Today I’m running an online workshop on reflective bookmaking with long-time collaborator Sarah Williamson. In preparation for that here some instructions on how to make simple book structures…
Really this is a Work in Progress post, I will add more detail to this post at some point, but don’t have the time this morning 😉
How to make a Beak Book
Quite a few things happened this last months, and one of my favourites was finally doing another in-person workshop. We were just a small group made up of PhD students of a number of disciplines, and after playing some games, chatting about their design and how they tell stories, and some light refreshments, some very cool board games were prototyped during the day. Their subjects ranged from subject specific (finding a visual way to explore the PhD topics) to PhD mechanics (reflecting on methodologies, as well as mapping the individual PhD journeys).
According to feedback “it helped me to understand that your research can go “beyond” the traditional academia and reach wider publics” and overall was described as an “enjoyable day.” I can’t wait to do more!
But… no matter how nice it is to spend a day together in person, it always feels rushed. (Admittedly not as rushed as when I run a very short version in 90 minutes…) Which is why I am delighted that this year in June I am also offering an online version that is spread over a week hosted by Methods@Manchester Summer School. You might remember that I tested this with some folks some time back, and we got some excellent results. While we won’t be meeting and you’ll have to organise your own snacks, we will be meeting online twice a day – to discuss next steps and then to discuss and reflect on progress – and participants will be able to take a bit more time to reflect and work on their prototype while off-line (I’ll be on hand to support virtually, of course). I think this will be the only online version I will do in a while, so take the chance if you don’t think you can come to one of the in-person ones (or if you just appreciate being able to sleep on the next stage). For more details check https://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/connect/events/summer-school/
Designing learning opportunities (also known as planning teaching) can be a tricky business. And it is often all too easy to focus on the content of a session, module, year or course, rather than on the people who we actually want to go on the learning journey.
If you have followed me to my Academic Afternoon Tea (quite some time ago now), you will know that I have been toying with the Hero’s Journey (a concept in scriptwriting) as a template (you can remind yourself in this post). But you might not know that I found Robert Farmer, learning developer at the University of Northampton, a likeminded colleague and that we have been working on this for a while now, culminating in a website that breaks the learning journey into equivalents of the Hero’s Journey and suggests some diagnostic questions that can help us consider these stages when designing student-centred sessions. You can access this website here (it also has a great resources page if you are hungry for more research in this area).
We had been planning to take this to the ALDinHE conference in 2020, and had planned an exciting journey for the conference delegates themselves – part reflective walk, part treasure hunt around the Waterside campus of the University of Northampton, that was to trace the stages by making links to the built environment, with hidden passwords and puzzles that were to unlock the diagnostic questions on the website and would culminate in discovering the location of an in-person discussion on the subject. Alas, it was not meant to be, because the conference that year was, of course, cancelled due to Covid-19. It felt like while we hadn’t refused the call, we were refused an adventure!
This year the conference went ahead, albeit in a virtual format. Which, of course, had a huge effect on our initially planned ‘wildcard’ session, because how to do a reflective walk within an hour session in people’s own homes? So we had to re-plan this from scratch. And we wanted to make sure we didn’t just focus on the content, but also on the participant’s experience. Could we send them all on their own little adventure, while also managing to tell them how we would map the student journey onto the Hero’s journey? In the end we went for a hybrid, telling our audience about the stages first, and then sending them on a little scavenger hunt around their homes with the brief to find objects and images that somehow represent parts of the adventure of learning. And we got some wonderful objects, pictures and stories back! I believe a great help for the success of the session were the beautiful illustrations we had commissioned from Amy Rose and Adam Watkins, two of my final year students, that did a great job at making the links between a traditional hero (armour, sword, dragon, etc.) and a student (library, whiteboard, mortar board).
We are now trying to figure out where to take this next. At a time when learning developers will be called on to review and re-plan sessions of all shapes and sizes, to decide how much it is appropriate to go back to the old normal or what of the online delivery aspects would be useful to keep, we probably all could do with taking a critical look at the teaching we have planned for September 2021. So this might be a good time to take this project further. We could see an in-person workshop (maybe half day?) that explores the structure and archetypes within the Hero’s Journey as mapped onto the learning journey. Or an on-line course that delves more into the stages and diagnostic questions, either stand-alone or run over 12 short sessions.
