Learning and Teaching Ludically

EDITED BY CARLA HAMER & ALLY STANDING

BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY

2020

Learning and Teaching Ludically: Playful practice in the ADM faculty and beyond

An independent publication edited by Carla Hamer and Ally Standing 2020 Printed in the UK

Contents

02

Introduction

Playful Practice: Contributions

06

Critical Thinking & International Students: Challenges and possibilities

40

Playing in the Spaces: Anarchism in the classroom

by Andrew Brogan

10

Ethics and International Student Experience: Some questions

44

Play X Creativity

by Yi-Chen Chen

14

Scaffolding Inclusive Support for International Students through a Model of Play and Interaction

48

Brahimaḍa: Everything that exists anywhere

by Rupi Dhillon

16

Critical Thinking: Murder Mystery

52

18

Speed Dating with Books

Research Games: A playful experience

by Carla Hamer

21

The Forensic Scavenger Hunt

56

A Game for English Literature: Who knows?

by Izabela Hopkins

22

Visualising your Research Question: Poster making

58

Playful Jewellery Design

by Huaibing Li

24

Referencing Trail and Bibliography Bingo

60

Spread the Word / 传话

by Wenyi Ma

26

The Five-Week Time Planner Board Game

62

Shakespertise: The card game

by David Roberts

28

The Academic Art Dealer

64

Walking, Drifting, Playing: Psychogeographic games in the learning experience

by Ally Standing

74

Contributors & Acknowledgements

32

Question That!: The game

Introduction

Carla Hamer & Ally Standing

During the first semester of the 19/20 academic year, we worked collaboratively to put together a series of weekly support sessions for international students from the School of Visual Communication. Based on a model of play and interaction, these sessions used a range of games to improve the students’ confidence, language proficiency, academic skills, communication, and importantly, their critical thinking skills. Following the success of this series of workshops, we successfully applied for an innovation grant which would allow us to continue this research, and to disseminate it more widely.

This publication is the outcome of this, but it does not just contain our own work; we have been fortunate enough to receive contributions of playful practice from a range of individuals - both staff and students - which have really enriched this publication, and for which we are incredibly grateful. This document is not intended in any way to be an exhaustive account of all the instances of games and playfulness used within this setting or even within our institution; rather, we aim to give an insight into various instances of playful learning and teaching, in the hope of inspiring others to test some of these techniques.

Many scholars - an array of which are referenced throughout this publication have indeed highlighted the link between play and learning, with some even going as far as to suggest the two are one and the same. Indeed, Lieberman (1977, cited in Rice, 2009) hails the benefits of play as ‘developing or promoting creativity, imagination and spontaneous learning’. In the context of arts-based courses at HE level, then, it would seem that adopting playfulness as a strategy for both teaching and learning could be beneficial. Rice (2009) also goes on to explain how ‘playful methods in particular encourage and enable alternative views to be produced’ – this is particularly significant, given that in terms of the aforementioned support sessions and the new game we have made, one of the main aims was to improve students’ ability and willingness to think critically.

For the ease of our readers, we have divided this publication into two main parts; the first of which is dedicated to the support sessions mentioned previously and to the new game we have developed, while the latter part of the document contains the contributions we have received. The part of this publication entitled Scaffolding Inclusive Support for International Students through a Model of Play and Interaction will discuss in some detail the games we played within the series

of workshops discussed previously, including a review of their theoretical underpinning, and some suggestions on how these games might be adapted to other contexts. Before that, though, we felt it necessary to include two short articles establishing our own ethical positions regarding the teaching of ‘critical thinking’ to our international students. As discussed in Critical Thinking and International Students: Challenges and Possibilities, it is important that any teaching of this kind takes into account cultural factors with sensitivity, and has the kind of ‘strong international ethic’ that Song (2016) calls for. In the following article, the experience of international students is considered from an ethical viewpoint, underpinned by Levinas’ ideas around hospitality and responsibility.

The question whether we should avoid competition or questionable ideologies underpinning the games we propose to our students was something we discussed with staff participants in this project. Having reflected on this discussion, our experience of visiting the Play Well - Why Play Matters exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in January 2020 inspired an answer to that question. Not only do we agree with Shamita Sharmacharja, the curator of the exhibition, that ‘play matters’, but would also like to rephrase her statement to say that what matters is to play. Then, while we are playing, we need to “play well” with respect for others as Sharmacharja proposes (2020, p. 4). As Gwendolyn Smith explains, play is essentially important and significant for all, the young and old. We benefit from play in so many different and meaningful ways. We learn, socialise, develop skills, build empathy and refine our selfesteem. Play also enables us to communicate feelings or emotions and make friends. Sharmacharja claims that ‘the play instinct is innate, but if it’s not given the right conditions to flourish, it disappears’ (2020).

Thus, if we are born with the play instinct and we have all been children, perhaps being able to return to that innate frame of mind is more important and valuable than our critical views about a game. When we could just be immersed and enjoy a game of Monopoly without worrying about its capitalist ideology might have actually been a healthier and happier position in the world and with others. As educated adults and academics we might become more engaged in a description, analysis, and critical evaluation of a game rather than in enjoying and being part of it as players.

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Nguyen (2017, p. 125) differentiates competitive from striving play. What makes the difference, he says, is in the way we play, not the game. He argues that most games have a competitive and cooperative side, being immersed in the activity rather than being merely focused on the results and beating an opponent, is what transforms aggression into collaboration and enjoyment. He explains that: Striving play is done for the sake of struggling with obstacles, rather than for actually overcoming them.

Striving play is done because the process is fascinating, fun, pleasurable, satisfying, or interesting.

The latter part of the publication, Playful Practice: Contributions, contains a range of work – both textual and visual – which serve to put into context the varied ways in which play can be incorporated into learning and teaching. Dr Andrew Brogan, formerly Lecturer in Education Studies, has written a short reflection on the use of anarchism – which he deems as both ‘playful and creative’ – in a classroom setting. Professor David Roberts and Dr Izabela Hopkins, both of the School of English and who coauthored Games for English Literature, met with us virtually to discuss our project.

Izabela explained to us one of the games featured in the book, and David kindly gave us a preview of another game he is developing. The piece Walking, Drifting, Playing discusses the application of psychogeographic games in the learning

experience, and the piece Research Games: a playful experience details a game played over distance, which embodies the notion of performativity. Other creative contributions include Brahimaḍa: Everything that exists anywhere by artist and MA Fine Art student Rupi Dhillon, a series which explores notions of tentacularity and the way in which the act of playing – more specifically, the game Cat’s Cradle – links us together across continents. MA Fine Art student Wenyi Ma’s research has involved the proposition of various games which explore ideas of home, connections, and linkmaking, a preparatory sketch and instructions for one of which have been included herein. Playfulness serves as both inspiration and interface to some of the other contributions we have included, such as the charming and interactive jewellery designs by MA students Yi-Chen Chen and Huaibing Li. We would like to thank all of those who have contributed to making this publication so rich and varied. We hope that you enjoy it, and that you might find some ideas to bring into your own practice. We advise you to view the themes with a playful sensibility – by stepping outside of oneself, as play demands. In doing so, we have the opportunity to open up new spaces for discourse, exchange, and learning.

‘Play isn’t just a matter of doing: it’s also the state of mind you have while you do’.

You may start by turning ‘your mind into play’ (Gramazio, 2019).

References

Gramazio, H and Farnetti, T. S. G. (2019) How not to play.

Levinas, E. (1979). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. (Vol. 1).

Nguyen, C. (2017). Competition as Cooperation. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 44:1, 123-137.

Rice, L. (2009) Playful Learning, Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 4:2, 94-108.

Sharmacharja, S. (2020) Interviewed by Gwendolyn Smith for Wellcome Collection, An insider’s view on play well.

Smith, G. (2020). An insider’s view on play well.

Song, X. (2016). Educating Asian International Students: Toward a Transcultural Paradigm, East Asia, 33:1, 1-8.

Critical Thinking and International Students: Challenges and Possibilities

Ally Standing

Critical thinking - the objective process of analysis of an issue and its affecting factors when forming a judgement - is deemed by most, at least in the West, as being ‘the core of work at graduate level’ (Guo & O’Sullivan, 2011, p. 53). This is particularly significant in arts and humanities subjects, where the communicative - and indeed often directly questioning - nature of their associated outputs places this notion of criticality at an even higher level of importance. Critical thinking, in this context, is a concept which is rooted within a Western philosophical framework, and can be traced back to the teachings of Socrates.

He established, some 2,500 years ago, the importance of subjecting ideas to a series of probing questions before accepting them as truth (Paul et al., 1997). This mode of interrogation, now known as ‘Socratic Questioning’, came to be highly influential to many of the philosophers who most significantly shaped the canon of Western pedagogy and epistemology in general critical thinking has, over time, become fundamental to learning and teaching at HE level in the Western world. What, then, are the implications of practicing this skill for an increasingly-diverse array of students, many of whom have spent their preuniversity life in an educational and cultural context wholly different to that in which they are currently studying? In this short section Critical Thinking and International Students: Challenges and Possibilities, we will examine some of the literature dealing with this topic, underlining the importance of developing an environment of cross and trans-cultural awareness and respect, and touching upon ideas including language proficiency and confidence. Finally, we will suggest the use of play as a technique for facilitating critical questioning and thought a method which will be further detailed in the forthcoming sections of this publication.

these students from developing critical and independent modes of thought. This can be particularly problematic when it comes to studying subjects such as arts and humanities at a Western university, where critical - and therefore creative - thinking is regarded as having utmost importance.

Many scholars have recognised the difficulty international students, particularly Chinese students, can have when it comes to ‘thinking critically’. We must of course consider this in relation to the impact of cultural and educational background; there is a conception that the ‘Confucian do-afterme pedagogy’ present within Chinese educational systems can make it difficult to cultivate the notion of questioning around which the Western idea of critical thinking is based (Zhao, 2019). It’s been suggested that this may also apply to postgraduate students who have completed their undergraduate studies in China: Zhang (2016) argues that it is the heavily stateregulated HE level curriculum which becomes ‘the main obstacle’ preventing

Developing a system of ‘critical’ - read: Socratic, i.e. Western - thought is not something which can happen overnight, especially when a student is transplanted to an educational and philosophical tradition which differs fundamentally from the one they grew up within. As educators, we must recognise that the system of critical thinking we champion in the West is also based upon the Cartesian centring of the individual, and does indeed in itself reflect a specific worldview. Song (2016) calls for a ‘destabilisation of Western superiority’ and an acknowledgement of other systems of knowledge and reasoning; positing that in the interest of inclusivity, critical thought should have a ‘strong international ethic’. In order to cultivate a willingness to question

Cultural factors must also be taken into account when considering the matter of critical thinking; in Chinese culture, as explained by Guo and O’Sullivan in Critical Thinking and Chinese International Students: an East-West Dialogue (2011), there is an emphasis on harmony and the ‘collective good’; as such disagreeing with or challenging the opinion or values of another in public is something which is actively avoided, and is considered disgraceful in the Confucian tradition.

