something before someone experiences that and that is literally a model of best practice to help people learn in ways that there it’s kind of like covert learning, almost like mysteriously over learning.

Colleen Smith
I love it. But it’s, um, I mean, and that’s in a sense of, of what I tried to do with the culturally sustaining pieces I live in worked in the state of Florida for very long. And now we know that the state of Dei, a diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging, and what that looks like in Florida, and I covertly had to kind of sneak in culturally sustaining practices in a way that I was consulting with my clients, right. So now I see the role of games of not just for our students, but also for those people who form those experiences for our students and a creativity way, because we very rarely give ourselves time to collaborate, to be creative to think outside of that, that boom, boom, boom type of formulaic peace, because it when you’re taking care of students, like you’re on call 24/7. You know, I remember being in an FYE, and a transfer student experience program that was all about a cohort based program. And literally, I called myself mother hen, because they will just like, Call me or text me when they’re like, Wait, what are we doing? When is this happening? How are we doing this? While I’m picking up cookies in order to bring it to an event, right? Like, all of that stuff is going on? But then when do we have time to strategize and empathize and, and create and immerse ourselves as administrators or as faculty in that storytelling and creative process? Not very often, right? So I love the fact that you kind of looked at that misalignment as a my play on words, keep coming. I think it’s just if we don’t do ourselves justice in our own work, and giving ourselves that time to breathe and think outside of the box and color a little bit more, I think it enhances the opportunities and the experiences for everyone around us.

Tricia Siefert
And I just want to pick up on that, because I’m thinking about this alignment. And to some extent, what a disservice, our rigid alignment suggests to students, because it tries to make things so clear, and so linear, and like, if you do this, then this will happen. And then this will happen, and this will happen, and we will measure it. And they get sucked in to this box of what learning is. And then all of a sudden life happens. Because life really does happen. It happens in real life. It happens actually in the game that I created. And what’s so fascinating, is watching players and students figure out like, oh, man, that was a really bad life happens card, how do I scramble? How am I flexible? What are the skills that I can bring to bear to realize how to do things when life happens? And it’s that experiential learning that play gives us a space to see ourselves outside of ourselves, and develop, I think, some really important coping that we can bring to bear when life really does call us to deal with it. And I think if we’re thinking about how do we educate the future, it can’t be in this totally structured linear way, because that’s not how life unfolds. And I think that’s part of where play, why I get so ridiculously jazzed about the power of play. It’s because of those curveballs and I also think, when I go back to my former self when I was a student at or Oregon State worked on their low ropes course. And that was one of the most fun things about challenge by choice was creating and spinning these nutty stories and inviting the people who were out on the ropes course with you to add in, like to Andrews point, like, what’s the new challenge, so that they have some investment in how the story unfolds, and they can author and self author, their actions within it. And I think, you know, play in learning by doing is, is, is our future, because it’s our historic for ever past,

Andrew Peterson
we have something just so universal about play that it’s like, it’s part of every childhood, it’s part of every like, it’s like the human experience. And so anything that you can relate back to that it has a broad appeal. And then like to tie it back to that, like the the benefits of inefficiencies, like that, I love that because it’s the, again, I can tell you, Oh, you need to follow a schedule you need, you need to just do that. And by me telling you that you go, whenever I know how to schedule my stuff, I’ve got a calendar, I, I’ve always been able to just wing it, and it’s fine, you know, but But again, as soon as you had that play experience, and you’re like, Oh, I’ve only got so much time to spend. And then when something happens that you really want to do that you don’t have the resource for, there’s a tangible, like, something happened, like there’s an experience now that I can relate to, that I can reflect on, because I can make excuses on why my time management is flawless. But as soon as you remove it just a little bit and put it over here and play. Now there’s a different part of my brain that goes, How can I make that better? How can I optimize that, and it’s just removed from self? Uh, not that I don’t have to defend it, that I can kind of engage into that. How do I make this play experience better? One of the key things that we did with my game very early on, as we had that discussion of our players playing as themselves, and we had to go, no, they are not, because as yourself, I would never miss the tuition payment and have all my classes dropped. I’m better than that. But if I’m playing as Bob, and Bob could have anything happened to Bob, and then you have to deal with what happened to Bob. And that’s a fun learning experience. So it makes it just disconnected enough that you didn’t have to defend and personalize the experience.

Colleen Smith
I love that. Because yeah, it creates more risk, right? I think students are more likely in any player is more likely to take more risks when they’re kind of simulating who they might be in a different life maybe. But it could come out in a great way for them. And they might use that in a way to be brave in their everyday life later.

