Video – Educational RPGs

Hi everyone, and welcome to this video  on educational role-playing games. Here I will talk about how to work with role-playing  games in education, what role-playing games are good for when it comes to learning, how you learn  through role-playing games, when you can use them, what some of the pitfalls are, and I  will finish up with some practical tools.

When you’re going to use role-playing games in education, how does that actually work? Well, there are many different ways of working with it. You can use an existing educational role-playing game, or you can write your own, or, what might be more common, is that you take a non-educational role-playing  game and then you mod it to fit into your setting. You do that by connecting it to the existing  curriculum. There are different ways of doing this; there are some references here if you want to go more into that part.

So, what can you learn from role-playing  games? It’s actually not only academic things. It’s a lot of focus, I would say, on social  and personal development, social development, personal development, because there are a lot of interactive and co-creative elements. This also means that there is a focus on the social  parts and how we interact with each other. So all types of social focus is rewarded. Your active  participation and the actions you do takes a very central role here. Many times in education there  is a focus more on prolonged quiet concentration, which is not the goal here. So this means that  students that doesn’t always fit the more classic teaching mold, about figuring out what the teacher wants, can now get a new constructive role in the group, even if it might be hard for other students  who are very used to that way. And having a tool like this can also be very important for creating a good group dynamic and a functioning classroom, and thereby making other types of learning  easier and mitigating a lot of other problems.

Okay, so let’s talk a bit about how you actually learn through role-playing games. Now, I’m going to give you a little list  and talk about different ways you can   learn the role-playing games. And one thing that is very relevant here is about power distribution. In a role-playing game, you all get characters and you all interact with each other, which change the power distribution; It’s not main focus on the teacher, instead, the focus is on all the students and interaction. So we don’t get only one-on-one interaction, we get a larger type of interaction and  the power is thereby also distributed. We also learn by being active, because in a role-playing game, you always need to take a stance, you have to use your agency. So even being passive in a role-playing game is making a decision, taking a stance. If there is.., if we are playing out a huge conflict with people being really upset and angry and  loud, and you decide to not react on that, just standing back and not trying to break them up or try to handle the situation, that is also to use your agency and to take a stance. That is a choice which will affect the outcome of the game. Another way you learn is through putting knowledge into a context. We learn knowledge before the game, and now, all of a sudden, you put it into a context. It’s not just  abstract anymore. And you also take that previous knowledge, bring it forward, and then you need to apply that, you need to use it, and you need to interpret it in relation to  what is happening in the game. So it’s both putting it into context and applying it. This point might seem obvious, but I still want to mention it, because you are doing things,  you are exploring. You are learning by actually doing and exploring. You practice problem solving skills by going out and using that knowledge. We also learn through embodiment, at least in larps, not so much in more tabletop role-playing games and so on. But in larp, we have a lot of embodiment playing into this. And when playing a role, you are using your own body and then that will kick in and help out. It’s not just intellectual, it’s the physical parts. And this also means there often are emotions involved, which can actually help with storing things you learn more effectively in the memory and also making people more engaged.

You can also learn through new perspectives. So by playing someone else and trying to act as they would and think about them for a while, you get to practice taking on a new perspective and seeing things from a different view. And of course, sometimes you get a character whose point of view is very, very close to your own, but it’s very rare that you play someone who has an identical perspective as you do. And that means you will always get some kind of level of a different perspective. And hopefully you also get to take part of some of the other players’ experiences, and then you get to hear different perspectives from them also. We also get some kind of common frame of reference. And while the experience can work as a common frame of reference,  it does it slightly differently from, yeah, well, let’s say watching a movie, because after a movie, people have ish the same idea about what it was that happened during that film. But here, since everyone played a character with a unique perspective, you also get very different experiences within the main experience. So it is as if everyone watched a movie with different characters as the main character. So a lot of the main story arc might work as a common frame of reference, where you can learn together, but you also have these different perspectives. Then I also want to highlight cooperation, because the story here is co-created by the participants so they get to practice on cooperation. And this is not only in building narrative, but also keeping up the pretend to build a world we’re in and to treat others as their characters. But it can also be solving problems in game together and working towards a common goal.