Indeed, it is noted that ‘critical thinking is often translated as pi pan shi si wei, which literally means looking for faults in others’ (ibid., p. 56). Consequently, it is easy to understand how students who have come from such a philosophical background might see ‘critical thinking’ as something negative.

With this in mind, we must be mindful about the way in which the notion is communicated to students. In the same article, it is suggested that analytical approaches are in fact an important part of pre-university Chinese education within various subjects; and that the difference is not so much in approach, but in semantics: This type of teaching is not explicitly called critical thinking as it is in the Western context … The Chinese terms used to describe these understandings of critical thinking are luo ji (logic), tu li (deduction), yan yi (induction), and lian guan (consistency) (Guo & O’Sullivan, 2011, p. 55)

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within our students, we must first develop an understanding of their - and of our own diverse cultural backgrounds and associated cognitive processes, striving to approach the issue with tact and sensitivity.

Further to the semantic and cultural differences between notions of reasoning mentioned previously, we must also recognise the impact of language proficiency when it comes to a willingness to actively participate critically in discussions in a classroom setting. It is logical that expressing oneself in a second language poses challenges when articulating complex topics; this is outlined by Lun, Fischer, and Ward, who cite various studies confirming the notion that there is a ‘positive relationship between language proficiency and critical thinking performance’ (2010). Therefore, it’s important that any approach aiming to help international students develop critical thinking is also one which holds interaction at its core, and is geared towards cultivating an environment which actively encourages students to speak up; which can indeed function by creating constructed situations outside of a ‘normal’ academic dynamic this is where the notion of play comes into the discussion.

As mentioned in the introduction to this publication, a key quality of play is that through the construction of imaginary situations, it allows those involved to see issues from a variety of different perspectives and to form alternative views.

Given that the idea of critical thinking essentially centres on a notion of viewing an issue from diverse angles, it would seem that games - and play more generally - could be an ideal way of encouraging critical thought. For reasons outlined above, some international students, particularly Chinese, may have - or are perceived to have difficulty in assimilating the Socratic form of interrogation held in such high regard in Western HE institutions. For these students in particular, the framework provided by a game could indeed be key to encouraging and enabling this questioning approach.

In his 1994 text Teaching Critical Thinking in the Strong Sense, Paul suggests that in order to reach what he calls ‘critical empowerment’, one must step outside of oneself in order to examine the worldview in which they have already become critically literate. In a similar vein, Guo and O’Sullivan (2011) highlight the need for students to be able to understand other worldviews before being able to critique their own, which serves to highlight the

importance of enabling an environment of cross-cultural exchange as a foundation. It if for this reason that the weekly support sessions - outlined in section 2 of this publication - did not focus solely on taskbased playful learning; but that time was factored into each session for free-flowing discussions. As outlined previously, language proficiency and confidence are both aspects which might impede international students from engaging in discussions and therefore developing critical thought - and this informal conversation can be key in bridging that initial gap.

Further on in this publication we will outline some of the games and playful approaches we adopted over a semester’s worth of weekly extracurricular classes, which were aimed at helping international students (though were open to home students too) with their communication and academic skills. Through these sessions, which brought together students from a diverse range of backgrounds, we aimed to encourage critical thought through playful learning approaches, while improving confidence and language proficiency and laying a foundation for transcultural exchange and respect through conversation and exchange. What we seek to highlight here is that while we do recognise the value of teaching critical thinking - especially within an arts-based HE-level programmes of study - we hope to do so here reflectively, and with the international ethic mentioned

by Song (2016). It’s important that we don’t consider this teaching as remedial, and that we as educators are able to think outside of ourselves and our own philosophical orientations. Creating an inclusive space and indeed, one in which dialogue can take place - means acknowledging cultural contexts and other modes of reasoning.

References

Dong, Y. (2015) Critical Thinking Education with Chinese Characteristics. In: Davies M., Barnett R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Guo, L. & O’Sullivan, M. (2011). Critical Thinking and Chinese International Students: An East-West Dialogue, Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 2010, 5:2, 53- 73.

Lun, V.M., Fischer, R. & Ward, C. (2010).

Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak?, Learning and Individual Differences, 20:6, 604-616.

Paul, R. (1984). Teaching critical thinking in the strong sense: A focus on selfdeception, world views, and a dialectical mode of analysis. In K. Walters (Ed.). Rethinking reason: New perspectives in critical thinking (pp 181 – 198). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Paul, R., Elder, L. & Bartell, T., (1997). A brief history of the idea of critical thinking.

Rice, L. (2009) Playful Learning, Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 4:2, 94-108.

Song, X. (2016). Educating Asian International Students: Toward a Transcultural Paradigm, East Asia, 33:1, 1-8.

Singer, D., Golinkoff, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., (2006). Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth.

Oxford: Oxford University Press Zhang, T. (2017). Why do Chinese postgraduates struggle with critical thinking? Some clues from the higher education curriculum in China, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 41:6, 857-871.

Zhao, W. (2020). Epistemological flashpoint in China’s classroom reform: (How) can a ‘Confucian do-after-me pedagogy’ cultivate critical thinking?, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52:1, 101-117.

Ethics and International Student Experience: Some questions

Carla Hamer

I would like to welcome your attention to the question of what constitutes a fair educational situation. In particular, my interest is in how to teach and support our international (and all) students responsibly in terms of taking accountability for the role we play in those relationships. I have purposefully highlighted the words welcome and attention in the introduction to this text as they connect with the logic of hospitality and responsibility in Levinas’ ethics which, amongst other ethical views, I will briefly outline. Not only do I want to mention Levinas because he questioned a whole Western philosophical ‘edifice’ and traditional way to think morality, but because his ethics is about the ‘concrete experience of the other’ (Large, 2015, p.

1). Ethical questions concerned about the experiences and inclusion of international students in western universities have been widely raised. For example, research carried out in Australia has highlighted that the internationalisation and commodification of research degrees in the West has led to the construction of hegemonic discourses that categorise, and thus, marginalise their international students (Baron & Zeegers, 2006). The term ‘international student’ has thus been turned into a new generalised identity. In addition, despite the competition between western universities to capture ‘feepaying international participation’, the increasing urge of quality assurance and regulations has contributed to the production of ‘panoptical discourses’ through which ‘the individual who does not fit average profiles’ feels ‘under surveillance’ within normative models of knowledge, behaviour and ‘deeply rooted English-only attitudes’ (2006, p. 86).

For example, linguistic hegemony that has privileged the use of English for the production of knowledge within western institutions, might give us a sense of the experience of an international student with regard to the IELTs (International English Language Testing System). These tests, not designed by or created according to the educational or cultural norms of non-native English speakers, have different bands descriptors that group potential candidates into those who satisfy the requirements and the ones who do not fit the university standard (2006, p. 87). However, not much research has been found on the testing of those testing systems as priori predictors of academic achievement. We can see that the sharp-edged division of homogenous groups created by these discourses is an ethical problem. Have we really not been able to move yet from a humanist binary tradition and ‘self-interest’? (Zylinska, 2014). Thus,

rather than thinking in humanist terms of independent objects with fixed boundaries, Barad reminds us that agency results from intra-activity and entities do not precede their relationships or intra-actions (Barad, 2007).

However, the questions raised do not aim at establishing an ethics of ‘sympathy’, tolerance, respect for or ‘right to difference’.

This ideology, Badiou argues, ‘consists of not being offended by the fact that others think and act differently from you’ (Badiou, 2001, p. 24). He argues that the word ethics has become a common phrase based on backed up opinions that regulate behaviours across different situations (Badiou, 2012).

As he states, national and international commissions, professional organisations, institutions and even military deployments have justified their own ethics. Yet, as he argues, these popular or institutional ethical opinions can be no more than some form of nihilism, the normalisation of an uncritical and self-indulged ‘goodness’ (Badiou, 2012). Thus, generally, the term ethics is used to suggest compliance with moral behaviours, or culturally, socially and temporally embedded codes, laws or principles that regulate what is ‘right’ in society (Large, 2015).

Yet, this is not exactly what Levinas, Badiou and many others, have meant (2015).

According to Levinas, whilst on the one hand, whilst important and needed, moral behaviours start with the rationality and intention of the self, ethics starts with the experience of “exteriority or transcendence in the face of the Other” (Levinas, 1979, p.

24). In other words, his claim was that ethics does not begin in the free intentionality of the self, but rather in the Other whose speech calls into question and demands the self to welcome and attend their voice (1979). His way of seeing the ethical experience is therefore pre-cognitive and beyond ontology. It opposes thematisation and ‘definition’ that situates the Other as object (Large, 2015; Derrida, 1988). For an ethical relation, or experience of the Other in discourse to be such, the speaker needs to be present and sincerely ‘attend’ the words they pronounce (Levinas, 1979). This is an ‘I am speaking to you sincerely because you demand a response from me’ (Large, 2015, p. 45). Also, an ethical relation, according to Levinas, requires the ‘welcoming’ of the Other in their infinite alterity, an absolute exteriority within, rather than contained by thought (1979).

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However, as Derrida has mentioned in From “Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas”, to welcome the other is not passive, but rather a saying yes and a ‘responsible response’ to a preceding welcoming of the other (Derrida, 1988, p. 21). It suppresses any kind of thematisation, categorisation or description (Derrida, 1988). This is where signification arises and teaching or being taught take place. As Levinas proposed ‘intelligibility does not arise from the identity of the same who remains in himself, but from the face of the other who calls upon the same’ (1979, p. 98). The experience, rather than the thought, of the infinite surplus of the other in relation to the self is a teaching that comes from the other and always exceeds what the ‘I’ contains (1988).

‘open door’, an invitation to question ethical assumptions and responsibility for our being in and with the world with all different kinds of human and non-human others (Zylinska, 2014). These are the types of questions that inspired our project based on the experiences of play, interaction and teamwork as an approach to teaching and learning. I would therefore like to finish with a short quote by Henri Bergson (2015, p. 237), as his work might be more connected to this project of supporting international students. What is less known about Bergson is that he did not just introduce a different notion of time but was also concerned with ideas about the body, affect, the social experience, creativity and practical ethics (Linstead & Mullarkey, 2003; Zylinska, 2015). He asked:

Overall, I would rather leave the thoughts I shared here in the form of an open question about our teaching practices and our positioning with regard to and as part of the teaching and learning relationships we are involved in. I agree with Joanna Zylinska (2015) who claimed that, from a posthumanist perspective, some of Levinas’s ideas could be questioned (Zylinska, 2015).