Keith Edwards
Or they might take some risks and a game and see how it really doesn’t work out. And what a great way to learn in a game from since consequences and failure or artists successes to do that, where it’s a little bit distant. You’re all reminding me of sort of this juxtaposition because I love this the mystery and the openness and the unanticipated nature of play. But then I’m also thinking all of these games, the way they work is they have rules, right? If soccer had no out of bounds, and the game went on forever, like it’s not a very fun game. Right? It’s the rules that make the game. And I’m wondering if any of you can speak to this juxtaposition between rules and boundaries and limitations. And then this mystery, openness, kind of thing that emerges from that.

Tracy Fullerton
I can speak to it. I mean, this isn’t like day one in my in my classes, right? What we talked about is the paradox of play, right? Is that this idea that, you know, rules constrain us, right? And play is is an attempt to break those constraints, but within them, so good games are not completely tight, like you can’t like in a system where you can’t move at all. There’s no play, right? But in a system where you can kind of move around and kind of get out windows or doors or figure your way through a system where there’s just enough play, so to speak, for you to be creative for you to challenge yourself. Just enough, but not too much. You that’s when there’s this sweet spot, right? There’s this beautiful sweet spot where we’re safe because we’re we’re within the constraints of play. Like you say we have boundaries right. And we can be more creative. But we’re not completely free. There’s this strange paradox. And, you know, many artists have have spoken to this idea that constraints create the best art, right? And I think game that’s the art of games is how to create this, just enough constraint, just enough rules for us to be challenged to become better versions of ourselves. Yeah, we play we often become better versions we, we have an epiphany of, of putting something together, we have an epiphany of working together with someone in a social game, right? We are sort of in this crucible, where the all of our skills, all of our emotions are compacted in that constraint. And out of it comes emerges to use the word you used earlier, emerges, this sense of of learning have a better version, and then we take away that knowledge that we can be better, we can escape whatever constraints have been put on us, but that the constraints themselves are good, that they’re good, because they made us better.

Andrew Peterson
Right? Think a little bit of that is like the game itself creates like an agreed upon environment in which we’re all going to exist in the next series of play. There’s kind of like that, that magic circle that we all step into. And we’re like, here’s the reality that we’re all going to exist in. And then for the next however long the game, social contract, right, exactly, you’ve kind of got that agreement that we’re all going to exist in this. And then it’s just a series of meaningful choices within these constraints. What can we do? How can we do it? How am I going to do better than you? Or are we going to do better together? Or, you know, kind of that that structure of play and scoring and winning?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I love your point about this is not just about learning, but the the boundaries and the constraints foster all kinds of creativity. And you mentioned other artists. One of my favorite musicians is Bob Schneider, who does the song game, and it’s all the songwriters. And if you sign up to play his song game, he sends you a prompt every Tuesday. And the only rule is, that word needs to be in your song. And you have to submit a song by the end of the week. And if you don’t submit a song, by the end of the week, you’re out and you got it. And it doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to go on your next album. But it’s got to be a song and that words got to be in it. And it might be a throwaway word, it might be the title of the song. But again, that this word, end of the week, fosters that creativity, its structure and boundaries. And then as you’re talking about a social contract, it’s reminding me the world that we live in now is slipping on that we don’t have an agreed upon reality, we don’t have agreed upon facts. We don’t have agreed upon sort of that. And maybe that’s why games are so appealing as people are yearning for. Yeah, but we all kind of agree that we only get six moves. And this is the rules. And this is that. And now what do we want to do with it? I

Tracy Fullerton
think it’s a lot why young folks are really interested in board games. And I’ll tell you, I have a theory about this. It’s not proven, I have no research behind this. But board games are beautiful practice for us all holding a system and adjudicating it together, saying these are the rules. And we will play by them together. digital games, some of them have that. But many of them have a sense where the game itself is held by an AI, it’s held by the software, the code, right? You are just bumping against it. You’re trying to like, get through it, right? Yeah,

Andrew Peterson
you can clip through that door, you win because you beat the computer.