What do you think? Would one of these be interesting? Or a different format altogether? Please let us know in the comments!
In spring I was asked by Maarten Koeners, organiser of the Playful University Club, whether I would deliver my ‘Make Your Own Research Boardgame’ workshop online. And I have to admit that my initial, not really thinking about it response to this request was ‘No’ – I really enjoy being in the room, chatting with people about their process and ideas, suggesting adjustments, and to see people getting inspired by each other’s work. But then I was thinking about this some more, and decided to approach this from the regenring perspective – apart from all the things that the workshop (and myself) would potentially lose in an online format, were there things that it could gain? And there were two things that I always thought were unsatisfactory about the face-to-face workshop: that it has to follow a prescribed route, and that there is not enough time to really think about the different stages. I wondered whether I could come up with a format that could address these issues.
To explain, the workshop follows a ‘method’ that I have come up with for people (well, really this is targeted at academics) to take their research (either the content or the process – or possibly both) and to develop it in/as a board game format. Initially I had thought of this as focusing on an illustration that could be used as an academic poster using the board game as a visual analogy of the process. However, I have learned that a lot of people who have taken the workshop, have been really interested in exploring game mechanics to build a play experience that allows players to experience parts of their research in some way. In my ‘method’ I have identified four stages that participants should go through, but three of these don’t have to be done in a particular order. When I do the workshop in person, though (especially if it’s a short one, so up to a half day), it is easier to prescribe an order for these, so that everybody can do them at the same time. Otherwise it just gets too messy and confusing for people. But if I were offering stand-alone videos for each stage, then everybody could go through these stages in the order they prefer! So this would solve the problem of the prescribed route.
The issue of time is something that could also be addressed in an online format – if these are stand-alone videos, everybody can take as much time as they like. But what about having not stand-alone videos, but guided sessions instead? This could also allow more time, because instead of cramming all the time we have together into consecutive hours, say 5, I could carve these up into 5 separate sessions, with me delivering for half an hour, and then giving participants a day to find another half hour to individually work on their own projects. While they wouldn’t have to devote more time to it (although they could), this would allow people to have more time to ‘digest’ and reflect on each stage, rather than the “you now have 30 minutes to complete this before we move on” pressure that is going on in the workshop. So this would allow people to spend more time on it – or maybe just spend their time on it in a smarter way.
I decided to play with these two ideas a bit more, calling them the ‘basic’ version and the ‘intensive’ version.
The basic version would mean participants get access to videos, but not much else. They can go through the three stages in any order they like, and devote as little or much time to it as suits them. Because it would be stand-alone this would work best for people who are organised and self-motivating.
The intensive version would mean that participants sign up for a week long workshop, that is delivered as a little chunk each day. Each session ends with a task (completing a specific stage), and then the next session starts with a review of the work that has been done by everybody. This would mean that the group and scheduled sessions can work to motivate the participants, and because there is interaction between them, people will get varied feedback on their progress and might inspire each other.
Not bad as concepts for online versions of this workshop, I thought. I talked with Maarten about it, and he agreed that either of these might work, and he suggested the Playful University group to ask for volunteers to test the formats.
And this is how I recently spent two weeks testing the intensive format with seven volunteers. Two weeks, you ask… yes, because when we got to Thursday (when I talked about the putting it together stage), it was clear that people wanted a bit more time to develop their prototypes, so we took the joint decision to move our last session back a week.
This was not the only useful thing that I learnt…
Overall this was a very successful experiment. Clearly there are things I want to change/tweak before taking the next step and offering either (or both) versions for sale, but I’m really happy with our week (and a bit), and we are planning another meet-up later in the year to see how prototypes have developed and maybe playtest with each other.
And some really amazing game prototypes were made, so this is definitely something that I want to pursue further, because it seems that an online version of this workshop does work!
