yet. INNOVATION ABSTRACTS x22"
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VICES [ J
AGL Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development

With support from the W/. K. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W. Richardson Foundation

 

 

 

PLAYING AROUND WITH THE HUMANITIES

This is a confession: I always hated playing games. Fortunately, the ivy league universities which I at-
tended encouraged the professors to lecture and to develop theories without recourse to fancy games in the
classroom. My model professor was a particularly inaccessible and aloof lecturer. I was getting quite good at
this role until I accepted a short-term faculty position at a small community college in Arizona. To my astonish-
ment, my usual style of rarefied, if impassioned, lectures in the Humanities engendered considerable disinterest
among the community college students. I confided my frustration to my husband, a filmmaker, who must have
said something like: “The students don’t seem to ‘see’ the social dynamics. Why can’t we get them to ‘act’ it
out for themselves?” | reluctantly agreed to the collaborative development of an educational game.

Our effort resulted in “The Renaissance Game“ which we hoped would illuminate the conditions which
transformed western European society. In preparation for the game, I wrote very brief descriptions about the
responsibilities and lifestyles of various medieval social categories, such as nobles, clergy, troubadours, peasants,
alchemists, astrologers, and craftsmen. In class, students were divided into small groups, assigned a category,
given the appropriate description to read, and told to discuss what their daily lives, sorrows, and joys might
have been in the late 13th century. We circulated among the groups, encouraging them to verbalize their ideas
and subtly preparing them for the next stages of the game.

When the students felt comfortable with their roles, we called them together and asked each group to
describe its lifestyle. One of the students panicked and fell back on reading the prepared statement. Neverthe-
less, an undercurrent of solidarity emerged between the “clergy” and the “nobles.” An incidental event made
the game realistic. One of the “peasants” got up to make a phone call, and a “noble” called for his arrest.
There were discontented rumblings from the “peasants” and “craftsmen,” but somehow the change for the
phone call ended up in the palm of the “clergy” as tithing.

The stage was now set. We asked a “troubadour” how he felt about having the greatest tale in the world
and knowing it would have only a limited audience. Then we asked him what he thought of the new technolo-
gy for a printing press. While he retired from the game to write an epic in the vernacular, the “peasants” began
to grumble that they would never be able to read it anyway. The “clergy” told them to put their minds at rest
and offered to interpret anything that was important. We asked an “alchemist” and an “astrologer” to discuss
the new technologies to observe earthly and astronomical phenomena. They got huffy and insisted that predic-
tion was an art, not a science. The “nobles,” who were not expecting the Black Plague, tried to run the “al-
chemists” out of town. The “peasant” who, in the meantime, had been trying to scrape up more change for his
phone call, decided to invest in a piece of property, the owners of which had succumbed to plague. “Who says
he can do that?” asked a “noble.” One of the “craftsmen,” now turned entrepreneur, explained how a money
system works, set up a bank, and was elected councilman by a majority vote. The “clergy” immediately opened
up a bank account.

The instructor's playing role in “The Renaissance Game“ was to introduce dynamic elements, such as the
changing economy, demography, or technology, and to tantalize students to discover the implications. Because
the students were able to relate to the idea of real people with genuine concerns, fears, and opportunities, the
Renaissance came alive. Students readily handled the more abstract concepts—that social forces may affect
people's lives and that these forces are comprehensible. After that game experience, the students participated
more effectively in class discussions and began to apply their intuition and knowledge to new information.

After that initial success, | created games each time the students seemed to lose touch with the course ma-
terial. “The Philosophy Game” helped to enrich their understanding of 17th and 18th century philosophers and
writers. Before playing the game, students were asked to review brief summaries which I had written about
each philosophy. We drew our chairs into a circle, and each student received a name plaque: Rousseau, Vol-
taire, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Goethe, Swift, Descartes, etc. With the cast of characters assembled, the
students and I took turns posing questions and evaluating the responses. Extremely abstract questions—such

 

Cap Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712