Tracy Fullerton
But in a board game. There’s this sense where we’re all holding that together. We’re make we’re saying no, no, no, you can’t go through that door. Right together. Oh, I see. I can’t go through that door. Because of this. We agree. And there’s this civility to it that is quite beautiful that you practice as a young child, and continue if you play board games into adulthood, which many people are doing now. I think it brings up back I think it brings a sense where, okay, we’re holding this this set of rules together. We’re holding society together. You know,

Keith Edwards
what? Every kid cheats at a game and then finds out how that goes or doesn’t run. No,

Tracy Fullerton
Everyone’s like, no, no, no, that I’ve got the rules.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, yeah. And that learning about trying to break the rules that we all agreed on and then the social consequences or can I get away with it? And then you win when you cheated, and you know it and it’s tainted. And so you played

Andrew Peterson
as a banker in Monopoly?

Colleen Smith
Yeah. Oh no, I think that’s really interesting. One of the parts about my research is that cultural inclusive tivity inclusivity and belonging pieces, it’s to challenge that social contract. Right? So going back to our conversation about like being able to take risks in a safe space and almost like a place where it’s okay to kind of think outside of the box, right? The research that I’ve put into my cart deck is really about asking yourself questions like, Am I doing this just because of the social contract? Or am I doing this because it’s actually something that would help my students be successful in this learning environment that I’m creating? So where I would say, yes, there’s nostalgia with those social social contracts and learning the rules and working within those confines, when you’re looking at like a game like card sorting, which there could be any type of answer, right. And I think that that’s the strategy behind it is kind of breaking into that social contract and seeing like, like, Is this because it is this way? Or is it because I think it’s supposed to be this way? And how can I bend those rules to make it better for people? So I just thought that was an interesting concept that I was thinking about it in a completely different way that there really are no rules with a card sorting, you know, type of game, but in a strategic or a board game. It’s a different construct.

Tracy Fullerton
I think that’s so beautiful. I think, you know, what you’re really getting at is the underlying assumptions that we have in our worldview, right and challenging those. And a social contract could be maybe the first layer, right? It’s your first assumption, but then by challenging people to say, Well, wait a minute, it could be a different way. That’s just a wonderful subtext. Right. And, and a kind of new level to thinking about how play could change our point of view? Really,

Colleen Smith
it’s like the perfect world question and counseling. In a perfect world, how would this go?

Tracy Fullerton
There’s a wonderful game by Brenda Romero, it’s an art game called train. And I don’t know if folks are familiar with it, that does this. And I don’t want to give too much away. But it’s a game where you playing it. And you have these meatballs, which I love that you use that term earlier. And you’re sort of shoving them into these trains, and you’re trying to get them down this track. And, and at first, you’re just in a game mode, you’re like, that’s what you’re doing, right? But you discover along the way that that’s, in fact, not what you’re doing. And I don’t want to like say don’t want to give it away, but it’s a kind of

Andrew Peterson
Add into the to playlist.

Tracy Fullerton
Yeah, it’s a terrible, beautiful, horrible experience, when you realize what you are doing. And it changes your perspective.

Tricia Siefert
Well, that’s why games teach. Like, I think, you know, if I could like, hashtag anything games teach, they teach us things. And I think what you’re describing Tracy is, there’s a subtext within that game, like you’re doing something on this level. And then, in a moment of deeper reflection, you start to realize, whoa, that was only slightly about what I was actually doing the subtext here, or the deeper learning. And that’s the power of games, when they’re when there’s some level of facilitation, especially educational games, right, like when we can have a good prompt, to just allow people to do that next level thinking. I mean, we’ve gotten such mileage out of this most simple prompt was, I used to think now, I think, so I used to think this about a topic. And now I’m thinking this, and I can’t think of it honestly, like a more simple prompt, that has generated some really deep reflection. And I would love to throw out that prompt with this training game to see what is it that players are taking away from that experience, two days later.

Andrew Peterson
Play experience does to is it gives you like, you can you can have a lecture on that. And you can just be told it and you’re like, Yeah, da, I know this. But But by giving that that personal experience, kind of that gut wrenching, you know, twist in the story, all of a sudden, you’re like, oh, that actually happened. And I can internalize that and relate to it. And now it’s my experience. It’s not something that you told me or a PowerPoint where you click next, or how you told me how to feel. That’s how I felt. And as soon as you personalize it, now it’s, it’s yours and you own it.