Usually when I develop new sessions it is to address a specific need in my practice, but today I want to tell you about what happened when I came across an idea I immediately wanted to try out, but initially couldn’t really fit into what I do…
The Virtual Escape Room Idea
Experience Design is one of the things I am interested in and do research on. I now realise it was a large part of my Masters thesis, although back then I didn’t know that’s that what it was called. And creating learning opportunities, which is my job, is in a way creating experiences for students/learners/participants/add-your-own-preferred-term-here. No wonder I am fascinated by Escape Rooms and have played a few. I have analysed what works and what doesn’t. So when I came across a tweet by Emma Thirkell offering guidance on how to build a virtual escape room via Microsoft One Note, I was immediately intrigued and messaged her to get my hands on this. (You can find her write-ups of her work on this here and here. And if you follow her on Twitter @EmmaThirkell and ask nicely, she’ll probably send you the guidance she wrote, too.)
Added to my own fascination was the fact that we were in lockdown and there was no telling to what extent we would be able to teach on campus for the foreseeable future, so developing my own virtual escape room would be a fun little CPD project for me to do, which could be used for the students once they came back.
There were really only two issues with this: I don’t get on with Microsoft One Note – which is a problem if this is the infrastructure you are building this on. However, I do really like the Class Notebook function in MS Teams, and that is basically One Note linked in, so doing a bit of work on this was probably a good idea and would help me develop my skills in this area. However, the second issue was more problematic – it seemed to me that the most basic form of a virtual escape room (and I did play some of the ones that are around for free as research) is based on a multiple choice test. I don’t really have anything to test that way… I currently teach Animation Studies. My classes don’t end in exams, they end in students making an argument in form of an essay or other genre of their choice. Could I make them memorise dates and similar? Sure, but I don’t think that is the point. I’d much rather they start thinking about the issues within animation, and then they will hopefully have the skills to let those thinking skills develop their animation practice. Now there probably is a way to develop a virtual escape room based on Animation Studies, but I was looking for something straight forward, because I was trying to learn how to design one by doing. So I needed a subject area/collection of topics that a) were somewhat related to my teaching, so I could actually use this for my students; and b) I knew at least something about, so asking technical details about animation processes and the pipeline, for example, were out.
I thought back to one of my areas of expertise, study skills, and wondered whether maybe the library might be able to provide a solution.
Enter the Library
My students need to use the library, and, to be honest, this is a weak point for most of them. (Imagine my shock when a student recently asked me what I meant by telling her to do a search on “the library page” – I meant the Staffordshire University Library Website… but maybe I need to be clearer in spelling things out!) So a fun way that reminds them of the stuff we covered in class would be great. I got in touch with some of the nice folk I know in my library to check whether they already had a virtual escape room, and if not, whether they would be up for helping me put one together. Turns out there hadn’t and yes, they were indeed up for it, so off we went on our little adventure.
Starting Points
Just as with any experience design, it is important that you figure out your audience and objectives before you start designing in earnest.
Starting with these objectives we set out to brainstorm the different areas we wanted to include. By that we were guided on information we wished the students had retained from our teaching, as well as frequently asked questions and frequently made mistakes.
The first prototype (a terrible first draft)
We wanted to come up with about 10 different topics to make 10 sections or ‘rooms’ within the Virtual Escape Room, the last of which we wanted to be subject specific. As Animation is my subject area, we used this as the subject to construct the example room.
Then we broke these down into possible questions we could ask, or started with the information we wanted to test for, for example, do the students know the best way to search for a physical book is different than searching a database?
Our first version of the Escape Room was very basic and very cumbersome for a number of reasons:
Test playing this through by ourselves, i.e. looking at the sections each of us hadn’t written themselves and giving each other feedback on this, really helped to identify these sticking points, and we decided to simplify it before going public with it.
Theming
What I was particularly concerned with was a story to frame this. I didn’t want this to be a random exercise that asked library related questions, because in that case, you might as well just write a multiple choice test. I thought we should try to come up with a compelling story that would provide some sort of motivation for the players and an (albeit made up) reason for why they are being asked all these questions. With the focus of the online library, I came up with some vaguely cyber-security related framing, i.e. the library has been hacked/invaded by a mutant algorithm and the players are asked to reset it step-by-step to make it usable again for themselves and other students. My team liked the idea, so I wrote little introductions to each room that try to keep this theme alive, although they are basically just techno-babble. At some point we were wondering whether we could make it look like this is a conversation that uses the live chat function of the library page, but that seemed to much detail to get into. Maybe once we have good feedback on the whole thing this is something to do to pretty it up a bit.
