Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Playtesting a university simulation game in a graduate seminar

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The first thing I'll do here is praise Bryan Alexander first for trying this game out with students and second for describing it so well. It clearly engaged students and provided some valuable experience. Now to turn to the inevitable criticisms, I'm going to accuse him of rigging the game. Of the eight roles defined, five were management. The 'random' events were arbitrary. The game felt to me designed to push the participants into a decision-making orthodoxy.

And as an aside, I wonder what 'emergency remote learning' would look like if, instead if emulating lessons and tests, students spent the two week closure playing a similar sort of a role-playing game. If it had been me running the system, online learning would have looked very different from in-class relarning. And would be the better for it, in my view.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: May 01, 2024 8:37 p.m.

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