El Juego de la Vida: Learning Language and Life Skills through a RPG-Based Curriculum
Joshua Archer
Sonoma State University
“The only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands, he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs.”
— John Dewey, My Pedagogical Creed (1897)
“Any inherited system, good for its time, when held to after its day, hampers social progress. Old teaching methodologies should give way to new ones if the old ones don’t get the right job done as well.”
— Franklin Bobbit, Scientific Method in Curriculum-Making (1918)
Introduction
From a young age, I understood the power that education possesses to shape self-esteem and identity. I was a chubby child with asthma, unaccepted by my peers, and too shy to find many friends, but one thing I did excel at was school. I loved to learn new things, and I loved the attention I got from the teacher when I would answer a question correctly in class, and get a smile and a ‘good job’, and yet, I still felt isolated from other children and was branded a “teacher’s pet”, and a “nerd”. I became more reticent to go out to the playground during recess, as I was teased without mercy. I wasn’t good at playground games, and I wasn’t good at social games – the only game I seemed to excel at was the game of teacher-student-classroom. That was, until in my 2nd-grade year I met a group of boys huddled in a corner of the playground yard, rolling dice and holding pieces of paper, while they excitedly told each other stories of monsters, treasures and daring deeds, with their own perspectives being that of the heroes. I showed interest, and was quickly invited in to play my first game of Dungeons and Dragons. The kids in the circle were not all ‘smart’ kids by ordinary scholastic standards, and some of them were great athletes and didn’t need to be segregated to the side of the playground. And yet, together, we were a community, telling a story together, and we were all the heroes. I started a gaming relationship with those boys, and learned through the experience so much about history, mythology, medieval technology, science and fantasy. We were all motivated to learn as much as we could about the setting of our storytelling, so that we could tell a better story together.
Learning is a natural and automatic part of life – to quote Frank Smith (1981) through Short and Burke (1991), “learning is not an occasional event, to be stimulated, provoked or reinforced. Learning is what the brain does naturally, continually”. Every environment we are in is a learning environment, and every relationship we have is a learning relationship. And in those environments, with those learning partners, we follow rules and play roles; these all constitute a game we decide to play, like any other game. Some games are voluntary and entertaining, while others feel compulsory and are not fun. Traditional, transmissive top-down schooling in the “Banking” model (Freire, 1968) is a game that is not fun for many children or adults, and cedes too much power to the educator in the room, where “the teacher pretends knowledge and projects ignorance onto the students” (Pinar, 1975) and where “all questions have more or less correct answers”(Pinar, 1975) and “the function of education is then to ensure that each student knows the right answers to a series of questions that educators have decided are important.” (Pinar, 1975), (Glasser, 1969). While this mode of education works for some individuals better than others (I as a child was adept at pleasing the teachers, and became reinforced by the positive feedback), and works for some subjects perhaps better than others, I would argue that for many the experience is disenfranchising, and for the subject of learning a foreign language, and for learning about life situations such as the adult workplace, it may be less well-suited than a methodology that is social and interactional in nature, and allows for students to pursue their own lines of inquiry and build their own network of knowledge through practicing life experiences. As an educator and curriculum creator, I believe it is my responsibility for “establishing a learning environment that is conductive to the growth of the particular students in our classrooms” (Short & Burke, 1991). In creating the game-based curriculum “El Juego de la Vida” for Casa Grande High School’s Spanish 3 in the Workplace classroom, my partner Bert Holcomb and I wanted to use a methodology that put social interaction and individual exploration at the forefront, using constructivist and inquiry-based methodologies as much as we could, while still maintaining a connection to the learning objectives set forth by the classroom, historically, and meet the requirements set down by the Petaluma School District.
Educational Goals
“El Juego de la Vida” is a role-playing-game-based curriculum which enables students to take their own pathway through the narrative of a fictional persona or ‘character’ who is a new high school graduate, in their first job and working to improve their standing in life. The pathway that the students take through the game depends on their individual goals and actions, in concert with the guidance provided by the instructor and the influence of the students’ individual actions upon one another. While one of the primary objectives of the class as a foreign language class is to gain Spanish competence and fluency, the framing of the class is that this fluency is context-driven and incorporates learning not only Spanish, but the contexts of work and career within which the Spanish use is situated.