Testing the refined prototype
The next step was to put this out there, and ask people from outside of the team to test it. We invited some library professionals, as well as lecturer colleagues, one of my experience design friends, and I also tried to get some students on board as testers. We had some feedback, but not as much as I would have liked, and simplified instructions a bit more based on that feedback. (I can recommend having somebody screenshare with you while they are playing and talking you through their thinking, that was a very valuable exercise for me!)
And this is the stage we are currently at. We have decided to make it available to the wider university now, but make it clear it is still in the testing phase. Keep your fingers crossed!
(and yes, I will update you about this at some stage ;-))
I’m very excited to have been invited to be the guest speaker at this month’s Playful University Monthly Meeting on 17th September, starting at 12 (BST), to talk about my approach to teaching and Tactile Academia in general.
And the even better news is that this is open for free to anybody via zoom, so if you ever wanted to find out more about my work, all you need to do is sign up and log on. Expect some chat about making board games to disseminate research process and results, to get a closer look at some of the objects I have made as part of my tactile academia journey and to explore some of the everyday analogies from Writing Essays by Pictures – and beyond. Have paper and some pens (lots of colours are best!) ready to join in some simple drawing fun!
There might even be an exciting announcement regarding the future of the board game workshop…
For more details and to sign up, check the Eventbrite page for this event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/playful-university-monthly-meeting-alke-groppel-wegener-tickets-118185260295?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch
My trusty Elastigirl mug
Like Elastigirl on one of my The Incredibles mugs (yes, I have more than one, I teach on an Animation course, they were basically a work expense!), I feel like I am ‘Stretched to my Limits!’ at the moment. Global pandemic, quick pivot to teaching online, learning to use a new virtual learning environment (we seem to be now moving to MS Teams), preparing for more online delivery for next academic year (and possibly beyond), on top of normal marking and grade admin… there is a lot going on. And, ironically, at the same time I (and possibly you, too) am just not stretching enough.
This hit home when a colleague of mine posted a time-lapse video of him working through a morning, where he really didn’t move around enough. So I asked myself, what am I doing? And what can I do more to form better habits of working from home? And – maybe most importantly – how can we as lecturers foster good habits in working from home (and working on a computer) for our students?
Flashback to the online session I facilitated the previous week, which I thought would take about 45 minutes, but that ended up taking more like 2 hours. (…what can I say, they kept me talking…) Where I didn’t schedule a break. Where I didn’t really move around, and didn’t encourage the students to either. Of course they might have, most of them didn’t have their camera on, but to be honest, I doubt it. A horrifying scenario, now that I come to think of it!
Weirdly, when I used to work at/from home before, my habits were quite good (I think, at least). I usually don’t work all day at the computer. I usually follow the basics of the Pomodoro technique, working in 25 minute focused chunks with 5 minute breaks in-between and a longer break after 4. During those breaks I move around, getting more water or making a hot drink. When I have a lot of typing to do, I often work on a standing desk, or at least standing up with my laptop on a box on top of my desk. But none of this had transferred to my teaching, probably because I was so stretched that I focused too much on content, rather than stop and think of mode of delivery.
Of course this is a big issue to tackle and I’m making headway little by little (at least I hope so). But it was time to add a little ‘stretch goal’ by finding a way to include breaks, movement and particularly stretches into scheduled teaching (and hoping it rubs off and allows them to build good habits for the future). Luckily, I knew exactly who to call for advice, as my friend Marina is behind SittingDuck.co which is all about ergonomics when working from home. A real-life Mrs Incredible to the rescue!
Once I told Marina about my idea to somehow get stretches into teaching sessions, she made me three backgrounds that I could use as video chat backgrounds (you can add your own in Teams, or at least unless you’re on a Mac as a colleague informs me), but would that be too distracting? Maybe, I thought, it would make more sense to add them as slides into the deck I wanted to cover for my session – one for before the session starts, one for the break, and one for the end of the session?
And that is what I tried out today: Marina made me three slides
After building them into my slide presentation, I realised that sharing the screen at the beginning with the whole presentation didn’t really work for me, so I instead shared just the image. (After starting the meeting really early, to make sure no student would be there before me…) Just sharing the image also allowed me to continue working in other windows on my computer.