Another very important part in how you learn through role-playing games is alibi. And we have talked about alibi before, and blee, so I just want to add some things here. When you work with a character that is further removed from yourself, that has a very different point of view, or just acts in a different way, comes from a different background, or so on. This actually helps with giving a stronger alibi, because it’s really clear this is not me. So I get an a stronger alibi because it’s very far away. While if you play a character that is very much like you, that is very close to home, as we say, that gives a weaker alibi. And that then increases the chance, or risk, depending on how you see it, of getting bleed. So bleed might be exactly what you want, then you might want to have a weaker alibi. If you do not want it, then you want a stronger alibi. There is always the risk of social prestige loss as I like to call it, or just fear of losing face. You’re scared of playing a character, or making a fool out of yourself, in front of others that you might find superior to you, if you are playing with your superiors, like your boss, or if you are in a situation where, socially, it’s kind of awkward in the group, so it’s very sensitive what you do, Or if you work with teenagers, then this is something that can be very important. And to handle that, to make people dare to play and step into this, then you want to have a stronger alibi. So a stronger alibi helps with handling the fear of social prestige loss. So there are pros and cons to the different ones here. And talking about alibi, I want to go slightly deeper into this. So I want to show you a model from my thesis, that pinpoints some of these things and how the alibi work. So through the game, through the rules of the game, you get the alibi to play and to participate. It’s because it’s just a game. It’s not for real. And then all of a sudden, it’s okay to do things in a different way, because it’s just a game. And then we get to the next part. So through the world, or the setting that you’re in, you get the alibi to explore, because it’s not real,  and it’s not the ordinary world, it is something different. And then it’s okay to do things in a different way. And in role-playing games we also have a character. So then you get the alibi through the character to behave differently because it’s not me, it’s not you. I’m not me. So it’s not you, you’re someone else. And that gives you the alibi.

This actually connects a lot to what is called the Batman effect.  So the Batman effect, was a psychology study where young children were asked to complete a very repetitive task, and they should work with it for ten minutes while also having the option to instead do something fun, in this case, play a video game. And what they found was that when children were asked to do this, it was quite tough for them in many cases. But if they ask kids, to do it, but pretending to be a character, for example, Batman was one of the characters in the study, which is why it’s called the Batman Effect, they would persevere way longer than children who did not pretend to be Batman, but instead were themselves. Because they maybe wouldn’t keep on doing it, but of course, Batman would persevere; he wouldn’t give up, so then I would do more. And this is something I’ve seen examples on when I’ve been out working with groups also. For example, one time when our company was out working, we had a situation where we were working, in this case, we were working with teens, I think, and they were doing a larp practicing using English. And when the larp was done, a teacher came up and said “I’m so impressed. We have this student who is quite good at writing in English, but never speaks up in the classroom, don’t really take any space verbally at all, won’t answer questions, which makes it really hard for me to grade them. And they just walked up in front of   other students and held a long speech in English about how they have dissected an alien egg and what they found and used really advanced English and seemed to be fine doing it. What, like, what is happening?”. And I said Well, well, ask the student.” And so they did. So they asked the student. And the student, when asked, answered  Well, of course I would never go up and speak like that, but I was playing a scientist. And that is what they do. So, of course, I did it.” That can also be a type of Batman effect. They did something they  wouldn’t normally do because they got the alibi. They could persevere being in this, for them, uncomfortable situation way longer than they would otherwise.

Okay, so now we have talked a bit about how you learned through edu-larps and  educational role-playing games. Now I want to talk a bit about “When?” instead. So you can put these things in different orders. So maybe you start out with learning some new materials, and then after that, you play the game, and then you contextualize the knowledge and you practice the skill through the role-playing game. Or, if you do it the other way around,  then you start with playing a role-playing game, and then you use that role-playing game experience as a reference point to make the knowledge more relevant to learn. But no matter which one of these you pick, it is very important to work with the after-part; it’s the reflection, it’s about transfer and helping that happen through debriefing, and other ways of working with it. So no matter what, the after is super important. Even if you of course, can learn before a game, by reading up on the historical period, or practising your character, and so on. And you can also learn during the game. But after, it’s the most important part. Now let’s talk a bit about the pitfalls. So something that can be harder with this method then just, I don’t know, giving a lecture, is that the participants often have not heard about role-playing games or larps or are not  used to it. This means they need to learn how to larp also. They need to learn to larp. This is, of course, true for any new method that you would bring in,  that you also have to get to know the method. But it’s also clear. Then we have time. It can be very time consuming to work with role-playing games. I would say it’s worth it, especially if you use them with things they are good at, but it’s still true. It takes a lot of time. You get to explore and go deeper, but it takes way more time than someone just giving you some context and telling you about it. I would also say it’s not great for facts, because during a game you are very busy with taking decisions, applying your knowledge, then it’s very hard to take in new information. So I would say it’s better to use role-playing games for multifaceted  problems, or practicing skills, or putting them into context, than it is to learn new materials. Then there are other ways to work that can work better.