Tracy Fullerton
You know, I’m gonna give an example. I didn’t really talk about the game that I’m not supposed to talk about. But I give a example in this game that doesn’t exist. And that is, so there’s a set of prompts that are made in this game. They’re made out of cards that are spread amongst all the students and given away at secret events and things like that. And basically, they have to put these their own prompts together, right like create a Animated Short. And then there’s like all these qualifying things takes place in this in the courtyard, it’s in black and white, it has the theme of morality, you know, has a woman in red or sent, you know, whatever it is like they create this prompt. And they think it’s about making that an animated short, what it’s really actually about is getting a group of people together to add their cards to the prompt, and then talking and making something as a group of people, because when freshmen come in, you know, they come, it’s a large university, I’m sure you guys all they sit in these large lectures, they’ve come from high schools all over, they’ve been given stacks of reading lists, they’ve got a bunch of books in a big backpack, and they sit down in a lecture hall, and they think that’s what school is. Now, we’re gonna sit in a lecture hall and listen, right? And we wanted to make this thing that was an intervention against sitting in a lecture hall with books, that’s that made that cause them to go meet each other and put their cards in a pile together and stand standards. What if we did this? And what if we did that, all of a sudden, they’re not sitting in a lecture, all of a sudden, they’re standing around talking about things, adding their piece to the pile? Right. And so the mechanic is not the prompt. The mechanic is getting a bunch of people together to make something. Right. And so, you know, just to come back to this, this misalignment thing that we were mentioned in the beginning, sometimes you have to design play, that isn’t what it seems, it may be about sorting cards, it’s actually about changing people’s perspective, it may be about creating a prompt, it’s actually about getting freshmen to talk to one another and work together. Right? It may seem to be about learning, you know, your first year of college, but actually, it’s about, you know, being ready for the unexpected experience, right. So all these I think what’s really common among our work is that we’re designing mechanics that then have this meta level of experience that we hope that players will happen. It’s

Andrew Peterson
funny, you say that, because that’s the exact justification for EA Sports at Ferris State University. So it’s, you know, on the surface level, it’s getting people to get together and play games, right, and to be a somewhat competitive level, and you go, it really isn’t that at all. It’s, it’s that social place of belonging, where we can all get together and have a common play experience. And we’ve seen more success have, you know, we’ve had, like 180 students that are now getting together, and playing and having fun, and it’s created that exact environment that you’re, I’ve actually got a couple of those cards, I think from a games learning and Society Conference. Go and I’m like, half of me wants to go back and look at my bookshelf and find them and be like, Oh, I’ve got the black and white cup but but that’s what it really does is you’re creating those those social connections and that sense of belonging because as soon as you have that, you know, the rest of college and honestly, almost life gets really, really easy because you’ve got that that group of people that you can relate to and have that discussion and have kind of that that healthy cohort that makes life fun. Oh

Keith Edwards
I muted myself. This is the game of zoom. There’s there’s a benefit here of creativity and innovation. There’s a benefit here of resilience and adaptability and the unexpected. There’s a benefit here learning and there’s a better fit here of connection and relationship building and camaraderie. I got totally distracted from summarizing what I was hearing and hitting my mute button. I do want to bring up a really specific thing. One of our listeners Jen Bullock, who is a student events coordinator at Auburn University, Montgomery reached out over email, had no idea what you’re doing this episode, but just said, Hey, have you ever thought about talking about tabletop role playing games, and I remembered being a 10 year old obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons. But she’s really interested in exploring these in ways to address mental health and resilience and trauma recovery and maybe even rehabilitation with prison populations. And so I just wanted to throw that out here. That’s something that that Jen is thinking about and ideating about and looking at learning about and researching and just want to throw that out to all of you what Any thoughts what comes up for you, as experts in this kind of space?

Andrew Peterson
I loves the role playing games in general in the classroom. But my are much more academic. So I’m familiar with like the reacting to the past, that’s a very historical scenario based in any, I would be concerned that any kind of like the mental health trauma or rehabilitation would be 10 gentle and not directly related to it, or if it was, I would want that, you know, therapists social work to really be involved in that game design process, to make sure that I wasn’t doing bad things.

Tricia Siefert
Oh, I would offer I actually saw this presentation with a faculty member from Simon Fraser University last last spring. And the Game Master was the therapist was the counselor. And in many of these role playing games there, the role of the Game Master is, is so important. And as I was mentioning before, like having someone to debrief and facilitate what’s learned through a game, from the literature, we know is really important. And I think if you’re going to be working with this different group of game players, to having a really thoughtful and intentional Game Master to sort of facilitate that role playing process will be essential.

Colleen Smith
Hey, agree, I think they’re just safeguarding the identity stereotyping that could happen through role playing exercises with such a distinct population, making sure that we keep it stereotyping at bay during the game and role playing, but also use it as a chance to educate on the actual population and the actual audience that the role playing would be targeting.