The educational goals of this unit are built upon the framework lain down by the original course description of Spanish 3 In the Workplace at Casa Grande High School. The primary educational goal is teaching Spanish fluency within the contextual scope of workplace situations, interactions and communications necessary for success in workplace environments. The secondary, but equally as important educational goal is teaching a familiarity with the concepts and situational interactions of the workplace, and more generally life after high school, including subjects such as pursuing a formal education through colleges and universities, participation in informal education through mentorship relationships or self-training, as well as issues of time management, economics, keeping a budget, managing debt and planning for the future through investments. The tertiary educational goal is to allow for students, through the proxy of their characters, to explore the details of specific careers of their choosing and of their own personal interest. Through independent research, role-play and through the character-advancement mechanics of the game, students build a contextualized understanding of these explored professions, and build practical experience using Spanish vocabulary and grammatical concepts related to those professions.
Interdisciplinary and Multicultural Goals
We have designed “El Juego de la Vida” to address several other very important educational goals, which while not necessarily part of the explicit standards required by the class, are part of the hidden curriculum and are in my judgement just as important for creating a well-rounded person in our society. As Eisner so sagely tells us, “the implicit curriculum of the school [or classroom] can teach a host of intellectual and social virtues” (Eisner, 2001).
One such virtue that “El Juego de la Vida” enables students to learn and practice is empathy.
To quote Short & Burke, “Our ability to empathize with others provides our only opportunity to stand outside ourselves and observe who we are and what we are doing. These socially provided observation points lend flexibility to our personal worlds. They create choices that would not be available to us if we were isolated from others. We have potentials for learning that would never be realized without these social relationships” (Short, K. & Burke, C., 1991). By taking on the roles of other people, and interacting with others doing the same, students can reflect on the perspectives on others as self and as other, and share their observations and reflections with one another in their interactions, as well as in any artifacts of their reflection.
The game consists of the students inhabiting and acting through personalities in face-to-face role-play; students are practicing understanding another person’s perspective and making decisions based on that perspective. Each character possesses elements of background and personality that are randomly determined and are designed to create diversity in the population of characters included in the game, and challenge the students as players to understand perspectives that may be very different form their own. Differences in gender, religion, cultural background, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, etc. are assigned to the characters to introduce aspects that shine a light on issues of discrimination in the workplace, and cultural differences that will play out in students’ communications during role-play.
Situations that the players must navigate through the course of the game may include difficult issues such as theft, drug abuse, sexual harassment, or other themes that place the player in relationship with subject matters with which they in life may have very limited access or experience. By playing through role-play scenarios, from a perspective possibly quite divergent from their own in life, the students gain valuable practice in empathetic thinking for others and a broader understanding of situations outside of their own perspective.
Transactional and Peer-Oriented Learning
For the latter part of the 20th century and into the beginnings of the 21st century, top-down, transmissive educational practices and methodologies have dominated public education in the United States. Classes are organized in rows, or sometimes more progressively, in a circle, but typically the mode of education follows the model of the teacher at the head of the class (figuratively and/or literally) instructing the class on a subject, and the students passively absorbing the knowledge in preparation to return that knowledge in the form of written or oral tests. Even in the face of alternative approaches being both invented and put into practice, this model has continued, perhaps more for the reason of ease and expedience of preparation on the part of the educator than one of best practices for learning. The ‘banking’ model of education (Freire, 1968) devalues any knowledge or perspective of the student, discourages critical thinking, and emphasizes the memorization and regurgitation of discreet ‘facts’ without any allowance or focus on deeper understanding of the content with which the educational experience is engaged. The agency of the learner is challenge, and for Freire, this leads ultimately to a re-enforcement of oppression (Pinar, 1975).
Bennet, in A Nation Still at Risk, suggests “We must be as open to alternatives in the delivery of education as we are firm about the knowledge and skills being delivered” (Bennet, Fair, Finn, Flake & Hirsch, 1998). Bobbit, in Scientific Method in Curriculum-Making puts forth that “any inherited system, good for its time, when held after its day, hampers social progress” (Bobbit, 1918). While we are not yet poised to revolutionize all our public schools, and certainly there are times when traditional transmissive techniques might have limited merit, we believe that the time has certainly come, at least for us, to reorient our methodologies towards a more inclusive, engaging and participatory ethos. We believe we have found that in the use of role-playing games.