Yet, his book Totality and Infinity, written in beautiful poetic language, contests thematisation or turning the question of ethics and the Other into a theme. This is exactly what he opposed to and I support.

Rather, I would suggest, his teaching is an

How could this self, which distinguishes external objects so sharply and represents them so easily by means of symbols, withstand the temptation to introduce the same distinctions into its own life and to replace the interpretation of its psychic states, their wholly qualitative multiplicity, by a numerical plurality of terms which are distinguished from one another, set side by side, and expressed by means of words?

References

Badiou, A. (2001) Ethics: An essay on the understanding of evil. London and New York: Verso.

Barron, D and Zeegers, M. (2006) “Subjects of western education: Discursive practices in western postgraduate studies and the construction of international student subjectivities”, The Australian Educational Researcher, 33:2, 77-96.

Bergson, H. (2015) Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Mansfield Centre: Martino Publishing.

Derrida, J. (1998) ‘From “Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas”’, Research in Phenomenology. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, Inc., 28.

Large, W. (2015) Levinas’ Totality and Infinity, London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Levinas, E. (1979). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. (Vol. 1).

Linstead, S. and Mullarkey, J. (2003) ‘Time, Creativity and Culture: Introducing Bergson’, Culture and Organization. Taylor & Francis Group, 9(1), pp. 3–13.

Zylinska, J. (2014) Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Open Humanities Press.

Scaffolding Inclusive Support for International Students through a Model of Play and Interaction

Carla Hamer & Ally Standing

During the academic year 2019/20, in the effort to upscale international students’ academic skills through an inclusive learning experience, we supported a diverse group of learners to overcome communicational and academic skills barriers through a series of weekly support sessions. Through a playful strategy based on interaction, gameplay, and teamwork, each student’s abilities were recognised, and their less developed skills enhanced through a series of ‘gamified’ activities. In our experience - and within much of the literature reviewed in other sections of this publication - play can form the foundation for interaction, confidence-building, and language proficiency. Not only this, but through the construction of playful situations, students have the opportunity to step outside of themselves: playful learning allows issues to be questioned from various angles, which is a key step towards the development of critical thought. We started this activity with undergraduate students from the School of Visual Communication, and we were successful in our bid for an innovation grant which would allow us to further disseminate the work we have been doing through this publication. In this section, we will briefly outline some of the games we developed, in the hope that they might be adapted to fit other teaching contexts.

As mentioned in section 1, a lack of confidence can be one of the main issues impeding international students when it comes to engaging in group discussions, which are in themselves a key aspect of developing critical thinking skills. Academic skills (including critical thinking), communication, and confidence are intrinsically linked. When we began our first semester of planned sessions, we ran a confidence and academic skills audit with our group of international students which revealed that only 38% of them felt confident enough to contribute to class discussions when they wanted to. Because of this, it was important for us to create through our weekly group sessions a relaxed and friendly environment, with as much opportunity for cross-cultural exchange and discussion as possible. We found that providing refreshments and the sharing of food - such as at our last meeting of the semester when students were asked to bring some food from their home countries to share - was a good way of stimulating this informal conversation, which in the grand scheme of things is crucial as foundationlaying for skills-based activities and games.

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Critical Thinking: Murder Mystery

The Murder Mystery game was the first playful learning activity of our weekly support sessions. Moon’s idea of critical thinking as a doing, a process rather than an external outcome inspired the game (Moon, 2008). With this in mind, the aim of the activity was to engage students with problem solving skills and the development of a logical argument supported by evidence. We divided the class into groups of four to six students. Each group found a pack of resources on their table. These consisted of poster-size paper, markers, post-it notes, Blu-Tack and a sealed envelope containing a series of laminated ‘Murder Mystery’ picture cards. There were three groups of cards with images of possible weapons, possible suspects and possible evidence.

We explained the game and introduced the students to the story of a mysterious crime: the unexplained case of the murder of a millionaire man at his home in London. We prompted the students to build a case and prove the guilt of a suspect. Their mission was to find a suspect, select the evidence and build a watertight case. We asked the groups of students to consider the following questions to create a well-structured argument: What happened before the murder? What happened on the day of the murder? How, why (or why not) was the murder committed? The students seemed to embrace the idea of becoming detectives for an hour and engaged immediately with the game. There was a lot of discussion, backtracking or retracing the murderer’s possible steps and analysis of the different relationships between the suspects, their personalities and probable motives.

What was important was to identify and acknowledge how the students wanted to engage with the activity. Trying to get involved in teaching, supporting or moderating the game was not only unwanted but also counterproductive. This is because students would automatically

freeze their discussions and engagement as players to return to their attention to us as our students. This relates to what Larsen explains as the necessary ‘spatial doubling’ that constitutes the act of play (Larsen, 2014, p. 183). What this means is that an activity can only be considered play if there is an overlap of a spatial locality where it takes place, and a layer of meaning that expands that space, and consequently, the activity itself (Larsen, 2014). Without that ‘make-believe’ or ‘mental augmentation’, as Larsen suggests, the activity would only be an activity, not play. Therefore, our presence as teachers within the virtual circle that the act of playing constitutes would only contribute to dissolve it.

Yet, time parameters were established and agreed upon in advance. We gave students forty-five minutes to construct their case and create a diagram or mind-map to represent it. They would then have five minutes per group to present their cases to the rest of the class and answer questions.

Finally, each group would vote for the most convincing argument that managed to solve the puzzle of the murder mystery. Because they had taken the play activity very seriously, what mattered here was that their votes were both logical and honest. This also led the students to take a more active role in redefining the learning objectives of the session. Some of their comments were, for example, that the game had helped them to understand ways to structure an essay or assignment. One of the things we learnt from the Murder Mystery game is the extent to which allowing students to demonstrate their critical thinking through play, rather than positioning them as “objects to be changed” that should passively accept our descriptions about what critical thinking really is, allows them to adopt a protagonist role that is personally and mutually empowering.

Top: Students present their ‘case’ during the Murder Mystery task Bottom: Close up of visual ‘maps’ made by students to explain their cases

Speed Dating with Books

This workshop connects two apparently unrelated activities: dating and academic reading. The aim of ‘Speed dating with books’ was to explore an approach to support the development of presentation and research skills based on humour and gameplay. The activity was borrowed from secondary school resources websites and adapted to the context of higher education in Arts Design and Media (2019). The idea behind was to demystify the notion of academic reading and research and encourage other less exclusionary understandings of the terms (Harwood & Hadley, 2004). It can be difficult to determine the extent to which international students’ exposure to specialised language, academic stereotypes and norms affect the way they engage with academic research (Hatakka, 2014). However, with regard to the teaching of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), Harwood and Hadley explain that the naturalisation of academic conventions only preserves a status quo that marginalises international students or minority groups (Harwood & Hadley, 2004).

inhibitions, encourages participation, laughter, enjoyment and critical thinking (Dormann & Biddle, 2009).

In short, we asked the students to bring a book of their choice to the session. As they came in the room, we gave them a form that they needed to fill in based on their chosen book. The form questions were aimed at getting the students to identify key bibliographic details about their books and briefly summarise their key ideas or content.

At the same time, the questions were written in a ‘speed dating language’ style in order to preserve the sense of pretend play experience of the session. We arranged the chairs in rows and asked the students to sit facing each other during two-minute encounters when they would take it in turns to persuade their possible ‘candidate’ about the charms of their book and to select it to meet again. Before moving on to the next date, students would need to make some notes whether they would have an interest in ‘dating that book again’ or not. Once they had all had the chance to meet each other, the most popular book titles were voted for and revealed.

Harwood and Hadley encourage the application of Critical Pragmatic EAP teaching approaches through which students are both exposed to dominant academic language and discourses and the possibility to challenge, question and transform them (2004). We believe that placing students in a position of passive receivers of apparent monolithic academic EAP rules and norms not just reinforces the idea of ‘copying’ the expert’s advice but also denies them the possibility of ‘invention or discovery’ (2004, p. 359). Therefore, incorporating humour into the teaching of fundamental skills at university such as academic research and reading is not about not taking them seriously. Rather, it is about engaging students with the task of making connections and bridging boundaries between their academic studies and real-life situations. The power of humour enhances communication, releases tension, overcomes

Overall, Speed Dating with Books was a workshop that we all enjoyed and made everyone laugh. It was very enjoyable to see students talking about their books with such enthusiasm and passion whilst embracing their role as participants of the game through a positive humorous attitude.

Humour played a crucially important part in this activity as it supported communication, interpersonal skills and a playful and subtle transgression and demystification of stereotypical ideas about what academic research, reading and presentations should look like or be taught. It promoted inclusion, cohesion and interaction within the group of students. As Dormann and Biddle (2009, p.

811) state, ‘humour is very much a social phenomenon: It is a pervasive feature of active social interaction, and we rarely laugh when alone’.

Students engaging in the Speed Dating with Books activity November 2019

Students engaging in the Speed Dating with Books activity November 2019

The Forensic Scavenger Hunt

What inspired us to plan the Forensic Scavenger Hunt session was the problem of students whose failure to fully engage with the library facilities has an effect on their academic achievement. This is an issue associated with students commencing their studies at university with either low levels of academic skills, from non-traditional backgrounds or the ones with less proficient level of English (Reading, 2016). At the same time, there is a direct connection between the increasing advances in technology and ‘endless supply of digital information via the internet’ and students’ lack of engagement with the digital resources and the physical library space (Walker, 2013, p. 281). We could argue that the amount of information that can be accessed online can give students a false impression and make them underestimate the time, effort and skills involved in the search and review of literature sources. This affects first year students, as the large amount of information available on the web requires them to apply evaluative skills that require time and effort to develop (Walker & Pearce, 2013).

Judith Reading suggests a relationship between academic and information skills and problem-solving abilities. Therefore, rather than supporting students through a lecture-based, teacher-centred pedagogy, why not engage them with the action of literature searching as a problem or quiz?

This is what we did in The Forensic Scavenger Hunt. This was a two-hour session divided into two main activities that involved teamwork, organisation, task management, collaboration and creativity.

The first task was twenty-five minutes long and aimed at getting the students to know each other within their small groups and understand the game. We proposed this preliminary scavenger hunt as all our students were international, and many of them not familiar with this game. For this first task, we gave them a list of things they

should find and photograph around the campus. For example, these included things such as ‘a two-dimensional artwork that suggests visual depth’, ‘someone famous’ or a ‘must-have item if trapped on a dessert island’. There were also a series of riddles within the list that they would need to decode in order to find something that would represent them visually.

