Board Games, Systems, and Equity — An Inquiry — Week 20 — Student Projects

Well, we have arrived at the end of our year of games. The last 6 weeks of the school year will involve playing the legacy games (which should take us to the end of the school year) during our weekly time together, and the completion of another cycle of student inquiry.

I will write on last blog after this one to reflect on the year, what was learned, and what our next steps will be, but for now, I wanted to focus on the student work.

As you may recall, the last time that we completed a cycle of inquiry (back in November), we noticed some tendencies that caused us to pause and reflect on our work. We noticed that:

1. Students tended to select from a narrow range of topics. In our conferences students did not necessarily indicate a huge interest in their topic of choice, but derived ‘intellectual comfort’ (for lack of a better term) in knowing that most people were working along the same lines.
2. Students overwhelmingly selected a format for communicating their learning that reflected the most common form of assignment submitted in their class. Almost 85 percent of students, in the end, chose to complete their inquiry by creating a PowerPoint or an essay.
3. Students were comfortable raising points and taking positions that had been discussed in our large group, but almost none were willing to step outside these lines of argument to express a different idea or perspective.

We had lots of discussion about the significance of what we were seeing and how we could (potentially), disrupt these tendencies for the next cycle of inquiry.

The first thing we decided on was that we were going to try to include explicit teaching around different methods of communicating information. We wondered what would happen if students had more options in their toolbox. Would they make different choices? And so we taught the use of Twine and Canva, and we also tried to provide more diverse options for other assignments in the class to avoid giving the impression that there was only one way of demonstrating student learning.

The second thing we though about was risk-taking. What kinds of moves could we make to encourage students to take risks? We came to the conclusion that this was both a relational piece and an assessment piece. We thought that we had to do some work to build relationship and trust with students, but that we also had to show them that taking risks in the classroom was not high stakes. This meant mitigating or removing the ‘threat’ of grades and focusing on the growth in learning. This is a huge undertaking and shift. Students have been programmed that work gets marked and then it goes into a pile of other work and the combination of all those marks determines your final grade. Doing poorly on one or two assignments has traditionally meant that you take ‘high’ levels of achievement off the table. This is a longer term project, but it needed to begin now. Ungrading has always been something that I think we need to embrace more fully in school, and this is a good way to engage with teachers and students about the value of grades and their impact on student choice and development.

Finally, we thought that it might help to extend our time with each game. So after Christmas we spent at least two, and sometimes three weeks on each game. We also extended conversations on topics to match the length of time we spent on each game. This adaptation wasn’t connected directly to either wondering, but we thought that if we tweaked conditions related to choice, time, and risk, that we would have a good chance to influence the next round of student projects.

You might also remember that due to COVID disruptions, we had our second round of inquiry cancelled, so we haven’t had a chance to see if our adaptations have had any impact.

So we were quite curious to see what this round of inquiry would look like.

I would say that we were amazed by what emerged in our first conferences. Students opted for an incredibly wide range of projects, and we even had some opt for a inquiry topic that wasn’t in the suggested topic list. For context, we always have a ‘topic of your choice’ option, but we have found that this rarely gets selected. I think this is a good reminder that simply saying students have a choice doesn’t mean you are really creating a situation where student choice is celebrated and respected. If students still feel threatened by the ‘risk’ of getting a poor grade, then they will be highly unlikely to actually to venture out into uncharted waters in their learning. For this round, we also allowed students to work together in pairs or small groups if they wished.

Here are some of the project ideas that we were presented with:

1. One group decided to imagine what the food would be like in the imaginary world of their game (Legacy of Dragonholt) and wanted to create recipes that the races and cultures of their game world eat. They also wanted to prepare that food and bring it in for their peers to try.
2. One student wanted to design a website to teach people how to play the game was playing (Clank! Acquisitions Incorporated)
3. One student wanted to do a summary with a comparative evaluation of all of the games we had played this year.
4. Some students opted to write a journal describing their journey in learning the legacy game they were playing.
5. Some students opted to write a diary in the character of the role they were playing in the game. Some students wrote as nobles (The King’s Dilemma) while others wrote as citizens or people hearing about the events of the game.
6. Some students created ‘historical artefacts’ based on what happened in their game (Risk Legacy, The King’s Dilemma, Charterstone).
7. Some students wanted to focus on the intricacies of strategy in the legacy game they were learning to play. They created a variety of documents to show others how to play the game successfully.
8. Some students decided to focus on the value system of the game they were playing. Particularly in the more historical games, they wanted to compare the ways in which the game made them think about ‘real’ history, the ways that it departed from ‘real’ history, and what the game could teach us about the consequences of societal choices.
9. Some students were interested in ‘modding’ a game. These students looked at the existing game elements and conceived of new elements to introduce, new rules that might be used, and new scenarios that could be imagined (Risk Legacy in particular).
10. Some students wanted to create posters and other graphics that advertised the game, explained it, or explored the characters in the game. In particular, students who played Legacy of Dragonholt became very attached to the characters they created, and many opted to build detailed images and descriptions of their character.
11. Some students liked the idea of creating videos on a variety of topics. Some students created a film trailer for the game. Others decided to create videos of their group playing the game.
12. Some students used presentation software to create a presentation that was not a Powerpoint. They used Canva and Padlet and Prezi.
13. Some students opted for an oral presentation they either recorded, did in front of the class, or presented just to staff.
14. Some students chose to stick with a Powerpoint or an essay — and that was perfectly OK!

There were others, but I think this gives you a good sense of the variety and range of projects.

I have to say, I was amazed and overwhelmed by the creativity displayed by the students and the depth of learning that it allowed them to demonstrate.

The last thing I am going to do with them this year is ask them about the experience and figure out whether this is worth doing again, and if it is, then how we can make it better.

If games aren’t what they want, then I am also looking for them to guide me in how I can support rich and meaningful inquiry learning in their classrooms.

I guess that is an important point to mention from a pedagogical standpoint — teaching should never be something that is done ‘to’ students; it should be something that is co-constructed, done ‘with’ and ‘alongside’ them.

A screenshot from part of T’s Canva — Awesome!

Clank!

A link to J’s website he created above. He designed it to teach people how to play Clank! Acquisitions Incorporated.

A screenshot of one entry from E.D.’s project

Part of the character assignment from one of our students from the Life Skills Centre

The Opening page from an examination of the importance of Collaboration in games

A very detailed description on how to play the game Charterstone by A

Thanks for following along!