I am happy to report that SAGE Open has published my presentation from the 2015 National Communication Association Game Studies Pre-Conference (“Introducing Game Studies to the National Communication Association”). “Winning Through Deception: A Pedagogical Case Study on Using Social Deception Games to Teach Small Group Communication Theory” was modified from the original presentation as that was more a representation of the lesson plan and how to implement game-play into a communication course. The article as written is more of a detailed analysis of the impact of ludology on the pedagogy of higher education communication course. The timing of this article was also a nice analog counterpoint to the attention my digital work has been receiving over the past few months.
One of the reasons I’ve been working on this article and going through the almost dozen drafts of this work is that I believe that this will encourage a good discussion about how to think creatively about how to structure and assess course objectives effectively. I mentioned in the original presentation (but omitted in this article) that this lesson plan was based on a “moment of panic” where I couldn’t find a great way to teach small group communication short of lecturing about the theory and literature. I felt that using a game like “Are You a Werewolf?” or “The Resistance” would allow for better interactions in the classroom and I could use formative forms of assessment to determine if the students learned the small group communication readings.
I was encouraged by the reviewers of this article to examine how this style of education fits within the “Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive Framework” (ICAP Framework). The major concern with using an exclusively lecture and examination based pedagogy style is that the classroom experience would fall too much into the lower half of the framework. The lecture-based pedagogy is more likely to foster a more passive response from the students. The only occasion that encourages a more active role in the students would be during the examinations. This stressful style of education will fail to encourage what Alfred Whitehead would call the “romance of the subject matter.” Students could feel that the knowledge was presented as a “gift on high” rather than part of an overall conversation about knowing good communication practices.
It is easy for instructors to use a game like “Jeopardy!” as a means to incorporate game-based education. This style of teaching is a good beginning point for the process of incorporating ludagogical element in the classroom. The problem with this technique is that the classroom experience is fundamentally no different than using flashcards to review course concepts. This exercise is not interactive as the action of the students comes from the rote memorization of facts instead of attempting to take general concepts taught in the reading and apply those concepts to specific cases.
According to Sean Malloy (2015), these type of classes do “not enhance the student’s learning, but simply adds a game mechanic to the classroom setting.” The students suffer from “death by Jeopardy!” instead of “death by PowerPoint.” Professors must be thoughtful in the incorporation of learning objectives in the game mechanics of a given lesson plan. The mechanics should help frame student assessment. One of the examples Malloy used in his presentation was the concept of using “Win, Lose, and Draw!’ and having the students draw out the concept so their classmates would be able to yell out the correct answers. This style of education encourages both an interactive role among the students and applies a romance to the course materials.
