EMERGE Ep. 2: Role Playing in the Classroom with Reacting to the Past Pedagogy
Brief Description:
In this podcast, members of the ASSETT Student Success Innovation Incubator Team and undergraduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder discuss their experiences with the Reacting to the Past (RTTP) pedagogy. RTTP is an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games designed for higher education. Learn about these role-playing games in the classroom, the benefits it could have for your students, and resources available for you though CU Boulder.
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This Episode's Guest Interviewer
This Episode's Hosts
Michaele Ferguson is Associate Professor of Political Science and a President’s Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of Sharing Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2012), co-editor with Lori J. Marso of W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender (Duke University Press, 2007), and co-editor with Andrew Valls of Iris Marion Young: Gender, Justice, and the Politics of Difference (Routledge, forthcoming in 2021). She has written numerous articles on feminist and democratic theory, including most recently “Dead Dogma and the Limits of Feminist Political Imagination: Thinking #Metoo as Consciousness-Raising," forthcoming in 2022 in Theory & Event. She is currently working on a book on feminist political theory, Bandita: Iris Young and the Politics of Writing, Reading, and Citation, and she is co-authoring a role-playing game on the Paris Commune with Mark Carnes. She is the Co-President of the Association for Political Theory and a Consulting Editor for Contemporary Political Theory.
Associate Teaching Professor Catherine Kunce received a Marinus Smith teaching award in 2022 and has published a book on the correspondence between two American nineteenth-century women writers. One writer was engaged to Edgar Poe, an interesting romantic partner, to say the least. Catherine’s first novel won two awards. She also has published on a variety of topics, including Cervantes and Nabokov; Zitkala-Ša (Lakota); Linda Hogan (Chickasaw); Oscar Wilde and Willa Cather; and vaudeville and The Great Gatsby. “Trilobite Tribute,” an excerpt from her latest work, Editing Dad, soon will be published electronically. She loves leading a Global Seminar in Dublin, Ireland, and she has taught for the Program for Writing and Rhetoric for over twenty years. Pleased to have collaborated with RTTP team members David Paradis and Michaele Ferguson, Catherine additionally has been inspired by the guidance and creativity of Jacie Moriyama and Blair Young.
To Catherine, ASSETT is truly one of the greatest assets on the campus.
David Paradis teaches courses on pre-modern Europe, including a variety of topics from the culture of feuding to responses to patriarchy and the prevalence of popular rebellions between 1350 and 1789. Some of the courses he teaches include: "Introduction to British History since 1660," "Gunpowder and War, 1300-1648," "War and Society in Renaissance Europe," and "Medieval Europe." Professor Paradis has been an ASSETT Teaching Fellow and is currently involved in the ASSETT faculty incubator project related to increasing student engagement. Passionate about bringing research into teaching and learning, his classes tend to emphasize active learning strategies and hybrid courses that involve teaching technologies and student interaction in the classroom.
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Episode Transcript
BLAIR: Welcome to the EMERGE podcast series brought to you by the University of Colorado Boulder Arts and Sciences Support of Education Through Technology, or ASSETT Innovation Incubator. The ASSETT Innovation Incubator is a three-year pilot spanning Fall 2019 through Spring 2022 that provides a safe resource space for the Arts and Sciences community to grow their ideas for active teaching and learning with technology. This series will feature conversations with participating faculty, staff, and students on topics ranging from metacognition and well-being, student success, multimodal participatory publishing, and inclusive data science. We hope you enjoy learning about the unique projects and perspectives from our community.
CATHERINE: I now think that Reacting to the Past courses is not just important, but it's vital for students' education…
DAVID: It's great to see a learning methodology that by its very nature encourages people to learn a little science, learn a little international politics, learn a little history...
MICHAELE: We are emotionally engaged in learning, we tend to remember it a lot more strongly, right, because we associate those memories with the emotions...