With “El Juego de la Vida”, we have endeavored to use a transactional modality of learning that depends on interaction with narrative situations and with other peer student players. This transactional modality gives the student a sense of agency in their inquiry and allows for student players to bring their own knowledge to forming solutions for their characters in their pursuit of socio-economic success. Problems are posed in the form of situations that must be resolved, either through direct role-play interactions, or through the manipulation of game mechanic which use as currency rewards from role-play interactions. There are no ‘right’ answers to the situations posed, but certain outcomes may carry with them different consequences, some more desirable and effective in promoting success than others. In this way, “learners work together to create curriculum” as “a shared process of teachers and students working together through negotiation” (Short & Burke, 1991).
Games, Engagement and Motivation
One main issue with traditional, transmissive-based top-down educational methodologies, is the potential for the learner to feel disconnected and disenfranchised from the learning process. If a learner does not feel connected to the learning process, and does not have an intrinsic desire to learn about the topics and questions about which are being inquired, this can lead to a subsequent decrease in engagement and motivation on the part of the learner. For education to remain engaging, it needs to respect the agency and perspective of the learner as at least an equal to the ‘instructor’. After all, “education is what happens to other persons, not what comes out of the mouth of the educator. You have to posit trust in the learner in spite of the fact that the people you’re dealing with may not, on the surface, seem to merit that trust” (Horton, 1990).
One identified way to increase engagement for learners is to use games and gamification techniques to change the relationship between learners and the learning process from one of top-down lecture and instruction-driven learning, to one that incorporates elements of play and that increases the sense of agency and efficacy on the part of the learner in the process of learning.
Both James Paul Gee (2003) and Jane McGonigal (2011) have spoken extensively on the benefits of games as educational modalities. Gee lists 36 principles of learning in good video games which he declares are close to what he believes are the best theories of learning in cognitive science, which stress the importance of active inquiry and deep conceptual understanding. He states these theories of learning that can be found in good video games “fit better with the modern high-tech, global world that today’s children and teenagers liv in than do the theories and practices of learning that they see in school” (Gee, 2003). I have compared his 36 learning principles to what can be found in “El Juego de la Vida”, as well as other role-playing games, and most of them (I found at least 23 solid correlations) still apply. If a technological component were integrated into the overall game play, most of the other 13 would be easily added to that list. The analysis of that, would unfortunately extend beyond the scope of this paper.
McGonical (2011) suggests that “there’s something essentially unique about the way games structure experience…all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.” To her, the goal is “the specific outcome that players will work to achieve”, which “provides players with a sense of purpose.” The rules “place limitations on how players can achieve the goal” and they “unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking”. The feedback system “tells players how close they are to achieving the goal” and “serves as a promise to the players that the goal is definitely achievable” and it “provides motivation to keep playing.” Lastly, voluntary participation “requires that everyone who is playing the game knowingly and willingly accepts the goal, the rules, and the feedback.” She tells us that “knowingness establishes common ground for multiple people to play together” and the freedom to enter or leave a game at will “ensures that intentionally stressful and challenging work is experienced as safe and pleasurable activity” (McGonical, 2011).
“El Juego de la Vida” creates a learning environment that places the individual agency of the player as their character in the center of the activity, allowing students as players to control the actions and destiny of their characters while pursuing their character’s career and life goals. Students are learning information and producing artifacts not merely as assignments but as means to the ends of promoting their character’s success in advancing their careers and lifestyles, and in a contextualized environment that emulates real-life situations. The game mechanics and rules are structures that allow students to both make plans for reaching their goals, and provide a framework against they might create creative, divergent possible solutions. Activities in class, such as group role-plays, are performed in character and are rewarded with game-related currency (Vida Points) that may be used in the process of advancing a character’s skills and abilities. These in-game rewards act as a partial feedback system on their performance, as does updating their character sheets and shared class artifacts such as progress charts. The narrative also itself changes to reinforce as a feedback system their relative success and setbacks. The one place where the game curriculum has some difficulty meeting McGonigal’s game criterions is the voluntary participation. While the class is in a sense required to play the game, a sense of comparative choice could be given to the class between a game-based education modality and one of traditional textbook learning; given the choice (and when our pilot class was asked about it), they will in most cases choose to play the game.
