Over the past couple of weeks I've been re-thinking some of what I want to do in my classroom. This all started in a training with Grant Corser in which we were talking about planning a course based on specific learning outcomes. I've always known this was important, but for some reason in that meeting, I feel like I had some clarity that I've struggled to find until now.
Specifically, I was thinking about my upcoming SPAN 3510 class in which I will be teaching about the history and culture of Spain. I have two main goals for this class:
1) I want students to have a general outline of the history of Spain in their heads.
2) I want students to be able to research a specific time and place and to be able to imagine what it would be like to live there.
For the first objective, I could teach a traditional course, but the second objective seems to require a different approach. I decided early on that I would like for students to blog in the voice of a character that they develop as they research Spain.
That is about as far as I was able to get with this until I met with Todd Petersen. He is the head of the Creativity Center here at SUU and a great sounding board for out-of-the-box thinking. As I spoke to him about my idea, we started brainstorming the idea of turning class into a Dungeons & Dragons style Role Playing Game that I could in part design but that the students could flesh out. Todd then put me in contact with Dallin Bundy, an adjunct English professor and a Dungeon Master. Over the past couple of weeks Dallin has been giving me a crash course in D&D, and I think that this class is going to be great.
Todd Petersen also recommended to me the book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal, which is really helping me to re-think how I approach teaching and how I can leverage my class time and make class better for my students. This an exciting time for me. I feel a lot of great creative energy and I look forward to having a great class next semester.
Finally, yesterday I ran into a friend of mine who is a fantasy writer, Ladd de Winter, and he has begun helping me to generate ideas as well.
I feel like I've got a good team of people helping me, and I think this idea has potential to go somewhere. I've got a few weeks now to figure it all out.