MATARA: You've just heard from Catherine Kunce, David Paradis, and Michaele Ferguson, three faculty members at the University of Colorado Boulder talking about the Reacting to the Past pedagogy. Reacting to the Past is an active learning strategy that uses role-playing games designed for use in higher education. These games are valuable ways for students to engage with classroom content on a deeper, more personal level. For this episode, we'll hear faculty perspectives from Michaele, Catherine, and David, as well as student perspectives from two undergraduates on Reacting to the Past. At this point, you've heard the term, Reacting to the Past. But what IS this pedagogy? Catherine Kunce, a senior instructor for the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, describes this teaching method.
CATHERINE: Reacting to the Past is an active pedagogy, and it involves role-playing games designed for higher education. Â鶹ŇůÔş are assigned character roles with specific goals and they must communicate, collaborate, and effectively compete to advance their objectives. Class sessions that are run by the students, not by us. Reacting roles and games do not have a fixed script or agenda. While students are obliged to adhere to the philosophical and intellectual beliefs of the historical figures they have been assigned to play, they must devise their own means of expressing those ideas persuasively in papers, speeches, and other public presentations. Â鶹ŇůÔş must also pursue a course of action to try to win the game.
MATARA: We spoke to Michaele Ferguson, an associate professor of political science and a President's Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, about her Reacting experiences in the classroom. As a political theorist, she uses reacting to the past to actively engage students in their learning experience. Through these games, she teaches them that they can create political change and shape history. Let's hear more from Michaele...
MICHAELE: One of the things I've been really excited about with Reacting is that it teaches my students a whole set of skills that I wasn't teaching them before. It teaches my students public speaking skills, right, they have to get up in front of class and give speeches or ask questions or heckle speakers. And for the entire time that we're playing a game, the students are in charge of the classroom, so they're doing a lot of speaking. They're practicing these skills over and over and over again and so even students who are really nervous about public speaking become more comfortable with it. Doesn't mean the nerves go away, right, but they become more comfortable with it because they do it over and over again. Over the course of a Reacting game, it also teaches students leadership skills. Again, they're the ones who are in charge of the class. Nothing is going to happen in the game unless a student is doing it, and so they learn that if they want to achieve their goals—whether in the game or, I hope, in real life—right, that they actually have to take some initiative and make things happen. They're also learning how to persuade other people. They're trying to persuade through their speeches. They're also trying to persuade through negotiations they might be doing on the side through trying to organize a group of people to do a particular event or to vote a particular way in a game, and so it—it's encouraging, a kind of peer-to-peer interaction that again in a typical college classroom you might not ever see. You might be in groups for group work, but that's not the same thing as actually having to try to persuade people that you haven't interacted with much in class, right, of a particular position. And so, in many ways, I think Reacting games are encouraging students to develop a lot of skills that they're going to want to have for the rest of their careers that we're often not teaching them in, again, a typical college class. I also think that Reacting games really teach students resilience, right, they're in a situation where they have no idea how things are gonna turn out. When you walk into your first day of a game there are all these other people who are in character, and you know a little bit about them, but you don't really know what makes them tick or what's gonna what's gonna persuade them to go one way or another. And students have to learn how to keep fighting for the things that they—that their character—wants to fight for in the face of all of this uncertainty about how it's going to turn out, right? And again, that's—that's very much a quality of real life, right, that if you want to achieve a particular goal, right, you've got to work with other people not knowing for sure if they're going to end up being on your side. If you're going to be in agreement, if you're going to be able to maintain a coalition until you actually see it through to the end and you achieve the goals that you've got at the beginning.
MATARA: David Paradis, a senior instructor in medieval England and early modern Europe has played the Copenhagen Summit of 2009 and the trial of Galileo with his students. David, who has an academic focus in social unrest, says Reacting to the Past has revolutionized the way he teaches his material.