Once completed the first scavenger hunt and we all celebrated the successful winners; we asked them to identify the type of skills the game had involved. We explained that the same kind of skills would be required during the second game activity. We then asked them to work within their groups and follow a series of instructions to a library search for references they would need to find. Again, each group would have to produce photographic proof of their findings in order to complete the task. The time limit by which they had to be back in the classroom was set to forty-five minutes. We gave each group a sealed envelope with a hypothetical essay question relevant to their discipline and asked them to find at least five different credible, reliable and relevant sources for that assignment.

This was a great game because it involved and overlapped various skills needed in higher education. Whilst our initial hypothesis was that students would be learning and practicing literature search and information literacy, they actually identified other many interconnected skills such as teamwork or time management for example.

However, if doing this activity again, we will reconsider the second task as it was closer to the idea of a ‘teaching activity’ than a game. We might rather remain within the symbolic, liminal and “meaningmaking” space of play and allow the students to make their own connections and apply the skills gained or discovered through the game to the real situation of a library search (Swan, 2009).

21

Visualising your Research Question: Poster Making

This workshop engaged students in using words, images and graphic elements to create a collage or poster that represented their research ideas and focus. While the session was planned for undergraduate international students in Visual Communication, it aimed at supporting Level 6 students, with their self-directed research project. From our teaching experience, the development of a research question, aims or focus is one of the most challenging tasks for both the Level 6 and Level 7 students at university. Common problems students may encounter relate to poor preliminary research, difficulties in defining an area from things they find interesting or not being able to narrow their broad interest into a specific focus. In addition, being able to clearly articulate the research question adds an extra layer of difficulty which particularly affects the international students (Patterson, 2011).

possible for the researcher to literally see what they do or do not know’ (2018, p. 6).

Thus, we wanted students to visualise their ideas, and see the thought process before attempting to articulate them in clear written language through three interrelated tasks.

For the first activity, students had to represent their research topic by using images only. They used magazines, coloured papers, pens and pencils to create their posters. Secondly, we asked the students to represent the same idea and research focus by combining and arranging single written or found words from magazines or newspapers into a design. Finally, students were asked to create their final research poster by combining text and images. To allow everyone’s thought process and research questions to be visualised, shared and discussed, students displayed their posters on the walls and had some time to present their posters.

We got inspiration from existing research on the use of visualisation formats such as mind maps, diagrams or visual metaphors (Eppler, 2006) and argument mapping or visualisation of the critical thinking process (Patterson, 2011; Noble & Bestley, 2011).

Patterson explains that apart from all the most common knowledge about critical thinking in the West such as the ‘ability to see logical connections’ or ‘different viewpoints’, the being able to ‘apply skills in a flexible and relevant manner to a situation that is entirely new' (2011, p. 36).

In addition, the problem solving that Tom Wujec presented in one of his TedTalks inspired to think about ways of breaking up a complex problem into separate parts by “making ideas visible” (Wujec, 2019). Most relevant to Art, Design and Media disciplines is research by Peter Thomas on practice-based, experiential and visual ways of how to bridge theory and practice (2018).

Thomas suggests that ‘communicating ideas visually through images, headlines, short chunks of texts and composition makes it

One of the benefits of the workshop was that it drew upon student’s skills in visual communication. This also made the problem of reflecting on their research focus more relevant for them and enjoyable. Working in small groups while creating their posters worked well because they had the chance to collaborate with each other, as well as being able to present and discuss their research ideas in a non-judgemental manner. The students’ feedback about the session was very positive as it they found it helpful and enjoyable. Yet, being able to frame and articulate the ideas they represented in their posters and discussed clearly in writing was still a challenge. Poster making can still serve the purpose of making concepts and ideas visible and reflecting upon them.

Above: An example of work made during the poster making session. Students had to visualise their research question without the use of text before explaining their decisions

Referencing Trail and Bibliography Bingo

We borrowed the idea and resources for this playful workshop from Tactile Academia.

This is a blog of on-going pedagogic research created by academics at Staffordshire University. People from other different universities have contributed to their research project that was funded by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Writing-PAD network (Tactile Academia, 2020). The ideas and resources of the website are particularly relevant for us as they are aimed at students in Art, Design and Media. The activities shared by Tactile Academia are thus based on practice-based, experiential approaches to teaching and learning academic writing and research.

Their aim is to explore ways to ‘link creative practice with academic research’ so the Bibliography Bingo follows this approach (2020). The authors of this resource were aiming at finding a way of supporting students with their literature searching skills. The Bibliography Bingo achieves this aim by getting students involved in the act of developing a search strategy, finding relevant literature and evaluating sources.

For our workshop, we asked students to bring a list of secondary sources relevant to their work or assignment. Yet, as only few of them had prepared this, we gave them time to do a ‘referencing trail’ by doing some research in the library or using their laptops. We then asked students to fill in a Bibliography Bingo card for each of the secondary sources they had found. They had to include their reference details, library location and, if possible, some thoughts or extra notes. This part of the activity was not as exciting as playing the bingo game.

However, it was important because it made students go to the library and find a range of sources that followed the kind of things, they had to look for such as a reference or bibliography list, for example. Yet, within

the series of clues that students had to find in their chosen sources, the more important ones are in the middle squares as they relate to sources that are most likely academic.

Students had to evaluate each of their sources and check the boxes that applied to them. Only sources that matched at least three of the squares in the centre counted and could be used for the game. However, if their chosen sources did not match the criteria in the centre, a tick on at least four of the other boxes was required.

Thus, the game mechanics of the game is just as in any other bingo game but using bibliography cards instead. Ideally, students should have their list of references ready at the start of the session to allow more time for the game itself. Giving students the chance to collaborate and peer review their cards and findings was helpful as they learnt from each other. While we have not trialed playing the game online yet, we believe it could be adapted in many ways and should be possible to play it via Microsoft Teams with small groups of students. Overall, what differentiates Bibliography Bingo from other ways of teaching literature search and analysis of sources is that students learn by doing rather than listening how to do it during a lecture.

List of things students need to look for in sources they encounter. Taken from the Bibliography Bingo card from Tactile academia (2020)

The Five-Week Time Planner Board Game The Five-Week Time Planner game was adapted from a Five-week Study Planner learning resource created by the Learning Enhancement Team – Academic Writing and Language (AWL) at Middlesex University and transformed into a Board game. The game aims at supporting students with their, difficult to achieve, time management skills by simulating a step by step planning of a hypothetical essay. From my experience in supporting dissertation or essay writing, it is very uncommon to meet students who plan their assignment with plenty of time and balance their university studies and other personal commitments. This is a problem that seems to affect both their wellbeing, as they may become overwhelmed by stressful workloads, and their academic achievement.

The relationship between academic achievement and time management has been studied and showed a strong relationship between student’s ability to manage their time effectively and their grades at university (Cemaloglu & Filiz, 2010).

Therefore, we are keen in finding ways to support students in this area.

In fact, what we describe as ‘time management skills’ is, according to those studies, an entangled relationship between different abilities. Time management refers to the use of time as a resource, and how different resources are applied to achieve a specific goal. Time planning relates to being able to consider time as a skill and determine priorities and methods to achieve or complete a task. Distractions, difficulties or problems represent the time consumers which may affect the way time is planned and used. Finally, time attitudes are learned behaviours which refer to tendencies towards the way activities or tasks are approached and the time allocated to them (2010). These appear to be too many different skills to support students with through a game. Yet, the board game activity was used as a visualisation approach to encourage awareness and reflection (Govaerts et al., 2010).

To play the Five-Week Planner game, students we set the students to work in groups of four or five. Each group had a printed board game and a set of activity cards. For students who were not working towards any assignment at that time, it was

helpful to give each group of students a hypothetical essay question or assignment title so that they could more clearly connect the level of difficulty and length of the assignment with the time needed to complete it. Otherwise, some students preferred to work on their own assignments.

The task consisted in creating a five-week plan for that imaginary or real assignment, project or essay. Whilst the five-week planner has a specific start day when the assignment brief is released, students can decide the submission deadline during week 5. Students had to use a set of cards or create their own with a series of possible activities they would embark on during those weeks. There was a range of study related, social and wellbeing activities including ‘day off’ and ‘meet with friends’. Once students finished creating their planner, each group had to explain the type of assignment they had planned for and justify their reasons for the way they had organised those five weeks. They had to explain the type of tasks they would do only once, and the ongoing, regular activities.

They also had to state for which of those activities they might need support and who they would contact.

Most students found the game helpful in terms of being encouraged to break a period of preparation for an assignment into many different steps. Also, they found very useful to visualise the many different activities that planning and preparing for those assignments require as well as realising that time to relax, meet friends and rest could also be considered. Yet, in our opinion, the Five-Week Time Planner game requires some adaptations to make it more enjoyable and to stimulate student’s more careful consideration and reflection. For example, allocating a specific length of time for each activity so that they are planned in relation to other things they would be doing on one day would help students even more. At the same time, whilst interactive, it serves as an educational exercise but does not function as a game. Elements such as a clear system of rules, the possibility of winners and losers, decision-making, challenges and consequences, or other inherent qualities of games might help to improve this activity and would be good to trial in the future.

Above: The Five-Week Planner Board Game

The Academic Art Dealer

This game was not inspired by pedagogical research but a hit TV show in China called Collecting Everything Under Heaven (Bu, 2007). This is similar to the UK TV show Antiques Roadshow where people’s antiques are appraised by different experts, except from the fact that in the Chinese version, fakes are being smashed to pieces in front of their owners and viewers. Because The Academic Art Dealer about assessing works of art, it shares similarities with both UK and Chinese TV shows. However, the focus of our game was to engage students in analysing and presenting their critical ideas about designs and artworks to their peers.

We therefore adapted the aims and structure of the BBC television programme into an auction house game where the student players took on the role of bidders, buyers and dealers.

We created the different game elements in Moodle H5P and Socrative. A preview of the auction items was made using he H5P Dialogue Cards resource. This created a series of double-sided cards with images of the designs or artworks for sale on one side, and the artist’s name and a brief description of the work on the other. Each student had an auction bid form to write notes about the items they were interested in.