Increasing the sense of intrinsic rewards can help with engagement and motivation, and McGonigal has given four basic categories in which these rewards fall. First, there is satisfying work, or “being immersed in clearly defined, demanding activities that allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts.” She tells us that “satisfying work…starts with…a clear goal and actionable next steps” (McGonigal, 2011) Our game curriculum has numerous tasks, role-plays, and routes to achievement that players can complete with their characters that would qualify as satisfying work within the framework of the game. Writing a resume, getting an interview and a job, completing a college degree, paying off a loan, or buying a new car are all achievements that can happen within the context of the game and all add to the success of the character.
Second, being successful, or “to feel powerful in our own lives and show off to others what we’re good at” – as student players play the game, and as their characters become more successful, not only do they feel that success within the game, but consequently many of those skills transfer to their real-world analog. The student player becomes more proficient in the activities required for their character to succeed. The knowledge they create is connected in their minds to contextualized situations and will aid in recall in their everyday life. Filling out a job application, creating a resume, applying for college, or balancing a checkbook are all skills that students may be required to perform in their real lives. Further, McGonical reminds us that “games eliminate our fear of failure and improve our chances of success” (McGonigal, 2011). through our low-stakes practice of high-stakes situations. Playing our game will make the life it emulates more likely of being successful in the students’ own lives.
Third, social connection, or “spending time with the people we care about.” McGonigal tells us that “we want to share experiences and build bonds… by doing things that matter together.” She goes on to state that “games build stronger bonds and lead to more active social networks, and generate prosocial emotions”, or “feel-good emotions that are directed towards others.” And she suggests that these are “crucial to our long-term happiness because they help create lasting social bonds” (McGonigal, 2011). Our game, due to its role-play nature, fosters connections between characters as well as players, and students not only can connect between one another as their characters, but simultaneously are playing the game together with one another. Their characters grow closer, as do they as players.
Finally, McGonical lists the fourth and probably the most important, elusive category of intrinsic reward, meaning. This is “the chance to be a part of something larger than ourselves” (McGonigal, 2011) .
McGonical gives a longer quote explaining meaning:
“Meaning is the feeling that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. It’s the belief that our actions matter beyond our own individual lives. When something is meaningful, it has significance and worth not just to ourselves, or even to our closest friends and family, but to a much larger group: to a community, an organization, or even the entire human species.” (McGonigal, 2011)
At first, this feels not only daunting, but beyond the scope of our game. What meaning could playing a simulation of real life, learning Spanish in the workplace possibly have? McGonical goes on:
“The single best way to add meaning to our lives is to connect our daily actions to something bigger than ourselves – and the bigger the better”, and “to experience real meaning, we don’t have to contribute something of real value. We just have to be given the opportunity to contribute at all.”
Perhaps there is a route to this last sort of intrinsic motivation in our game. Our players are learning real skills through the activities of their characters that are transferring to themselves as people. When their character learns how to create a resume in Spanish, this is something not only the character learns, but so do they. All the skills that the players are learning through the activities which promote their character’s success are skills that they can employ not only for themselves, but for others as well. One possibility is to create an extension to the game, which involves having students volunteer time in their community as bilingual assistants to non-English speaking members of their community. The students can actively use the skills they’ve learned in the game to help their community members seek and reach the same criterion of success that their characters have achieved.
Role-play and Simulation
Role-play and simulation are modalities that have been used in education for a long time, and much has been written to their support. Instead of running the learning in the classroom from a transmissive top-down model, role-play allows the learning to occupy a space of possibility, allowing the learners to direct the action and focus of the learning through their personal investigations and interactions with the narrative of the scenario presented.
Role-playing games are by their nature a social endeavor, simulating life as lived and posing situations and problems that are naturalized and contextualized within a social context. Short & Burke, in Creating Curriculum (Short & Burke, 1991), pose a model of ‘the natural learner’, who is learning constantly through life experience, and through an experience that is ultimately social. The Natural Learner is driven by curiosity, intentionality, and sociability. Role-playing games allow a student, through the actions of their character, to follow their own curiosity within the context and framework of the presented narrative; there is no specific set ‘correct’ answer or way to interact in the narrative, only possible consequences of your actions. If a student wishes to pursue a divergent theme or course of action, there is a low-stakes environment in role-playing games for which they may pursue actions that might prove problematic in the ‘real world’. It is ultimately the student player’s choice as to which course of action he or she decides for their character in any given situation or scenario, and this agency allows the student to possess a sense of responsibility for their actions and their learning path. And, of course, role-playing games are by their very nature a social activity; no only do role-playing games allow us to interact in relationship to one another, both with other players and with the game master / education facilitator, but in our curriculum, student players have the advantage of witnessing others role-play their own distinct situations and learn from others in the process of active learning. To quote Short and Burke, they can “borrow others’ experiences and understanding” to lend greater “flexibility to their own personal worlds” (Short & Burke, 1991).