The break image came in the middle of my presentation, which was well-timed. I turned my camera off and muted my mic, but at least one student left their camera on and at some point did move around. They didn’t do the stretches the slide suggested exactly (or not that I saw, I was at some point also away from the computer moving around and topping up my glass of water), but even if they didn’t, they were moving around, and I hope others were too!
The Goodbye slide, I have to admit, I messed up. After covering the content I needed to get through I came out of the presentation to answer questions and mop up concerns the students might have, and then we just said goodbye to one another, without me remembering that there was another stretch I wanted to suggest.
So, a little try-out today, and I have to say that I am really happy with it. The idea, I think is a great one which I definitely want to keep and get my colleagues to also include into their teaching for next term. I’ve sent a call out to my students to see if any of them would be up for helping to custom-make us some stretch images or even animations (as we borrowed images from the internet for the prototype). The how to integrate this logistically (and logically) into the sessions itself, with swapping from application to application and screenshare to on camera is something I’ll still have to work out.
What do you think, worth developing further?
…and if you want to check out Marina’s work, you can find out more here: sittingduck.co (the tag line is ‘For duck’s sake, don’t forget to stretch’ – how hilarious is that?)
Last Friday was finally the day – I got to try out the Academic Afternoon Tea format with some brave adventurers (or maybe just afternoon tea lovers). I’m still working through the feedback, but thought I would post some initial thoughts and feedback before too much time passes.
We met at LEAF Manchester, a cafe that I had selected for their excellent afternoon tea and cosy atmosphere. And they did not disappoint, the staff was super lovely and helpful and food and beverages were delicious. (If I am bringing the Academic Afternoon Tea back to this venue I will have more time for people to engage with their wonderful menu of teas, which we didn’t really have time for this time around.) What slightly put a dampener on spirits (quite literally) was that a lot of people got caught in a heavy rain shower on their way in. Luckily I didn’t so the materials I brought remained dry.
Over the next three hours we made our own nametags, reflected on the role and agency of students and how that matches up to the learning activities we put on (or doesn’t) by making a volvelle (or pinwheel), we wrote Calls to Adventure for our students to follow, drew maps of the Unknown world we invite them into, thought about the people and ‘devices’ they meet – and how those might help and hinder them – and turned these into storydice, and ended by writting ourselves and each other messages to seal into a little bottle to take home with us.
And in between we had declicious food and drink and the opportunity to chat to each other, exchange stories and get inspired by other points of view. We were lucky in that we could use a different space to eat than to make because the cafe was not busy – this worked out really well and I would definitely make this a feature next time. Because the one thing we really needed was a bit more table space for the making – another thing to keep in mind for the future.
Another opportunity that came with moving between different spaces was that it encouraged mingling and re-mingling, which gave people the opportunity to meet more people. In a way this made up for us not doing a round of introductions at the beginning (which I avoided because in my experience that can get really out of hand and eat into the scheduled time), however, the people with dietary requirements remained seated together because of where their food was, which is something to consider in future.
I collected feedback via questionnaires and feedback bunting, here some of my favourite comments:
But I think my absolutely favourite comment was the questionnaire answer to the question of what was their favourite bit that stated “adjusting my thinking about ‘experience’ and ‘student experience’ away from facilities & buildings!” In a way this is exactly what the afternoon was meant to be about, thinking about how to put the students at the heart of their own individual journeys, to reflect on how challenging and transformative that can be – and trying to find ways to facilitate that through experience design, rather than fitting it into an existing context that might not (or only partly) be fit for purpose.
So all in all a successful try-out of the format! I will get on planning some more for the future – is there a particular topic you would want to explore in an event like this? Let me know as a comment!
With less than 2 weeks to go until the inaugural Academic Afternoon Tea, I thought I would share the preparatory (but also completely optional) task I set the people who have signed up, maybe one of you out there who won’t be able to join us would like to join in with this?
(One of the principles of Experience Design as taught by the College of Extraordinary Experiences is Co-Creation, the idea that ‘the group’ contributes to a shared knowledge base and design. This is, of course, also something that has become more and more important in Learning and Teaching, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, for example, as well as inviting the Student Voice into the classroom by making students co-creators.)