Now we come to talk about individual experience versus the more common experience, or frame of reference. I mentioned this before, that you have the big, main idea about what happened, but you also have different individual perspectives. So since we often work with conflict, or different ideas, there is a risk that you only get to see one perspective, from your character’s point of view. And this is why we need the debrief. That’s where we help them with the reflection, where we can make the connections, and get to hear the other perspectives, to get that more common frame of reference. Because without that, well, then you don’t get the different perspectives and the different ideas. Now let’s talk a bit about assessment. So, assessment is something that can be quite hard when it comes to role-playing games. There are also not a lot of research on this yet. Also, when it comes to a lot of other digital games,  assessment can be tricky, and I would say even more so here. I would not recommend using a role-playing game as an assessment tool because it will be very hard, because they are not themselves, they’re pretending to be someone else. So what are you then actually trying to assess? Is it their knowledge or skill, or is it their character’s knowledge or skill? Maybe they are pretending to be not as good at something because that made sense for the character. It gets tricky. And of course, you can then assess how good they role-played, but that is also hard. How do you see that? Maybe they had a very strong experience on the outside, or they had a very low key, strong, intentional, intense game, which would be very hard to see from the outside compared to someone who plays a very extroverted character or have a very large play style. So I would not recommend that either, to be honest. I wouldn’t try to assess the performance. But it is a way to give students a new way to connect to the knowledge, but also show skills, and of course, if they all of a sudden show something that you haven’t seen before, like we mentioned the the student who all of a sudden gave a speech, well, then that of course can affect their grade, or the way you see the students. But yeah, this one is tricky. Be careful. Another pitfall is that to be able to work with this method and make it function well, it takes trust, and you need to feel safe. And this is hard, because if you don’t have that, the method will not work as well. So you need to create the container. But if you do that, then it works like a charm most of the time.

And now we get to immersion. And immersion here means more immersed as in absorbed in, rather than present. And then the question is, what is it we are absorbed in? Sometimes, we can get so absorbed in the game that we forget to focus on the learning. There is something called the gamer mode that we have studies on, from the military, where people are playing characters in a game, and they’re supposed to solve different things. And then, since it’s a role-playing game, you throw in something unexpected and then they  can get super upset because it feels they feel cheated, “this wasn’t in the game”, “we didn’t know about this”, “this wasn’t in the rules”, “this is highly unlikely”,  because they are focused on winning the game and how to make the smartest move, instead of what can I learn from this experience, and what would I do if this actually happened? We have also seen that it can be hard if you play a character that are very focused on being the rebel, or the one who doesn’t care, to then learn a lot of things, where everyone else is like “we are playing that.. we are having this classroom setting and we are doing,  I don’t know, math.” And you’re like, “No, I’m the cool one. I would never do that.” Then, of course, you’re not going to practice using your skill because your character is the one stepping away. This can be solved by how you designed the game, but it’s good to think about. We have also seen that, in studies on digital games, that when you get into that flow state where you get super focused, that can also be sometimes bad for learning, because for deeper knowledge, you need to take a step back and reflect. And immersion actually works against that, that is not about stepping back, it’s about going in. So one way to handle this is to work with short scenes, as we are doing here, or if you work with longer settings, you can work with breaks where you take a pause in the game and you ask them to reflect about the situation, where we’re at, connecting that to the learning, and so on, before starting it again. And of course, having a proper debrief. I would also recommend having some kind of foreshadowing, letting them know that this is what the game is going to be about, this is what we are going to focus on, because then you bring that into the game, instead of playing a game and then after saying, “Haha, we actually did this. It was focused on this subject. You didn’t know that.” because then  it might not be as effective for them because they are focused on something totally different. Yes. So that was immersion.

Alibi. We talked about alibi before. How you get the alibi and how that can help you, if you have a strong alibi, even if it leads to less bleed. But this whole alibi and this whole playing, “it’s just a game”, also risks to make the transfer harder. Because it was just a game, nothing of it was real, and then you don’t connect it back. I’ve seen that when I’ve been out running games with children and I’m like “Did you learn something today?” and they’re like, “Yes, I learned so much!”, I’m like, “Oh, that’s great. Okay. Can you use anything of  what we learned today in school? In your ordinary days in a classroom?”, and they’re like, “No.” Like, what? We work with things connected to the curriculum but  they didn’t see that. You need to help them see that. So you get an extra layer by being in a game. And that’s why we once again need to have the debrief; to help them connect that out, and see the connection between the game and real life. We also have the emotions. They come with pros and cons. As we mentioned, having a lot of strong emotions can help things stick better, but it can also strengthen confirmation bias. We don’t have a lot of studies of this, but we have seen situations where people go into something expecting to see something in their character, and then that’s what they will see. And then they say, “Well, this is what I expected to see”,  in the debrief, “And yeah, it, it apparently this is the way it is.” So, once again, this is why we need the debrief. We need the post-game part where we can clarify things, and talk about it, and connect it back, and then see and find these things.