Bobbit, in Scientific Method in Curriculum-Making (Bobbit, 1918) and How to Make a Curriculum (Bobbot, 1924) make the case that we should study the life of adults to build our curriculum. While he is driven by the idea that “education is primarily for adult life, not for child life” as a preparatory exercise, and with this I disagree, as education must be relevant to the learner as it is being learned or they again run the risk of being alienated and disenfranchised from the educational experience, there is a way in which role-playing games can get you both immediate relevance for a child in the playing of the game, and a practice of future life as an adult through the development of game curriculum that simulates the issues, problems and narratives of adult living.
Bobbit makes an argument, and I think correctly, that the complexity of life in its entirety precludes a comprehensive scientific survey of the life of adults for the means of education, I do think it is possible, through focused scenarios around specific adult roles, such as the roles of ‘employee’, ‘job seeker’, ‘college student’, and the like, which can give us a rich field of topics for imaginative inquiry. In exploring with student-learners the possibilities of adult life through role-play, students have immediate access to imaginative interchange with the possibilities that might influence their present educational interests as well as their future educational path. In this way, the possible future is brought into the present relevance for the student learner. Adler, in The Same Course of Study for All (Adler, 1982) tells us, in regards to understanding literature and theater, “the best way to understand a play is to act in it” – I contend, that in the same vein, the best way to understand life and the different possibilities of being, is to role-play those lives and modes of being.
While playing a game with a character in scenarios based on the experiences of the possible future, and seeking success for their character in the game, players can investigate the complexities of adult life in a low-stakes environment. Divergent pathways allow for exploration into situations that might be considered ill-advised or even taboo; what is learned may be rejected or integrated into the student learner’s identity without risking personal success or integrity. Tyler, in Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Tyler, 1949) states an argument for the study of contemporary life as it relates to the transfer of training. He states that studies of transfer of training indicate that “the student was much more likely to apply his learning when he recognized the similarity between the situations encountered in life and the situations in which the learning took place.” Fortunately, “El Juego de la Vida” creates learning situations that very closely map to their real-life analogs. Players may practice at the skills they will be using in life, without the danger of making poor choices affecting their real-life standing. Tyler, in the same work, cites literature as being a low-risk exploration where a learner might “explore vicariously kinds of situations which are too dangerous, too fraught with consequences for [the learner] to explore fully in reality” (Tyler, 1949) – In our game curriculum, learners are given the opportunity to act out the roles of the main characters in a narrative they weave with one another and with the direction of the game administrators. It is, indeed, literature brought to life.
Constructivism and Discovery-Based Learning
I am a strong believer in the constructivist model of the creation of knowledge, and firmly believe we build our network of knowledge piece by piece, one interconnected with another, over time, and through our experiences. Facts memorized in isolation do not have longevity in the mind, and tend to drift into obscurity after the test is given and the grade received. While this is true in many fields of knowing, I imagine this to be even more the case with learning a foreign language. Grammar and vocabulary build upon one another, and fluency is an additive process. By providing a context of learning that links language fluency with contextual use not only allows the language to be assimilated in a more natural and easier to recall fashion, but also serves to connect the context itself more deeply in the minds knowledge network when the language is called upon to be used in those contexts.
“El Juego de la Vida”, in using a role-playing game model, exemplifies constructivist learning as well as discovery learning; the student players begin their adventure with their characters fresh out of high school – in a position not so very different from the students playing the game, and not given any more information than what they themselves bring to the game through their own lives’ contexts. The characters are created with qualities that might insight some inquiry on the part of the students to understand. “What is it like to be of a different gender than their own?”, “What is it like to be Muslim?” — such questions provoke a beginning of inquiry, in as much as the players must have a full understanding of their character’s motivations to properly act from their perspective. This exploration also promotes inquiry into issues of multiculturalism, discrimination, and other related issues.