DAVID: At this point, I've actually found a connection between the two games that I've played: between the Climate Summit of 2009 and Copenhagen & Galileo. And it seems kind of obvious, I guess, that you know science and the denial of science is common to both of those. And so at this point, I'm actually proposing a course that's focused entirely on opposition to revolutionary ways of thinking about what's going on, or maybe a better way to say it is opposition to systemic change. And I've submitted an Arts & Humanities course proposal—and hopefully it will be approved—where we look at that tendency of people to oppose new ways of thinking about the world and what's going on in the world and see if we can do that over centuries. We'll look at it in the 17th century, we'll look at it in the 19th century, and then we'll look at it in the 21st century, and that should be fun.
MATARA: And he's not the only one for whom Reacting to the Past has had a huge pedagogical impact.
CATHERINE: I came to into the Reacting to the Past cohort because I thought it was important, but I don't believe that anymore. I now think that Reacting to the Past courses are not just important, but it's vital for students' education. Reacting develops cooperation, an understanding of how clashing factions gain prominence, and how members within same faction can leverage rhetorical strategies to achieve their aims, even when faced with vociferous opposition. Most importantly, I believe Reacting to the Past courses allow students to become empathetic in very complicated ways.
MATARA: One of the recurring themes that we've heard during these segments is the potential for Reacting to revolutionize teaching and learning. How might these games encourage students to truly understand the complexities of historical events?
MICHAELE: One of my favorite games is set in Greenwich Village in 1913, and it involves different groups of people—some suffrage activists, some labor activists, some people who are in the art world or literary worlds—who are all radical thinkers, who meet up in a cafe in Greenwich Village and debate the various issues of the day, right? Should women have the vote? Is the best way to achieve progress for women actually through labor organizing and pushing for better conditions for working women? Should we be rethinking gender roles or rethinking the institution of marriage? Should we allow birth control, right? What's wrong with...why is birth control so controversial that the state is throwing people in jail for sharing information about about birth control for women? I really enjoy playing that game in part because it's—it's a really a strong way of showing my students a couple of things about that time period in history that I think they often don't learn about the history of feminism. We often hear that the first wave of feminism was about the vote, and what they get to experience themselves in their characters is how diverse the views were on...on the left right, on the progressive side about what exactly...which should be important for women. They also get to learn about different strategies, different political strategies that activists were using in order to try to create change around gender, around equality for women. So working within existing political institutions to get women the right to vote, organizing in unions in order to change working conditions for women, picketing strikes, organizing pageants and parades, engaging in different forms of direct action that might be more confrontational that would get people to pay attention to these questions—and in particular getting men, since men with the right to vote would have the power to be able to create a lot of changes in this area. So I love that it...it helps my students to understand that the history of feminism—and especially the early history of feminism—is much more complex than they usually think about it as having been. But it also really dramatizes some of the problems within feminism—right, these conflicts over different kinds of strategies, conflicts over the relative importance of gender versus race versus class—that were very much a part of the discussion at the turn of the century. And it's a really effective way of teaching that history because the students, in embodying their characters and getting emotionally involved in the characters, actually are writing the...the memories of that game into their brains in a very different way than they do when they're just sort of in a more typical class just reading about things and talking about things as their 2021 selves. When we are emotionally engaged in learning we tend to remember it a lot more strongly, right, because we associate those memories with the emotions.
MATARA: Now that you've heard from three of our resident reactors, it's time to hear the student perspective. What do they think about this pedagogy, and do they see it as a meaningful way to engage with classroom content?
BRENNA: So I thought those discussions as presentations were really good and great and much more interesting to watch and listen to than a straightforward lecture.
OLIVIA: And additionally, the nature of the game gave students who may have been hesitant to speak up in class before—you know whether that's out of nervousness or something else—the chance to participate in a lower stakes environment.
MATARA: You just heard from Brenna Bythewood and Olivia Bulik - two undergraduate learning assistants in David's reacting classes. The role of the learning assistant is to provide academic learner support to students. Brenna brings you the perspective as both an LA and an observer of reacting in the classroom.