As we are meeting for afternoon tea, I have asked participants to think about what aspects ‘lubricate’ our teaching and learning?
In the best regenring tradition, let us try and explain and share these concepts as ‘tasting notes’ of tea blends – the brief descriptions of what a tea tastes like, what its properties are and even how to prepare it.
This probably makes more sense when looking at some examples, so here are two that I came up with:
Whimsicalitea
An often unexpected taste, this is best served in small portions (especially at the beginning, after which it might develop into an acquired taste by the drinkers and could therefore be used more frequently and in larger doses). Very useful to introduce a sense of wonder and playfulness into sessions, it can open up the imagination and the exploring of opportunities.
Insanitea
A strong blend that is related in taste profile to Whimsicalitea, but much more intense. As this is almost hallucination inducing it is imperative to use this in only small doses. However, it is sometimes needed to get people’s thinking off the beaten track.
As you can see, the link to ‘tea’ works quite well if you get hold of a term that in conventional spelling ends in -ty, but you could equally make up a more fancy name for your tea blends, maybe inspired by blends that are out there. Really, I think the most important thing is to reflect on some aspects of teaching and learning that make it special – and have a bit of fun with this.
The ‘menu’ I made for the Academic Afternoon Tea – including some of the submitted tea tasting notes
Here are some that were suggested by participants:
Jovialitea
A fresh taste of cheerfulness that tempts the taste buds and lifts the spirits. (Kath Houston)
Acceptabilitea
An essential, everyday brew that shows willingness to work inclusively and to recognise worth in all students. Best served with an open mind, a kind eye, and a pinch of salt! (Christy Anna Evans)
Joie-de-vivre-tea
A lively brew, made with an attitude that combines passion for your subject, love of your work and a joyous approach to life! (Christy Anna Evans)
Creativitea
Our blending muses know that whilst mood and motivation change throughout the day, a bold wake up cuppa can put the first bounce into the creative leaps and bounds we make later in the day. Whatever blend of creativitea you choose, the taste can be adjusted to creative state with the addition of milk and/or sugar. In need of a creative hit first thing, then go easy on the milk but sprinkle that sugar liberally. Feel your creative juices flow as you drink a cup of liquid toast and honey. Feel sweet enough already? Then forgo the sugar and milk and enjoy an unadulterated cup of warming inspiration. Creativitea: the best start to your day. (Sandie Donnelly)
Pragmatisane
For those moments when it just isn’t happening for you, turn to pragmatisane. Step away from the computer, let the battle go, and fill your cup with zesty lemon, sharp enough to zap any lethargy, blended with warming spicy ginger to comfort and ease any emerging anxiety. Find a chair with a view, put your feet up and sip on pragmatisane. As the ginger relaxes you, the sharp lemon cuts a path through any blockages. You’ll be rested and refreshed in no time. Pragmatisane, because paralysing creative blocks aren’t worth it … (Sandie Donnelly)
My aim is to collect a whole menu full of teaching inspired ‘teas’ and to share this at the Academic Afternoon Tea (and also here on the blog).
If this sounds like fun, please add your own as a comment!
I had so much fun creating the game that I couldn’t put down the marker @mark_carrigan eventually politely took it off me 🙂 The facilitation of the workshop was excellent. Thank you @alkegw & @drkatyvigurs and all others for this inspiring day! (Urszula Plust-Odiase @Ullyodi)
After our workshop on making a Sociological Research Board Game had been so well received at last year’s Undisciplining conference, The Sociological Review asked Katy and myself to do another one – but this time we had the luxury of a full day!
detail from the handout
The venue was another art gallery, this time The Lowry at Salford Quays, and based on feedback from the conference at The Baltic, we had also set some time aside to go on a short tour of the permanent exhibition about Lowry himself during the lunch break.
The bag of board games I brought in
As we had so much more time (the first workshop was 90 minutes long, now we had almost seven hours to play with), we decided to start the day by getting our participants to play some board games. The Games and Visual Effects department at Staffordshire University that I work in has a board game library, so I had easy access to a whole (quite overwhelming) array of different games, of which I selected four more or less at random. Plus I brought in one of my own, the Boardgame Blueprint, as I wanted to then use that as an example when talking about the game design later on.