At the start of the auction game, all students were given the same amount of mythical money to bid on their chosen items via a Socrative quick question poll. Using Socrative allowed to see the bids and winners of the auction in real time. Once the highest bidders won their items and the auction ended, students had the opportunity to buy or sell their artworks. Without any prompting, students decided to use their phones or laptops to search for more information about the items and persuade others to buy or sell at the best price possible they. This part of the activity was

very good in engaging students in the task of finding information and describing art in a critical and professional manner. It was interesting to see that by being immersed in the game, students became less selfconscious about their language skills or lack of confidence in sharing and presenting their ideas to their peers.

By the end of the game, after having had the chance to re-sell or buy from other students, the authenticity of the artworks they had bought was revealed. The fooled buyers who had bought fake copies made losses while the lucky ones buying original masterpieces great profits. As in the previously mentioned Chinese television show, the real price of the designs or artworks were revealed and the students who had made the biggest profit were the winners. The Academic Art Dealer was a very fun game which we all really enjoyed.

The game kept all students engaged and involved many different abilities beyond visual analysis and presentation skills. The Academic Art Dealer received excellent feedback from the students who suggested playing it again, but said that using a physical board-game, money and cards instead would make it even better.

China’s hit TV programme Collecting Everything Under Heaven (cctv.com)

References

Bu, K. (2007) Collecting Everything Under Heaven. [online]

Mrs.Readerpants. (2019) Book speed dating: the hows and whys.

Cemaloglu, N. & Filiz, S. (2020) The Relation between Time Management Skills and Academic Achievement of Potential Teachers, Educational Research Quarterly, 33:4, 3–23.

Noble, I. and Bestley, R. (2011) Visual research: an introduction to research methodologies in graphic design, 2nd edn, AVA Academia, Lausanne: Worthing.

Dormann C and Biddle R. (2009) A Review of Humour for Computer Games: Play, Laugh and More Simulation & Gaming 4, 802.

Eppler, M. J. (2006) A Comparison between Concept Maps, Mind Maps, Conceptual Diagrams, and Visual Metaphors as Complementary Tools for Knowledge Construction and Sharing. Information Visualization, 5:3, 202–210.

Govaerts S., Verbert K., Klerkx J., Duval E. (2010) “Visualizing Activities for Selfreflection and Awareness”. In: Luo X., Spaniol M., Wang L., Li Q., Nejdl W., Zhang W. (eds) Advances in Web-Based Learning - Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6483. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

Patterson, F. (2011) Visualising the Critical Thinking Process, Issues, 94: 36-41.

Reading, J. (2016) Providing Enhanced Information Skills Support to Students from Disadvantaged Backgrounds London: Western.

Sydney University Library Outreach Program, The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Elsevier Inc, 42:6, 694-704.

Swann, A. C. (2009) An intriguing link between drawing and play with toys.

(Report), Childhood Education. Association for Childhood Education International, 85:4, 230-236.

Tactile Academia (2020) —Tactile Academia- Exploring the links between creative and academic practice.

Harwood N and Hadley G. (2004) Demystifying Institutional Practices: Critical Pragmatism and the Teaching of Academic Writing, English for Specific Purposes, Elsevier Ltd, 23:4, 355–377.

Hatakka, M. (2014) Demystifying academic reading and writing, International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 7:2, 11-17.

Tactile Academia. (2018) Bibliography Bingo.

Larsen, L.J. (2015) “Play and Space – Towards a formal definition of play”, International Journal of Play, 4:2, 175-189.

Walker, K. W. and Pearce, M. (2014) “Student Engagement in One-Shot Library Instruction”, The Journal of Academic Librarianship. Elsevier Inc, 40:3, 281-290.

Learning Enhancement Team. (2020) Fiveweek Study Planner. Middlesex University.

Moon, J.A. (2008) Critical Thinking: An exploration of theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Thomas, P and Lees-Maffei, G .(2018) The poster session as fusing theory and practice in art and design education: exhibiting an occluded genre. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 11:2.

Wujec, T. (2019) Draw Toast A Primer in Systems Thinking. TedTalks [online].

Students from SUIC, Bangkok on the Erasmus exchange programme, constructing their case as part of the Murder Mystery session

Question That!

The Game

Carla Hamer

Chinese Chess or Xiangqi (Seattle Times online)

Objective: The purpose of the game Question That! is to elicit reflection and build and communicate new arguments via participant’s sharing and discussion of critical questions about a topic and possible answers to those questions (Morley, 2019; Moon, 2008). It suits and fits easily to discussions about any chosen content.

Therefore, a text or information about the specific subject, theoretical concept, or design ideas must be shared between players in advance prior to the game.

If the game is played online, the gameboard, counters, die, descriptions of movements and examples of questions are contained within a PowerPoint slide. A Teams group for all players and the uploaded PowerPoint in the Teams group shared folder is prepared in advance.

One player hosts a Teams meeting and share his/her screen showing the Online PowerPoint gameboard slide shared between all players, and all players open, view and edit the file as they participate in the Teams meeting game.

Preparation:

Play:

Question That! Can be played by two, three or four players or small teams. The board is a square 9 X 9 grid. Each square represents one step. Each player chooses one of the four coloured counters (red, green, yellow or blue) and places them on one of their ‘home’ grey rectangles at one end of the grid.

Each of the six counters represents one life and players can only move one counter at a time from the START square to FINISH.

A toss of a coin or throw of a die decides who starts. For the online PowerPoint version of the game, the die is represented through a video on the top left-hand side corner of the slide. To throw the video die players click play and stop the video before it ends.

If the game is played offline (traditional face-to-face), the equipment needed is a printed board, a die, six counters for each player, a printed sheet explaining the different type of movements and a printed sheet containing examples of critical thinking questions (such as What if?, What could?, How?, Why?, Why next? and So what?) and a notepad and pencil to keep notes .

Six different characters and types of move were adapted from the Chinese game Xiangqi (see image above) which can be played on a face-to-face and online basis and are represented in the dice (Wei et al., 2011; Zhang, 2011, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2013):

33

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

Finish

So what?

Why?

What next?

How?

Why?

What could?

Why?

What if?

B

Why?

What could?

How?

Why?

So what?

What if?

So what?

How?

?

C

What could?

What if?

?

How?

Why?

How?

So what?

What could?

Why?

D So what?

How?

So what?

What next?

So what?

?

What could?

So what?

How?

E

?

What could?

Why?

How?

What next?

How?

Why?

?

What if?

F

What next?

So what?

What if?

What could?

Why?

What next?

How?

What could?

What next?

G

Why?

What if?

So what?

?

What next?

So what?

Why?

So what?

How?

How?

What if?

What could?

How?

Why?

What could?

?

What next?

What could?

What next?

Why?

How?

Why?

What if?

What could?

How?

Why?

Start

H I

Question That! game board

If a player throws a three, (the General) for example, he or she can only move her/his piece one square in any diagonal, vertical or horizontal direction.

Each player (individually or in small teams) finds their way around the grid through different critical thinking obstacles to reach the final goal of the game.

Players take it in turns to throw the die to move a single counter of their own colour (out of their six same-coloured counters).

Each move is according to a different rule for each of the six characters (Chariot, Elephant, General, Cannon, Horse and Counsellor). No two counters can occupy the same square at the same time. If a player lands on a square occupied by an opposing piece, the other player’s piece is removed from the board and the opposing player loses that counter (one of his/her lives) and needs to restart the with another of his/her remaining counters.

Players agree to either each annotating their questions or have a scribe to keep record of the questions asked during the game. If played on Teams, this can be done via the chat option.

If a player is prevented from moving a counter into a square because of the presence of opposing player’s counters in that square, he/she will have to either swap her/his turn with the opposing player or lose her/his turn if this is denied.

If a player’s counter lands on one of the squares with a written question, she/he asks a question about their prepared text, topic or theoretical concepts previously agreed and gives a possible or hypothetical answer to his/her own question. The player might also wish to invite the other players to contribute to frame the question or discuss the answers.

If a player’s counter lands on a square with a question mark, this means any player can propose a question for group discussion that relates to their agreed topic or suggest other connected topic or idea for discussion.

Winning: The game ends when one of the players or small team reaches the Finish square on the board.

Variants: Beyond the possibility of playing Question That! in relation to any text or topic, the game lends itself to many different variations and be adapted to different contexts and levels (Mayer, 2011). The board square grid can be left blank for players to formulate their own questions.

Also, the question mark squares can be used in combination with a card deck with extra questions or ‘destiny’ cards that would introduce an element of luck to the game (i.e. extra lives, power cards, etc.)(Sarxone and Devlin-Scherer, 2016; Zhang et al., 2011).

References

Mayer, B. (2011) Board game design: a pedagogical tool for inquiry and expression, in The Gaming Life [online].

Moon, J. (2008) Critical Thinking: an exploration of theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Morley, C. (2019) Critical Thinking Card Game [online].

Sarxone, N.B and Devlin-Scherer. (2016) Let the (Board) game begin: Creative ways for enhancing teaching and learning, The Clearning House, 89:6, 215-222.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

(2013) Chinese Chess [online].

Zhang, X, Chen, L, Tu, F and Li, Z. (2011) Discussion on Chinese Chess decisionmaking system with emotion, in Chinese Control and Decision Conference (CCDC), 3446–3450.

Zhou, W., Liu, J. and Zhao, Y. (2011) The Construction of Chinese Chess Computer Game Platform, 6th International Conference on Computer Science & Education.

Bibliography

Dixon, A. (2020) Adam Dixon –Writer & Game designer [online].

Fang, Y. Chen, K. and Huang, Y. (2016) Emotional reactions of different interface formats: Comparing digital and traditional board games, Advances in Mechanical Engineering, 8:3, 1-8.

Gramazio, H. and Farnetti, T.S.G. (2019) How not to play [online].

Gramazio, H. and Farnetti, T.S.G. (2019) How to play on the District line between Stepney Green and Embankment [online].

Li, Q. (2012) Understanding Enactivism: A Study of Affordances and Constraints of Engaging Practicing Teachers as Digital Game Designers, Educational Technology Research and Development, 60:5, 785-806.

Subhash, S. and Cudney, E. (2018) Gamified learning in higher education: A systematic review of the literature, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 87.

Theodosiou, S. and Karasavvidis, I. (2015), Serious games design: A mapping of the problems novice game designers experience in designing games, Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, 11:3, 133-148..