BRENNA: I thought it was a really great way to kind of hear the perspectives of other students, but to hear the perspectives also of other nations, of other organizations filtered through the perspective of the students in this course. I thought it was a really great way to kind of make that information, those perspectives more digestible and make them clearer to me as an audience. For example, I thought the Western Fuel Association was really great in presenting that perspective in a way that I could both understand and kind of see the manipulations that were going on and the faulty science that was happening there. So I thought those discussions, those presentations were really good and great and much more interesting to watch and listen to than a straightforward lecture would be I think. Was also a great way to talk about what can be a really difficult concept to grasp what with a lot of the debate about science and whether the science is accurate. And I found that the presentation of information not just by the students but by the kind of preparatory playbook, the handbook that was provided also for the summit was very helpful in that regard, talking about the ways in which climate change manifests and the policy proposals to help address it in a way that made it very easy for me to understand in ways I hadn't previously.
MATARA: Olivia had the unique opportunity to actively participate in a role and react with a team of students. Let's hear about her perspective as a reactor!
OLIVIA: Â鶹ŇůÔş really enjoyed the game! I was playing the game as a student, and I was on the team with two other students, and those two got really engaged with material and the roles they were given. It was a good break from the chaos of spring semester, especially this spring semester with everything that's been going on and the fact that we didn't have a spring break to, you know, take a step back and breathe. So this game offered them that opportunity to take a step back and do something fun in class for two weeks. Also given the partially remote nature of the class, it was pretty hard for students and for me to get to know each other, but working in those smaller teams really gave all of us the opportunity to get to know each other so much better. And additionally, the nature of the game gave students who may have been hesitant to speak up in class before—you know whether that's out of nervousness or something else—the chance to participate in a lower stakes environment. So yeah it was a fun, sometimes silly, game that let all of us unwind and open up a little bit while still being educational and relevant to the overall theme of the class.
MATARA: Did you know that there are already quite a few games, assignments, and resources developed for faculty to use?
CATHERINE: Faculty will find Reacting to the Past enticing because the course, the role sheets, the vexed issues, and the assignments are already developed for them. ASSETT hosts the Game Changers listserv, we have a Game Changers Community of Practice, and we periodically have guest speakers. We started a library of game books, which I think is very cool, and we've recently been allowed to purchase an institutional membership for one year: Barnard College's Reacting to the Past Consortium. And so, faculty members can go on that site—Barnard College's Reacting to the Past site—and check out some games. Try them out at no cost and also get some deep discounts to attend conferences that will train them, enable them to learn more about this really incredibly wonderful pedagogy.
MATARA: Now that you've heard quite a bit about reacting to the past, you might want to know how to get started! Here's a final bit of advice if you're interested in using reacting in the classroom.
DAVID: My advice to anyone would be play a game with faculty if you can, beforehand. Pick one that works with a course that you want, to fit it into the course, and...and then just dive in and do it and...and give it a try! And you have to have the right course size, you know, you don't want to do it for of course probably over 30 students, and you don't want it to do it with 100. 12...um, you know there are minimums and maximums for the games that are out there, and you have to make sure that you find the game that fits your class size. There are some games that can accommodate a lot of students, but I wouldn't do that for your first time. You got to keep track of the different roles that people have, and their contributions to the game. And there's a...a fair amount of work that you do as a faculty member outside the classroom beforehand, and to encourage people between classes to prepare for their roles, and...and so you have to do some planning up front. But if you do that planning, it's actually super enjoyable during the game itself to watch the students take on these roles and have fun with them!
MATARA: Hopefully these perspectives gave you more of an idea on why Reacting to the Past could be a valuable teaching methodology...but, of course, the best way to determine that is to try one out for yourself! Browse the games available to you at reacting.barnard.edu, linked in the episode description. The website also has a wealth of information on what is involved in a game and advice for how to make this a fruitful experience for you and your students.
BLAIR: Thank you so much for joining us for today's conversation on the EMERGE podcast series, an offering of the University of Colorado Boulder ASSETT Innovation Incubator. If you are curious to learn more about today's topic or the innovation incubator, please contact us at ASSETT (a-s-s-e-t-t) @colorado.edu. We look forward to hearing from you.