As the characters develop along their path, from first jobs, to first resumes and cover letters, interviews, job performance reviews, etc., their character’s personal experience joins learned knowledge to previous experience. As the character encounters chance issues in their lives, they are faced with new problems to solve, and integrate the solutions of these problems into the narrative of their characters, as well as into the network of their knowledge.
Much of the activity in the game is between the characters that the students play, and the game facilitator stands mostly to the side. As Horton suggests, in Islands of Decency (Horton, 1990), “Education is what happens to other persons, not what comes out of the mouth of the educator.” By his suggestion, our curriculum posits trust in our learners, in allowing them to pursue their own narratives, no matter how divergent they might become, and by empowering them to act as peer assessors of one another’s work and progress. We act as “gardeners” of the game, adding fertilizer where we want to encourage growth (in the form of chance cards and circumstances, as well as in the determination of the themes of our role-play scenarios), and pulling weeds when they threaten to choke out the growth that we wish to encourage (such as by bringing divergent narratives back towards the goals of our game). I agree with Horton when he states “Popular education should give people experience in making decisions” (Horton, 1990), and that’s exactly what our role-playing game curriculum is designed to do.
Divergent Thinking, Open-Ended Solutions and 21st-Century Skills
One of the major benefits of using a role-playing-game-based curriculum is that the narrative may set up the directionality of the learning experiences we intend our student players to enact, but we as game facilitators do not control the reigns of the conversations had by the players as their characters, nor of the actions they perform. More often than might feel comfortable for an educator attempting to follow a pre-established curriculum richly packed with the designs for desired learning experiences, the interactions by players as their characters can take a scene or a situation off the rails and into unplanned territory, and the players may end up engaging in learning experiences outside of the parameters originally designed into the narrative.
Divergent thinking, a concept and term coined by J.P. Guilford (1956), is generative of creative ideas through exploring many possible solutions, and reinforces one of the “21st-century skills” cited by the Framework for 21st Century Learning, along with critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. In fact, tabletop role-playing games have been cited to contribute not only to divergent thinking(Dyson, Chang, Chen, Hsiung, Tseng, & Chang, 2015), but they reinforce most of the “21st Century Skills”, such as: critical thinking (solving problems and puzzles, analyzing a situation and acting on discovered information), communication (role-play is intrinsically about communication), collaboration (problems are solved in a group context), and depending on the themes of the role-playing games and the design of the content, they can teach key subjects and life and career skills. “El Juego de la Vida” by design provides opportunities for learning and practicing many life and career skills, as well as world languages, and basic mathematics and economics.
The structure of “El Juego de la Vida” lay on the border between Eisner’s “staircase” and “spiderweb” model of curriculum development (Eisner, 2001); while some skills are required to build upon one another, the narrative style that allows for divergent thinking and solutions is a spiderweb of related situations, scenarios, and encounters that can be deepened over time as the game is played, and what is learned through each divergent pathway taken by student players is re-incorporated into the game as a whole.
Education as Enacting Social Change
Henry Giroux, in Critical Pedagogy and the Postmodern Divide (Giroux, 2004), states that “it seems imperative that educators revitalize the struggles to create conditions in which learning would be linked to social change in a wide variety of social sites, and pedagogy would take on the task of regenerating both a renewed sense of social and political agency and a critical subversion of dominant power itself. Under such circumstances, agency becomes the site through which power is not transcended but reworked, replayed, and restaged in productive ways” (Giroux, 2004) While a single piece of curriculum can only do limited work in the arena of social change, “El Juego de la Vida” has the potential to uncover inequality in the power relations around work and school, and through its role-play methodology and game-based goals of personal success, questions regarding these inequalities have a high potential of being reflected upon by the students, and explored through their role-play. As the students work towards their own personal success, they will begin to question issues of discrimination in the workplace that they either witness or suffer. Perhaps through their role-play, they may even find plausible alternative solutions that help them envision a world with a different power relation, or one that is modified towards greater equality.