37

Playful Practice: Contributions

40

Playing in the Spaces: Anarchism in the classroom

by Andrew Brogan

44

Play X Creativity

by Yi-Chen Chen

48

Brahimaḍa: Everything that exists anywhere

by Rupi Dhillon

52

Research Games: A playful experience

by Carla Hamer

56

A Game for English Literature: Who knows?

by Izabela Hopkins

58

Playful Jewellery Design

by Hauibing Li

60

Spread the Word / 传话

by Wenyi Ma

62

Shakespertise: The card game

by David Roberts

64

Walking, Drifting, Playing: Psychogeographic games in the learning experience

by Ally Standing

Playing in the Spaces: Anarchism in the classroom

Andrew Brogan

Let me start with an opening statement: anarchism is playful and creative. Now more than ever we need to approach education with imagination in order to combat the increasing constraints placed upon our practice by individualised, competitive, and metric-driven understandings of what it means to teach and learn. What I am particularly interested in is finding creative ways to subvert the institutions we work in from the inside by carving out spaces in the classroom which push back against an understanding of education which casts students as consumers both in terms of finances and knowledge, and educators as providers of a paid-for service. Such an approach is rooted in anarchist thought and practice.

Anarchism covers a wide range of different areas with different focusses, but there are common roots to all in the drive to act in the here-and-now in the pursuit of freedom, equality, and solidarity (Franks, 2011). Often termed as prefigurative action, or ‘be the change you want to see’, anarchist thought and practice encourages us to act from our current position and to change our behaviours at a personal and everyday level (Heckert, 2010, 2012; Newman, 2016), disrupting the expected behaviours which are imposed on us from above. Taking this into the classroom manifests as a call to re-think our everyday practice and interactions with students in order to disrupt the expected behaviours of provider-consumer and see what other forms of educational relationship can arise (Brogan, 2017).

This often means playing with different approaches in the classroom, from changing the physical layout of the space, to students taking a role in the design of

modules (Brogan, Forthcoming). These may seem like small steps, and they are, but these playful and creative uses of the spaces and resources available to us are the here-and-now actions called for in anarchist thought and practice.

I want to briefly highlight only one of these examples of anarchist-inspired creative practice from my own teaching.

This is not offered as a blueprint to be followed, but as a point of inspiration. In a previous role I taught an introductory module on British politics, and one of the sessions was about the relationship between the judiciary and politics. In my continuing attempts to disrupt the expected provider-consumer behaviours in the classroom I set up this particular session as a role play in which I would take a minimal role beyond providing a loose framework for the students to work in. I had previously provided the students with some background information on human rights law as it applies in the UK and some details of a real deportation case in which politicians clashed with the judiciary. At the beginning of the session I explained that we would do a role play and the students were free to decide their own roles from a choice of judge, accused, politicians, human rights group, and public. With 10 minutes to prepare their positions I handed the session over to the judge to run. I had no further role but to sit back, watch the session unfold, and embrace the unpredicatability of what might happen. In this situation this was a radical relinquishing of the authority that accompanies the traditional position of an educator, and a playful attempt to disrupt traditional educational relationships and leave space for other relationships and experiences to develop (Brogan, 2018).

41

A playful and anarchist approach to teaching represents ‘ … a call to re-think our everyday practice and interactions with students in order to disrupt the expected behaviours of providerconsumer and see what other forms of educational relationship can arise’

References

Brogan, A.J. (2017). The Exilic Classroom: Spaces of Subversion. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51:2, 510-523.

Relationships. In B. Franks, & M. Wilson (Eds.), Anarchism and Moral Philosophy (pp.

186-207). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brogan, A.J. (2018). Subversion in the Classroom: Anarchy in Thought and Practice in Higher Education. PhD Thesis: University of Kent.

Heckert, J. (2012). Anarchism WIthout Opposition. In C. B. Daring, J. Rouge, D. Shannon, & A.Volcano (Eds.), Queering Anarchism. Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire (pp.63-75). Oakland, CA: AK Press.

Brogan, A.J. (Forthcoming). Resisting the TEF. In A. French (Ed.), Diversity Deficits.

Bingley: Emerald Publishing.

Franks, B. (2011). Post-Anarchism: A Partial Account. In D. Rousselle, & S. Evren (Eds.), Post-Anarchism: A Reader (pp. 168-180).

London: Pluto Press.

Heckert, J. (2010). Listening, Caring, Becoming: Anarchism as an Ethics of Direct

Newman, S. (2016). Postanarchism.

Cambridge: Polity.

Play X Creativity

Yi-Chen Chen

My Face, My Choice by Yi-Chen Chen (2019)

My research project focused on creativity; specifically, the association between adulthood creativity and childlike methods of play. Being creative is an essential element for survival in this changeable society. However, we are often restricted by the environment surrounding us, and many of us have not been taught how to maintain and cultivate creativity as we grow older.

Thus, in my practice I aim to reignite adults’ creative tendencies and remind them of their childhood memories by applying different playful methods for the wearers to interact with.

Based on my research, I have incorporated a range of playful elements such as an adjustable face and detachable facial features, in order to reignite and draw out the wearers’ creative tendencies, as well as remind them of their childhood memories.

The detachable parts are made of crayons, and so are not only decorations on the piece, but also can be removed from the main body and further used in different playful contexts, for example drawing.

Tangram by Yi-Chen Chen (2019)

Life Puzzle by Yi-Chen Chen (2019)

The tangram was originally designed to cultivate children’s spatial ability which allows them to be creative by putting tans together to form shapes.

I incorporated this idea into my jewellery piece in order to arouse the wearers’ awareness of losing the ability to be innovative and creative.

Through interacting with this piece, the wearers can reclaim their inner child.

Most have experienced playing with a puzzle such as Tetris, and have enjoyed solving the difficulties while playing.

This piece aimed to provide the wearers with a range of opportunities to ‘puzzle’ their own jewellery through selecting different plates and putting them together, and also by choosing different colourful tracks. The tracks will be made from crayons as well as separated from the main plates which allow the wearer to pick up their preferred colours.

Brahima�a: Everything that exists anywhere

Rupi Dhillon

From Brahimaḍa: Everything that exists anywhere (2019)

Everything that exists everywhere explores notions of tentacularity, of making kin and connections through trajectories, lines and intersections on Earth and beyond. Cat’s Cradle - a game played before our time, across borders and nations, unknowingly weaving us together.

Brahimaḍa directly translates from English to Punjabi as “universe”. Most south Asian languages are from Sanskrit.

The term Brahmanda is Sanskrit for “universe”. The concept of universe is implied here to show a universality with Cat’s Cradle, one of the oldest games recorded in human history.

From Brahima�a: Everything that exists anywhere (2019)

Everything that exists anywhere explores notions of tentacularity, of making kin and connections through trajectories, lines and intersections on Earth and beyond. Cats Cradle - a game played before our time, across borders and nations, unknowingly weaving us together.

Research Games: A playful experience

Carla Hamer

Do interactive games produce acts rather than meaning?

Left: The author’s grandfather and great-uncle in Aarhus, Denmark, c. 1940s.

These photographs are part of a body of work and series of practice-based projects during my PhD studies exploring the ethics of participatory photography methodologies in research informed by ethnographic modalities. A story about my grandfather and a nineteenth century photograph of him as a child with his elder brother inspired this work. When my grandfather moved from Denmark to Argentina in the 1940s his brother remained in their country to attend to family matters. Whilst since moving in Argentina he never returned to Denmark or saw his brother again, for many years, from one country to the other, they continued their relationship through games of chess. They played by posting their chess notations. This anecdote triggered many questions regarding their sibling relationship and the bond between them. For example, how long would each other have to wait for their letters to arrive and thus be able to respond with the next move? How did that wait feel? In what way playing something together, as opposed to sending information or updates, might have felt differently? Did the experience of play contribute to create, preserve or deepen their bond and relationship? Did each other’s likeness fade with time? Did the game over the post contribute to, or intensified the experience of intimacy and sense of presence of the other?

From my own history of moving to another country and leaving family and friends behind, I decided to test the experience of playing a game of chess with a very close friend in Buenos Aires.

Because of the time restrictions imposed by my PhD and the possibilities of contemporary technological advancements, I replaced my grandfather’s system of playing chess over the post with the WhatsApp social media platform. This form of communication is also relevant as it has contributed to shape the way long-term relationships can be ongoingly created and constructed (Adami et al., 2016). Thus, we set our chessboards and played games of chess across both countries and each other’s seasonal and time zone differences. It was a cold winter for me in UK and very warm summer for my friend in Argentina. This inspired the question of what photography does, beyond describing and representing.

Because each photograph sent was a chess move, not just a representation, we would argue that they did not merely describe the event of the game, but actually played it. In other words, they constituted the game itself. Thus, they functioned as performative utterances, in Austin’s, Derrida’s or Butler’s terms, in the sense of doing what they said at the moment of saying it (Austin, 1962; Derrida, 2010; Butler, 1995). Do interactive games, regardless what, how or where we play them, not have a similar performative aspect by constituting those interactive experiences and “producing acts rather than meanings”? (Schott & Yeatman, 2005, p.

89).

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From Performing Relationships (PhD chapter, Carla Hamer, forthcoming)

References

Adami, E. et al. (2016) Special Issue: Social media and the visual, Visual Communication. London, England: SAGE Publications, 115:3, 263-270.

Derrida, J., Amelunxen, H.v., Wetzel, M., Richter, G. & Fort, J. (2010) Copy, archive, signature: a conversation on photography, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Austin, J.L., Urmson, J.O. & Sbisà, M. 1976, How to do things with words: the William James lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Schott, G and Yeatman, B. (2005), Subverting Game-Play: JFK Reloaded as Performative Space, Australasian journal of American studies, 24:2, 82-94.

Butler, Judith. (1995). Burning acts Injurious Speech, in Performativity and Performance, edited by Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. New York: Routledge: James.

A Game for English Literature: Who knows?

Izabela Hopkins

Dr Izabela Hopkins, who co-authored the book Games for English Literature with Professor David Roberts, spoke with us when we were researching for this publication. She told us about one of the games featured in the book: “In the guidebook that we published, there are many games for critical thinking. They of course can be adapted depending on what kind of subject you are teaching and what your overarching aim is.

We had a discussion on how and why games could be adaptable to literary climate classroom scenarios, because we think that a great part of the thinking and experiential learning excludes literary studies. Partly because it’s a slightly different field, the outcomes of the game are not as predictable as they might be in other subject areas. So we focused on the theoretical thinking behind it and how this translates into a game-like scenario. Then the games themselves are divided into different categories. One of the categories was critical thinking and how to develop it. Our idea was to always start small and then moving on to more abstract concepts and build on that.

The first category was about words and images, the second was about point of view games, the third was about text and content, the fourth category included games about theory and concept, and the last one was about building arguments.

One of the games was called Who knows? and the purpose of the game was to consolidate knowledge and draw upon it in order to build new arguments. This game lends itself easily to discussions of theoretical concepts and topics, as well as specific texts, and derives elements from the popular game table Guess Who. Basically, what you need is just a simple board dice, concept cards, and an overarching question card placed in the centre. The game begins by dividing the class into small groups. In each group, a student draws a concept card from the pile and has to explain its content to his or her teammates.