Tracy Fullerton
Absolutely, and I’m not certain from the question whether she’s talking about they’re talking about designing a new game or use using existing games not clear to me, if if, if it is about designing a new game, then my suggestion would be obviously, it has already been hinted here is to put together a team that includes people familiar with the, the needs, the you know, the situation that would this will be played in, in the pot in the population, and you’d want to do some ethnographic study with the people before beginning your design process, because you might begin with assumptions. And the it might be that these folks are, you know, not that different from all of us. Right. And perhaps they don’t need an entirely new type of game. Right, maybe the existing games with some interesting storytelling, that was more that was relatable. And, uh, you know, as we’ve already said, Here, a DM that is trained in kind of unpacking. I think a lot of that sufficient.

Andrew Peterson
I think a lot of that, too, is where you can almost think of the games as the engagement engine. Because it’s you go, we can get to this discussion any way you want. You know, one is you can have that the stereotypical circle, and we all talk about our feelings. I might or might not engage in that because of whatever reason, but if all of a sudden, I’m not playing a game. Oh, and how does your barbarian feel? Oh, well, he’s probably kind of intimidate. You know, you can disconnect that, but still have that discussion. And I think that’s, you know, if I had to kind of boil down the why I love games and education so much, it’s that it creates that engagement. And now all of a sudden they’re in the players are invested in what you’re talking about are the kind of the academics of it.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Well, thanks. I think that’s, I love that question. And I love including things that are our audiences sharing in but it really talks about sort of taking that to another level, another level of depth and complexity. And I’m even thinking about the creation of this game could be a game right and bringing people in from these populations and CO creating and working together and, and the emergence of that we are running out of time and you all have sort of hinted and talked about so many different things. So I want to give you a chance to share where folks can connect with you or find your games or find what you’re doing. So please feel free to share that. But I also just love to hear what what’s you know the podcasts call Student Affairs now so what’s with you now? What are you thinking? What are you troubling? What’s popping might be related to this conversation might be a car deck, you want to go grab from your bookshelf, Andrew, I imagine you’re beautiful. shelf that’s quite fascinating as all of yours. So what is with you now? So Andrew, we’re going to start with you. What’s what’s coming up for you now? And where might folks connect with you.

Andrew Peterson
So right now, literally tomorrow, I’m heading off to Gen Con, they’ve got a trade day there that is all about game based learning. It’s very much in the analog sphere of, of games and play. And so it’s really hard not to be super excited to go into Indianapolis with 80,000 of my closest friends, and just playing games, giving some lecture series on, you know, Intro to game design, rapid game prototyping, and kind of being part of that conversation of where games and education intersect.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. Tracy, how about you?

Tracy Fullerton
Oh, yeah. I mentioned that the most recent game that we’ve put out is the educational modules for Walden a game. And those can be found at educators.waldengame.com. It’s a series of five of short modules based on our commercial game about Walden Pond, and they’re free they, they have integrated curriculum associated with them. They can be played on Chromebooks, or any web browser. And I, you know, encourage any teachers who are literature teachers at high school or college level to check those out. But I just thought, based on our conversation based on the fact that you said, should you look at a card game, I do have a card game called Yes. And, and it’s a game. It’s kind of an exercise is inclusive brainstorming game exercise. And it’s just a deck of cards, which you can probably get on my website at at game innovation lab.com. I don’t actually put it up there. But I’ll check. And basically, it’s a for having conversations like this right about generating ideas and using the classic theater method of Yes. And I thought I’d throw that in there.

Keith Edwards
Awesome. How about you Colleen?

Colleen Smith
I was actually thinking I might end up buying it. So please put it up on your website. If you don’t check it out.

Tracy Fullerton
I sometimes forget, you know, I’m kind of like, I’m always just doing the next thing. And then you forget it. Yeah.

Colleen Smith
It’s great. No, currently, I’m in the faculty development world. So I have my full time. But I also have my side business, which is where the card deck kind of came out of, you can buy the culturally sustaining instructional design card deck, I got to work on the name, the CSI ID card deck on my website, colleensmith.tech/shop. Pretty easy to remember, hopefully, but I am working on setting up my facilitation schedule with different departments in my state right now and then eventually to other states, so facilitating the card deck and the conversation between departments, and trying to get our faculty to think more about how to create this inclusive online learning space when we’re creating their online courses. After that, I’ve been working a lot with TRIO programs, I, that’s my first love and I will continue to be so working with and coaching students on how to find joy in their lives and where they want to go. And I actually use these card decks as ways to kind of spark creativity for myself before I start facilitating and coaching those students. So it’s a way for me to collaborate with myself, just as someone who’s a remote employee, and then also trying to bring this card deck to different departments and create that ripple effect. Like I said earlier.