“El Juego de la Vida”, as most role-playing games, provides an opportunity for its players to step into the shoes of another person’s perspective, and to make decisions based on that perspective which may differ greatly from one’s own. In other words, merely through participation, we are fostering the capacity for empathy in our student players. Short and Burke, in Learning as a Social Process (Short & Burke, 1991), suggest that “our ability to empathize with others provides our only opportunity to stand outside ourselves and observe who we are and what we are doing. These socially provided observation points lend flexibility to our personal worlds. They create choices that would not be available to us if we were isolated from others. We have potentials for learning that would never be realized without these social relationships.” Both through group role-play, and through witnessing others in their own role-plays, student players have excellent opportunities to practice and witness decisions made from perspectives and histories alternate to their own, and in doing so gain skills in empathy that not only have the potential for promoting social change through a broadened understanding, but also create a greater set of possibilities in understanding of their own perspectives.
Multi-Faceted Assessment Methodology
Tyler, in Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Tyler, 1949), puts forth “if an educational program is to be planned and if efforts for continued improvement are to be made, it is very necessary to have some conception of the goals that are being aimed at. These educational objectives become the criteria by which materials are selected, content is outlined, instructional procedures are developed and tests and examinations are prepared.”
While I agree with this in sentiment, I also believe that the objectives can also be broad and can be expanded upon as the educational program is delivered, and the curriculum expands to include that which is experienced, as well as that which is planned. Insights can be made along the way that subsequently get integrated into the intentional learning objectives and content of the curriculum. What is important, when defining your educational goals, and judging the efficacy of your curriculum, is robust and broad-based assessment.
Short and Burke (Short & Burke, 1991) provide a useful matrix for curriculum evaluation and assessment in Learning-Centered Curriculum that crosses process and perspective in a nine-way grid, comparing the processes of intent, engagement, and artifact with the perspectives of self, collaborative others, and society that has been adopted as the basic structure of the assessment program used in “El Juego de la Vida”. This assessment matrix not only gives educators a robust set of data from which to determine evaluative and summative assessments of students’ progress towards their learning objectives, but it gives students their own strong measure of their progress as they proceed, provides a strong set of materials from which to prepare for any required summative assessments from the society/artifact quadrant of the matrix, and provides rich data from which to continually improve and extend the curriculum of this game.
Potential Weaknesses of the Curriculum and Places for Improvement
The major weaknesses I can see in “El Juego de la Vida” are in maintaining the feeling of voluntary participation in a classroom setting, and balancing between the game mechanics simulating real-life tasks and providing a play experience that is intuitive for the players. I believe that both problems could be addressed through the incorporation of online components to the game.
Addressing the latter issue first, most of the mechanics that require the most amount of bookkeeping and mathematics can be transferred to a combination of online tools such as spreadsheets, scheduling software applications, and the like, and a centralized learning management system that could hold interfaces to character-related data, career information, and more individualized encounters. Not only would the use of online components be easier to manage and less tedious, but they would more closely mimic the sorts of tools a person would use today in their own lives. There are options to create non-electronic versions (bank books, scheduling books, etc.), but realistically those are skills that students today will not need in the 21st century, and only serve to create more paper waste. Some physical artifacts, such as dice, posters, cards, etc. can add to the fun element of the game, and might be optional. My biggest issue with any physical items is that it limits expansion and growth of the game for participants to published revisions, or conversely to the creativity and time available to the instructors that administer the game. Also, having the system in a learning management system allows for future extensions into other foreign languages a far easier task to employ and deliver.
The former issue of students feeling their participation is voluntarily might just be a function of including enough choice in their options to make the game feel expansive and fun. A classroom might also choose to provide a shallow or deep participation, so that those that wish to opt out have a choice to play at a far shallow level, maybe participating in the role-plays as non-player characters, and creating artifacts but not advancing a character through the plot line. I’m less inclined to this solution, however, and would rather work on increasing elements of enjoyment than to give students an escape valve on a process that can be quite gratifying, but perhaps intimidating initially.
Conclusion
“El Juego de la Vida” is the first game of its kind that I have created, using a role-play methodology to teach foreign language and life skills, but it will not be my last. The potential for engagement and learning are stronger in my eyes than what can be provided in a more traditional vocational or foreign language classroom. Students preserve agency, practice empathy, actively set goals and work towards their fulfillment, and tell a narrative story in a collaborative setting with their classmates as well as their instructors. Divergent thinking is encouraged, and students have a real opportunity to explore issues of identity, ethics, morality, economics, and the like in a low-stakes environment not available in their everyday lives. While this game is still a prototype in development, I see great things for its future, and other game-based curriculum designed in its likeness.
References
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking#cite_note-1
http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework
http://casagrandehighschool.weebly.com/coursescourse-descriptions.html