Learning at Play with Kerry Whittaker and Matteo MenapaceDaybreak is a 2023 board game designed by Matt Leacock (designer of the hit game Pandemic) and Matteo Menapace. It's a cooperative game about fighting climate change in which players take on the role of various world powers implementing technological and social initiatives to decarbonize their energy production and build resiliency against the harms of a warming planet. The designers describe the game as "realistic, but not educational" in the sense that the mechanic and thematic elements of the game represent actual elements of the climate crisis without the game coming off as too didactic or preachy. I've known for a while that games, particularly analog games, can be very useful as helping players understand complex systems and how they work. See my 2020 post about the healthcare policy game RePlay Health for an example of this. The impact of human activity on the climate is certain a complex system, and, given my experience playing Leacock's game Pandemic, I could easily imagine him designing a game that would help players understand that system. It was thus an easy choice for me to back Daybreak when it was being crowdfunded. Having now played the game a few times, I can attest that not only does it teach players about climate change and climate action, but it's a very good (and often very challenging) cooperative board game! Earlier this year, I reached out to Matteo Menapace, one of the co-designers of Daybreak and someone who describes himself as "a very serious game designer" on his very playful professional website. We had a fascinating conversation about the design of Daybreak as a learning experience, and I shared that conversation with the Intentional Teaching Patreon supporters earlier this year. When I asked Matteo to direct me to educators who were using Daybreak in their courses, he pointed me to Kerry Whittaker, assistant professor of coastal and marine environmental science at Maine Maritime Academy. Kerry and her colleague Steven Baer developed a course on global environmental change in which they playtested early versions of Daybreak with their students. On this week's episode of the Intentional Teaching podcast, I'm very excited to share both my conversation with Kerry about teaching climate action through Daybreak and my earlier conversation with Matteo Menapace about games and learning. Whether you teach about climate change and might use Daybreak in your courses or you're looking for a deeper understanding of how learning experiences can be designed, I think you'll find both of these conversations interesting. You can listen to my interviews with Kerry Whittaker and Matteo Menapace (or read the transcript) here, or search "Intentional Teaching" in your favorite podcast app. Epic FinalesIn my conversation with Kerry Whittaker, I learned that her course has a final project but not a final exam, so she has her students play Daybreak as a class during her final exam period. That reminded me of a 2015 essay by Tony Crider, professor of astrophysics at Elon University, called "Final Exams or Epic Finales." Tony writes that ending a really fantastic course in which the students had become a real learning community with a high-stakes and high-stress final exam was deeply unsatisfying. He started replacing those final exams in some of his courses with class experiences he calls "epic finales," and in the essay he details what some of those experiences are like. I highly recommend reading Tony's essay! The epic finale idea has stuck in my head since I learned about it, and Tony's work changed how I thought about the student experiences in my courses. Teaching Moments in Professions of All KindsI'm looking for professionals to interview for a new book project on teaching moments outside of formal educational settings, like a doctor explaining a diagnosis to a patient. Do you know a professional who excels at teaching you hard things, someone who might be up for an interview? Maybe your tax accountant or home inspector or physical therapist or estate planner? If so, please send me a recommendation by hitting reply to this email. Thanks for reading!If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague who might like it! That's one of the best ways you can support the work I'm doing here at Intentional Teaching. Or consider supporting Intentional Teaching through Patreon. For just $3 US per month, you can help defray production costs for the podcast and newsletter and you get access to Patreon-only interviews and bonus clips. |
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.
Neurodivergent Students in Active Learning Classes A lot of the accommodations that have traditionally been given for students with learning disabilities, like notetaking assistance and extra time on exams, assume that a college course is mostly lectures and tests. That's not as true as it once was, especially for STEM courses where years of research on active learning have directed faculty to structure their courses differently. What is it like to experience an active learning class if...
Surfacing Students' Prior Experience with AI Last week I helped lead a two-day institute for faculty members participating in the University of Virginia's new Faculty AI Guides program. These faculty have signed up to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their own teaching and support their colleagues as they make informed, intentional decisions about the roles of AI in their teaching. We covered a lot of ground in our two days with the AI Guides, as you might...
Culturally Responsive Teaching with Emily Affolter On this week's Intentional Teaching podcast episode, I talk with Emily Affolter, who teaches in the PhD program in sustainability education at Prescott College in Arizona. Her students come from all different professions, some even already have PhDs. They’re in the program to pursue what Emily describes as “social and environmental justice as enacted in teaching, learning, and leading.” How do Emily and her colleagues meet these diverse...