After playing for about 45 minutes, we had a chat about all the games in turn, with the people who had played the individual games (or were familiar with them) describing the game play a little. We were particularly interested in the way the path was organised, the game mechanics used, and the way the visuals of the game represented (or not) the content of the game. (Pirate’s Cove turned out to be a really interesting example as it was so complicated that everybody basically gave up attempting to play it within the first 10 minutes. Although it is visually stunning, there are so many different aspects that players need to prepare and take into consideration that trying to learn it just for a practice play was not worth the time. A great example of how it is possible to overcomplicate a game – a pitfall we didn’t want to fall into with our prototypes!)
The selection of board games we actually did play worked really well, because we ended up with ones ranging from a very strict path (Boardgame Blueprint – see some of the game action here), one with some options (The Game of Life), one where you are quite flexible (The Master Detective Game) and one where the object of the game is to ‘construct’ the path while playing (Tsuro). A number of basic game mechanics were in play, particularly different ways of triggering chance events (dice, spinner, game cards). There was also an interesting range of how the content was visually represented: The Game of Life, for example, uses visuals of an affluent Western Society and three-dimensional elements that seem a bit gimmicky. The Master Detective Game seems located in Victorian London, but presents a bright watercolour version of this and doesn’t include any grime or shady areas that one could associate with Sherlock Holmes. Tsuro is quite abstract but with an Eastern twist. And the Boardgame Blueprint’s large visual is of an iceberg, which seems not really connected with the subject of researching and writing an essay, although the little images on the individual steps feature related pictures.
We then had about an hour before lunch, and I had thought we would be able to go through the different steps at a fairly fast pace. But this is not how it happened… and I’m not sure why, maybe because we had more time people didn’t want to be rushed? Thinking on our feet, we decided to turn the initial idea of going through the steps – to turn the diagram into a flowchart, consider game mechanics and finally design a visual – together, into me walking participants through this and then letting them work at their own pace. As they had a hand-out that detailed all the steps this wasn’t a problem, and allowed people to be more flexible. And it allowed Katy and myself to spend more time chatting to people and helping in case anybody felt they got stuck.
Participants also were flexible in how long they wanted to take for lunch, so that the lunch break organically flowed over to the afternoon when we had scheduled independent development work on the games. The last half an hour or so a number of people shared what they had been working on – and just like after our first workshop. we were really impressed by how many fascinating game prototypes were created!
Unfortunately we (again) didn’t really have time to do any playtesting. Maybe this is always unrealistic on the same day – so let’s keep this in our backpocket for a week long workshop 😉
Thank you @alkegw and @drkatyvigurs for facilitating and @JennyAThatcher and @mark_carrigan for organising such a brilliant day. Will definitely be using what I learnt in the future. (Catherine Price @CatherineJPrice)
So after this I think…
…starting with playing games is a great idea, because it not only gets people in a playful mood, but also because we then can talk about the different aspects of them (i.e. how is the path organised, what game mechanics are used, what is the visual impact – and is this connected to the content of the game). If there is not time enough to play, maybe it would be useful to talk about some at the beginning, or while going through the three steps? Playing (or thinking about) games could also be set as preparatory ‘homework’.
…as Jon suggested it would be great to have elastic bands to hand so that participants can take home their prototypes more easily after the session. (Actually I already bought an assortment of elastic bands based on this feedback and now just must remember to pack them for the next workshop!)
…the empty playing cards were a great addition to the resource table, particularly for the people who came with the idea of a card game in mind.
…I wonder whether the paper we are currently using is too big. Even when compared to board games that are commercially available the prototype we are producing is on the large side – however, this allows for us to capture small details (easy to do on a small scale if you have a computer for the writing, not so easy if you are working with markers – and I like encouraging people to use markers, because you have to commit to what you are drawing) – and it makes them easier to share in the session.
…it may be too ambitious to try to include play testing in a workshop, especially if people are working on their own individual games – I mean how would you choose which ones get tested and which don’t? (maybe we need to organise a workshop reunion to play test?) However, if working on collaborative games playtesting would be a useful addition.
If you have been to one of these workshops, let me know what you think via a comment!
Tactile Academia 