Now I want to go into talking about some practical tools, that you might be able to use. So let’s start with the magic circle. We mentioned this before. The magic circle is where you have the game within, where you get the feeling of I’m in the game. And a strong magic circle helps with creating an alibi, because then it’s very clear that now the game is going and I’m in the game, and then I step out of the magic circle and it’s not a game. So one way to help create a strong magic circle is to work with where in time the game is going to be. So if you were very clear about we are going to start at this point and we’re going to stop here, that is helpful. Then you know that now we are in the magic circle, we are in the game, and now we are out of the game. And this can be done physically. You can say that once we enter this room, the game will start, and we will keep playing until we leave the room again. That could be one way of doing it. But you can also work with more of a mental boundary, so you could tell people that, “As soon as you hear this music, think about these things, and then the game will start.” Or it can be, “I will ask you to close your eyes,  and I will count down from  to . And once you open your eyes, we are in the game and playing, and we will keep playing until I say ‘thank you for playing’, that’s when the game will end.” Then you have a more clear magic circle. You can also work with putting tape on the floor and saying, “Once you step into this, (maybe actual circle), then you’re in game, and when you step out, you’re out of game.” So there’s many ways of doing it, but having some kind of clear ways of showing when you’re in game, and off game, that can help with creating that alibi and the circle itself.

Next, I just want to talk a little bit about props and costumes. Because having props and costumes also helps with alibi, and it can also help with immersion. The tricky part about this is that you might need to get this for everyone, maybe not everyone has things they can bring, and if you create some, you need to have something that can fit everyone. People have different sizes, and you can’t have a situation where someone can’t wear a costume because it doesn’t fit. I would say hats in general are really great.  Because even if they’re slightly too big or slightly too small, they kind of fit, and it’s very easy to see that there is different characters. People do not look  like themselves, they look like someone else, you also feel like someone else. But also, having more stuff means more work, because you have to bring the stuff,  and you have to clean the stuff, and so on. But it can really help. So that’s also one way to work with it. And it can be something simple;  just adding a shawl, or asking everyone to bring some kind of small accessory, and then you pick from that and take something that is not your own, to feel like someone else. Then I want to mention something about mandatory games. Because in an educational setting, sometimes games are mandatory, especially if you work with primary school, I know that is not the case for you, but you also might have parts of your classes that are mandatory. And if the game is one such, you need to consider some things. So one is, there needs to be a way to opt out, there needs to be some way to do this, maybe they will get an extra assignment, something. But it must be possible to opt out. It doesn’t mean you have to tell them that before, it can be that you show up and then you, if someone says, “I am uncomfortable, I don’t want to do this”, or if  they contact you before, you can give them that option. But there should be some kind of option. I would also recommend, depending on how the group feels, but if it’s a new group and they don’t know each other very well, I would recommend, that you don’t say that people can stay and watch  instead of participating. Especially not if it’s a larger group playing and you have one person sitting out and sitting there watching everyone else, because it’s very easy that the  others will feel that they are being judged by the person not participating. So in general, I would recommend not having spectators. But if it’s a group that known each other for a long time, or if they’re someone who have special needs and everyone is okay with it, absolutely, go ahead. But it’s good to think about beforehand.

Then we have post-game. So, as you might have heard throughout this video, this part is very, very important. You can use it also to validate the player’s experiences, and you can clear up any misconceptions between the players and the content, which is very, very important. I had one situation where I ran a game for university students, in game design in this case, and it was an educational game originally written about being brave and learning more about what does it mean to be brave, and that it can be many different things, and that it’s complicated. And we played this game. But since the focus was on game design, I did not run the full debrief with them, because I didn’t think that was the important part, because we were just talking about how to design a larp. Then I met one of the students half a year later, and talked to them, and I asked what they remembered, and what they have learned. And then they mentioned that they  found it very interesting, and it was great to be in a character, and they remember a lot, from what happened. But then they said, “Well, my character had quite a different view from the other characters. And I decided to stand up for her views, because that’s what she would do, so I did that. I stood up, and that was really tough. And I got a lot of strong feedback on that, and I learned that that is not something I would ever do again.” That was not what we wanted someone to take away from that game. But we  did not run a proper debrief, so that was her takeaway, because I thought we didn’t need to, because that was just about learning how to design a game. But the debrief is a super important part about the game. So if we had run this, maybe that player got to hear from the others that, “Wow, that was super brave and it must have been very, very hard. We are so impressed now.” They never got to hear that. So, post-game parts; this is where the magic happens when it comes to learning. It’s the most important part.

Okay, let’s do a little summary. We have talked about ways of working with role-playing games in education. We have talked about what you can learn from a role-playing game. We have talked about how you can learn from a role-playing game. We have talked about when you can position the role-playing game and the learning content in relation to each other. We have talked about some pitfalls of this method. And finally, you got some practical tools. Here you have my references, and I want to say thank you so much for listening to this video.