The purpose of the of the concept card is so they've got something there, but they have to use their own words in order to explain it - i.e., without using any words already on the card. If the student’s teammates guess correctly, the student rolls the dice and moves forward. If nobody gets it, it goes back to the bottom of the deck, or another student may step in. The student whose explanation fails to elicit the correct response sits the round out and for every successful explanation, keeps the card. The student wins a point and a piece of the overarching question is revealed.”

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Playful Jewellery Design

Huaibing Li

Top: Progress shots showing articulated elements Left and far left: Preparatory sketches 2020

MA Jewellery Design student Huaibing Li has made a piece of playful jewellery.

It is inspired by dreams and by games played with the artist’s brother.

Articulated elements on the piece encourage interaction and allow the wearer an insight into the narrative conveyed.

Spread the Word 传话

Wenyi Ma

Preparatory sketch by Wenyi Ma for her game Spread the Word / 传话 (2020)

MA student from the School of Art Wenyi Ma has designed a series of games which explore communication, the creation of links, the concept of home, and her experience as an international student. Above one of the preparatory sketches for her game Spread the Word is shown.

Props: Cotton threads, some disposable cups.

Rules: First, make a hole in the bottom of the cup, put one end of the thread through the hole and tie it to the cup, and then fix the cup on another end of the rope in the same way to make a "phone". At least three players are required. When the game is in progress, any player can start to ‘spread his word’. The first player says something to the second player, and the second player transmits these words to the next person. All the player will pass on the message which eventually passes back to the first person.

We can see how the message is passed creatively during the whole process.

This game was originally a very traditional game, designed for students to practice their pronunciation and listening. For international students it will be fun, which encourages them to speak and also improve their creativity.

道具需求: 棉线，⼀次性杯⼦。 游戏规则: ⾸先在杯⼦底部打⼀个洞，把 绳⼦的⼀头穿过洞打结，使之固定于杯 ⼦底部，再在绳⼦的另⼀头以同样⽅式 固定杯 ⼦，这样便做成⼀个“电话”。需 要⾄少三名玩家参与。游戏进⾏时，可 由任意玩家开始传话，第⼀位玩家说出 某些话给第⼆ 位玩家，第⼆位玩家再将 这些话传给下⼀个⼈，由此经过所有⼈ 再传回到第⼀个⼈那⾥。我们可以看到 在整个过程中信息是怎 样被创意地传播 的。 本游戏原为⼀种⼗分传统的电话游戏， 是针对学⽣练习发⾳和听⼒⽽设计的。 对于国际学⽣这会很好玩，能⿎励他们 发⾔，也 能提⾼他们的创意能⼒。

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Shakespertise: The card game

David Roberts

Shakespertise: a card game for students and bard buffs by Professor David Roberts

National Teaching Fellow Professor David Roberts, who works in ADM’s School of English, has long been an advocate for the use of games within the context of teaching. In 2016, David coauthored the book Games for English Literature along with Izabela Hopkins, in which they suggested a range of games adaptable to the study of English Literature at various educational levels.

The games range from simple games about words and images, building up to games which challenge students to engage critically with the more complex theoretical topics they may encounter.

The most recent game David has developed is Shakespertise, a card game aimed at ‘students and bard buffs’ and which enables the player to get to grips with a selected Shakespeare play - the example pictured above is an edition dedicated to The Tempest - on a number of levels, both linguistic and contextual.

Walking, Drifting, Playing: Psychogeographic games in the learning experience

Ally Standing

Psychogeography, a critical approach to urban walking proposed by the Lettrist International (and later the Situationist International) - a group of radical artists, academics, and activists based in midtwentieth century Paris - is defined as ‘the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals’ (Debord, 1955). This muchreproduced definition is admittedly a rather stuffy one; and one which doesn’t serve to capture the ludic nature of the diverse and multi-disciplinary work which has come out of this area since then. Guy Debord (1955) himself, founding member of both aforementioned groups, recognised the ‘pleasing vagueness’ of the term: one of the appealing features of the subject is its very resistance to being defined.

Psychogeographers, both historical and contemporary, have been able to define this shifting and dynamic pursuit for themselves.

In layman’s terms, psychogeography is, as the name would suggest, located somewhere in the conceptual space between psychology and geography, and could be thought of as ‘how places feel’. In his 2004 article A New Way of Walking, Joseph Hart describes it as ‘a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities’. This ludic nature of psychogeography to which Hart refers is key; indeed, the Lettrist International’s magazine Potlatch included a ‘psychogeographic game of the week’ (Debord, 1955), and many of the techniques introduced by the L.I and the S.I - and employed by psychogeographers since then - are inherently playful.

Given that this publication is focused on the theme of playful learning, it seems only fitting to include some reference to how these psychogeographic techniques might be employed as part of the learning experience.

As recognised by Richardson (2015), psychogeography has received in recent years an explosion of academic interest, having been used as a theoretical underpinning in a wide range of disciplines, including education, as highlighted by Hindley, Knowles, and Ruth (2019, p. 2).

This section is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all instances in which

psychogeographic ideas have been used in teaching, nor is it an in-depth investigation into one specific case. Rather, this piece will unpack some of the facets of psychogeographic play in relation to learning, including the dérive (a critical urban ‘drift’) and the use and creation of subversive maps. Both through referring to various instances in which these techniques of experimental ambulation have been used within my own teaching - and that of some of my colleagues from the School of Visual Communication and the wider faculty - and through the review of selected academic literature on the topic, I hope to highlight the potential for this as an approach to be used more widely, especially within collaborative and interdisciplinary creative modules.

The dérive (in French; ‘drift’) was initially proposed in 1956 by Guy Debord - who at the time was part of the Lettrist International - and was explained in Theory of the Dérive (Debord, 1958) as a walk through an urban environment; one which was playful, critical, and ‘quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll’. The aim of ‘drifting’ in this way was to provoke a deeper understanding of the city, and as such constituted ‘a challenge to dominant forms of behaviour, life and experience’ (Barnard, 2004). Play was - and remains - central to the concept of the dérive; these journeys often use a game of sorts as a way of relinquishing control over direction. These ‘games’ can often be a simple formula such as ‘take every left turn’, or can take the form of more whimsical instructions such as ‘follow a bird’, while some involve the subversive use of maps. Robert MacFarlane (cited in Coverley, 2010, p. 9) challenges the reader to ‘catch the textual run-off of the streets; the grafitti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation’, and highlights the importance of recording these journeys in the stroller’s favoured medium - he mentions photography, sound recording, and writing, but we could add any number of diverse possibilities to this list.

Psychogeography as a practice is inherently inter- and trans-disciplinary, meaning it is ideal to incorporate into cross-disciplinary collaborative modules, especially those with a creative output.

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Narrative: Space and Place is a 20-credit, level 4 module I helped colleagues to develop in 2018. The module is one of 5 options which are open to students from across the School of Visual Communication - which includes Graphic Communication, Photography, Illustration, and Design for Performance - and involves students working in small groups towards the collaborative creation of a lo-fi, experimental publication known as a ‘zine’.

The visual and textual material for the publications was generated by each student group, who at the very start of the module were tasked with carrying out a dérive of their own. After first being introduced to the idea of psychogeography and more

specifically the dérive, students used a range of playful methods to determine their routes.

While attempts can be made to plan, this is often futile; Mollie Rycroft-Stanley, a student who took the module, told me: Initially, my partner and I set out to follow a small circle that my group had drawn on a map of Birmingham. However, we soon ended up forgetting about this map and following our noses instead. If a particular direction caught or attention, we followed suit which lead to us exploring areas of Birmingham we might never have seen otherwise.

Initially, my partner and I set out to follow a small circle that my group had drawn on a map of Birmingham.

However, we soon ended up forgetting about this map and following our noses instead. If a particular direction caught or attention, we followed suit which lead to us exploring areas of Birmingham we might never have seen otherwise.

Right: Peter’s Day, an illustration by Mollie Rycroft-Stanley (2020)

This notion of spontaneity is echoed in the writing of Nora Pyyry, who suggests that in the Situationist tradition it was ‘impossible to plan a dérive: it had to be played, felt and created in the moment’ (2019). For Mollie, the element of chance offered by this technique was refreshing: ‘the dérive allowed me to change my standard method.

As someone who usually likes to plan every little detail, it was nice to take a break from this approach and adopt a more free style of research.’. She went on to tell me that the activity caused her to reflect upon her own approach to work, and that since then, she has continued to explore this and other playful techniques. Ngọc Triệu (2018) reflects a similar view regarding the transformative potential these critical walks can have when incorporated into learning and teaching, positing that ‘a psychogeographic pedagogical approach can inspire students to look beyond initial appearances or preconceptions and cultivate a new learning mindset’. Aaron Paddock, another student I spoke to about his experience of going on a dérive, said: I believe incorporating playful techniques in a creative learning environment is key. It can really help with idea generation and can prompt ‘out of the box’ thinking.

Through my own experience, I can say it has definitely helped with my workflow.

It’s clear from speaking to students who have used the dérive as a playful method for generating primary research that it can represent a welcome break from the more formalised techniques to which they’ve become accustomed, even going as far as to suggest that it has the potential to transform their approach to learning and their creative workflows. However, interviewing these same students also served to highlight some of the possible issues which need to be considered when planning such a learning activity. The dériveur, by the very nature of searching for the overlooked and the inbetween and liminal spaces in the city, will often find themselves walking around areas which while rich with potential for creative exploration, might at the same time not be the safest - or at least, may not be perceived to be. Rice (2015) makes the point that ‘one of the requisites of playful behaviour is that the person feels safe or comfortable in their surroundings’; indeed, Mollie, one of the students interviewed, explained that this uncertainty did to some extent impede her group’s ability to cultivate the spontaneity they hoped for: ‘we were walking in a city away from home. We knew nothing of our surroundings which although interesting, can be slightly intimidating’. In the interest of inclusivity, when planning a dérive as part of any learning experience, it’s important to consider the multiplicity of the cohorts’ ways of seeing, experiencing, traversing, and existing within the urban space we are asking them to explore.