Keith Edwards
I love that I imagine you playing solitaire with your own game that you’re designed.

Colleen Smith
I love Solitaire. Yeah.

Keith Edwards
That’s really great. That’s really great. For sure what’s with you now? And where can folks connect with you?

Tricia Siefert
Yeah. So this summer, I’m actually using several of the games that we’re discussing here today. So in a five game curriculum, we’re working with the Flathead boys and girls, Flathead Reservation Boys and Girls Club of Lake County. Doing a summer camp program using enrolled application crunch, success prints Crash Course the board game and the in development video game version, with a group of members of the Boys and Girls Club. We also ran in a summer camp for English language learners here in the Gallatin Valley. And what was so fascinating was how quickly students who many are from Guatemala and Venezuela and who are new New Americans, learning about college readiness and college exploration through gameplay. And what was so fascinating was how quickly they picked up the game. And we’re already teaching the rules to the adults who are facilitating the game because young people know how to play. They also don’t have all of the baggage about like, oh, is this right? You know, they’re willing to just go for it. And so that’s what we’ve been seeing. In gameplay in this kind of college readiness, severe mode, we’re also playing with first year students trio students at Montana State and other programs around Montana, to really help bring students in and to learn about the resources on their campus. And so, success prints crash course has been adopted and adapted into customized versions at Montana State and at Montana Tech. And they really tell the game and the story of that unique campus. So we do these customized versions, where the board looks like your campus, you’re able to tell the story about your campus resources and events and the kaleidoscope of students who are part of your campus community. And it’s just a really great way to onboard and orient students to start to see themselves on that particular campus. And you can learn more if you’re interested in six at successprintscrashcourse.com. Awesome.

Andrew Peterson
So I had to throw in one more because Taylor and Francis published, we have a rapid prototyping game, which is the deck that we built for game design prototyping. So it’s a lot of the the game mechanics and the well, we’ll be doing one of those sessions at GenCon. So that was where I was like, oh, yeah, it’s connected here and connected here and had to plug that real quick. Yeah. Fantastic.

Keith Edwards
And we’ll get all the links there dropping links in the chat. We’ll get all those links in the show notes. You can find everything there in the episode pages studentaffairsnow.com thanks to all of you. This has been terrific. Thanks for your leadership and your thoughtfulness and your ideation and your playfulness for sure. This has been fantastic. I also want to thank our sponsors of today’s episode Routledge in Huron. Huron is a global professional services firm that collaborates with clients to put possible into practice by creating sound strategies, optimizing operations, accelerating digital transformation, and empowering businesses and their people to own their future. By embracing diverse perspectives, encouraging new ideas and challenging the status quo here on create sustainable results for the organizations they serve. And Routledge Taylor and Francis, which we’ve mentioned already is the world’s leading academic publisher in education, publishing a wide range of books, journals and other resources for practitioners, faculty, administrators, and researchers. They have welcomed stylus publishing to their publishing program, and are thrilled to enrich their offerings in higher education, teaching Student Affairs, professional development, assessment and more. They are a proud sponsor of Student Affairs NOW. You can view their complete catalogue of education titles at rutledge.com/education. As always, a huge shout out to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey does all the behind the scenes work to make all of us look and sound good. And we love the support of these conversations from you our community. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing to the podcast on YouTube or weekly newsletter announcing each new episode. For so inclined. You can also leave us a five star review helps us reach more folks with these great conversations. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guest today and to everyone who’s watching. Make it a great week. Thank you all.

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/enrolled

https://www.waldengame.com/educators

https://www.gamedesignworkshop.com

https://www.gamedesignworkshop.com

https://jaid.edtechbooks.org/jaid_12_2/a_model_for_culturally_sustaining_instructional_design

https://brenda.games/train

https://www.gencon.com/gen-con-indy/trade-day

https://www.gameinnovationlab.com/yes-and

https://www.facebook.com/blueprintsforstudentsuccess

https://www.instagram.com/success.prints

https://www.youtube.com/@successprintscrashcourse2333/videos

www.successprintscrashcourse.com