Illustration by Aaron Paddock Created during a dĂŠrive through NYC

Collaborative Practice is an ambitious cross-faculty level 5 module that I have been helping my colleague John Wigley to develop and coordinate for several years, and in which I have been able to use my belief in the city as a stage for learning to a great extent. The module involves students from the Schools of Visual Communication, Art, Media, English, Jewellery, and Architecture coming together in groups of six to respond collaboratively to the theme of ‘the hidden city’. While not written into the module in such an explicit a way as with the Narrative module discussed previously, the idea of critically exploring the city on various levels is key. According to Triệu (2018) ‘when employing psychogeography as a potential pedagogic approach in higher education, it is crucial to design the learning spaces in a way that … encourages curiosity’. Here, it is important to note that ‘learning spaces’ can function on a number of levels - physical, mental, and virtual - and that in the context of psychogeography, the city itself is indeed a learning space. Part of the pre-module reference material provided to students is a collaborative ‘soundscape’; recorded narrations of walks taken by staff from across the faculty, and focused on diverse topics from ‘Text in the City’ to ‘The Birthplace of British Techno’ and many in between . In listening to these recordings, students can begin to see that ‘the city is not a unified whole, but a unity of fragmented perceptions’ (Yılmaz, 2016).

While not branded as dérives as such, a number of walks have also been built into the module content - during the third week of the module, students choose from a variety of walks, talks, and tours, all of which aim to highlight aspects of the city which may otherwise have gone overlooked.

One of the talks available at this point introduces students to the concept as psychogeography, and we have seen evidence of the influence of this theoretical underpinning within various group projects, whether as part of the research stage or more obviously present as part of the final outcome. When referring to the use of psychogeography as a pedagogic approach, Triệu (2018) notes that the learning spaces cultivated should ‘challenge the hierarchy of lecturer/student relations’. Both of the aforementioned ambulatory examples from Collaborative Practice - the collaborative ‘soundscape’ and the guided walks certainly represent such a hierarchical disruption, in that through walking with students - be that virtually or physically the lecturer too is engaging in a learning journey of their own; opening themselves up to ‘the possibilities of new experiences’ as they come upon the shifting ambiences and

encounters of the urban space they move through (Yılmaz, 2016).

Whilst recognising the potential of the dérive as an alternative research method, a group of researchers in the field of management education (Hindley, Knowles, & Ruth, 2019) have questioned the feasibility of assessing work generated in this way due to the range of data produced.

Firstly, we should note that while psychogeography is interdisciplinary, it is most often explored within arts and humanities subjects - so the particular context of business management and its more systematic and quantifiable research methods would likely make it more challenging to build a dérive into assessable assignments. The article in question doesn’t, however, rule it out altogether, instead calling for ‘more sophisticated marking schemes’ (ibid., p. 13). With playful learning techniques such as these, it’s important that this is built into the learning design from the start. The word ‘imaginative’ features in the Learning Outcomes of both of the collaborative modules mentioned previously, Narrative: Space and Place and Collaborative Practice. With the latter, one of the criteria forming the Learning Outcomes related directly to the group’s exploration of the urban environment. It could in some ways seem counter-intuitive to measure or grade the outcome of play - which should by its very nature have intrinsic motivation - so it’s advisable to word Learning Outcomes and criteria carefully, so that students can use the playful learning tools we give them in a natural and uninhibited way.

As mentioned previously, the subversive use and creation of maps is something which has been key to psychogeography since its inception. Through a process of recording his drifts through the city, Guy Debord made a series of maps of Paris in the 1950s.

These highly personal works did not function as a regular map; rather, they took as their starting point a subjective perspective, using a range of media and artistic techniques to represent the spatial experience of Debord himself; serving, according to Ebru Yılmaz, to emphasise that ‘urban space is a collection of individual experiences’ (2016). Debord himself saw the production of these maps as transformative, claiming that it could lead to ‘complete insubordination to habitual influences’. Since then, many psychogeographers and other creative practitioners have explored the potential of playful cartography, and it is something I have used within my teaching practice on a number of occasions.

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The lecture I gave during Collaborative Practice about psychogeography includes a series of mapping tasks, as does the Narrative: Space and Place module. I was also able to spent a week at Escuela Superior de Arte y Diseño Andalucía (ESADA), having received a teaching mobility grant as part of the Erasmus+ scheme. The workshop I delivered was based around psychogeography, and was partly a condensed version of the Narrative module discussed previously - with students working collaboratively to create zines using material generated from their own dérives.

Karen O’Rourke, author of Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers, asserts that ‘mapping, … like walking, is an embodied experience carried out from a particular point of view’ (Pérez de Miles & Libersat, 2016). This becomes very clear when carrying out creative mapping tasks and there is such a variety of outcomes when students are tasked with finding an ‘alternative way of mapping’ or simply drawing a map of where they live. It would, then, seem that a creative mapping activity might be an ideal one to encourage the type

Above: ESADA students creating work in response to their dérives through Granada, Andalusia, January 2020 Right: Collage/mixed media work by ESADA students Created following a dérive through Granada, January 2020

of critical thinking discussed within the first sections of this publication playing with ‘students’ preconceived ideas and concepts, requiring them to develop their own perspective, and understand the multiplicity of alternative views’ (Rice, 2009). Playful approaches like these sit within a framework of constructivist educational theory, which, put simply, is based around the idea that students ‘construct their own perspective of the world based on their interpretation of their personal experiences’ (ibid.). Creative mapping could, then, help students to transition from a learning process of direct transmission to one which is more constructive.

Conceptual maps can also be used to ‘facilitate connections between knowledge zones’ Left: Giant conceptual map created during a workshop for Visual Communication foundation students, October 2019

Mapping in a less geographical sense can also be relevant within the context of curriculum design; as suggested by Arthur Efland (2000, p. 281) who compares learning design to that of urban space, calling for a curriculum which represents the unplanned or ‘natural’ city and the complexity of interdisciplinary and overlapping academic topics. He is an advocate for teaching which ‘attempts to enhance and enlarge the learner’s power of understanding by enabling him or her to see connections between and among domains of knowledge’ (ibid., p. 284). He demonstrates his ideas using diagrams he calls ‘semilattices’ - which are essentially conceptual maps broken down into sub-topics and which demonstrate contextual overlaps.

While these conceptual maps can indeed be used as a learning design tool, they can also be employed as a teaching activity. By asking a student to ‘map’ their research question and its associated thematic subtopics, it is possible to ‘allow for a more complex and flexible learning structure, which facilitates connections between knowledge zones’ (Pérez de Miles & Libersat, 2016), which is, of course, key to the development of critical thinking skills.

The introduction of psychogeographic games into the learning experience is something that, through the examples outlined in this piece, I have seen to have the potential to be transformative for students on a number of levels. Not only does it alter their perception of the city and of their place within the wider cultural landscape, it can also help them to see how their own individual experience fits into a ‘plurality of perspectives’ (Pérez de Miles & Libersat, 2016). This is key in terms of helping students to adapt to a more constructive form of learning, and to cultivate the kind of critical thought demanded at HE level. These playful psychogeographic practices, which can span a multitude of disciplines, are especially relevant within a creative sector which is placing increasing amounts of importance on the idea of interdisciplinary working both in education and within industry.

Through a deeper and more playful engagement - both with the city and with the idea of mapping - it is possible to ‘open up transitional spaces for observation, imagination, and narration’ (ibid.). In asking students to look at, move through, and map the city in ways previously unfamiliar to them, we can bring about in them an ontological shift, helping them to understand the layered and interconnected nature of complex issues; to tolerate uncertainties and possibilities; and ultimately, to see and articulate their own position in relation to them.

References

Barnard, A. 2004, The legacy of the Situationist International: The production of situations of creative resistance, Capital & Class, 28:3, 103-124.

Bertling, J.G. (2017), Internship terrains: Psychogeographically mapping place, International Journal of Education through Art, 13:2, 261-269.

Coverley, M. (2010), Psychogeography, Hertfordshire: Harpenden.

Debord, G. (1955), Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, Les Lèvres Nues #6.

Debord, G. (1958), Theory of the Dérive, Les Lèvres Nues #9 (November 1956), reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958) Efland, A., (2000). The city as metaphor for integrated learning in the arts. Studies in Art Education, 41:3, 276-295.

Ferguson, R., Alÿs, F. and Arm and Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, (2007).

Francis Alÿs: politics of rehearsal: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles: Steidl.

Hart, J. (2004) A New Way of Walking, UTNE Reader Online.

Hindley, C., Knowles, D. & Ruth, D. (2019), Teaching research methods: Introducing a psychogeographical approach, Journal of management & organization,1-13.

Pérez de Miles, A. & Libersat, J.U. 2016, ROAM: Walking, Mapping, and Play: Wanderings in Art and Art Education, Studies in Art Education, 57:4, 341-357.

Pyyry, N. (2019). From psychogeography to hanging-out-knowing: Situationist dérive in nonrepresentational urban research, Area, vol. 51:2 315-323.

Rice, L. (2009) Playful Learning, Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 4:2, 94-108.

Richardson, T. (2015) Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography.

London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Triệu, N. (2018). Inside, in between and out: How can psychogeography be beneficial to teaching and learning in higher education?

Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 3:1 [online].

Yılmaz, E. 2016, Subjectivity in Design Education: The Perception of the City through Personal Maps, International Journal of Art & Design Education, 35:1, 121-139.

Contributors & Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of those who contributed to this project and document; their work has really helped to contextualise the themes discussed, and has given this publication more depth and richness.

Contributors (in alphabetical order): Andrew Brogan Yi-Chen Chen Rupi Dhillon Carla Hamer Izabela Hopkins Huaibing Li Wenyi Ma Aaron Paddock David Roberts Mollie Rycroft-Stanley Robert Sharl Ally Standing Thanks also to Mary Traynor for her support, and for helping us to realise this project.

Document design: Ally Standing

Notes

Notes

Learning and Teaching Ludically is a publication which represents the culmination of a research project looking into the use of playful learning techniques within the context of arts-based courses at HE level. A series of game-based workshops developed to support a group of international students are discussed in detail, and a new game, Question That!, is also outlined.

As well as these games, the publication also contains contributions from a range of individuals - both staff and students - from BCU’s ADM faculty and beyond. From the deliberate incorporation of an anarchist approach into the classroom, to a game for Shakespeare buffs, we can see playful techniques used in teaching contexts in a variety of ways. We also see playful learning in action, with a range of creative works contributed by students from the faculty, including ‘playable’ jewellery designs, a photographic series based around Cat’s Cradle, and more. ___ Carla Hamer is a Lecturer in Culture and Language, primarily supporting international students from the Schools of Art, Jewellery, and Visual Communication. As a research practitioner Carla is interested in interdisciplinary, performative photographic approaches, and the politics and ethics of photography within new research methodologies in the arts.

Ally Standing is a Lecturer in Contextual Studies in the School of Visual Communication, and a visual artist with an interdisciplinary practice which explores ideas surrounding the built environment.

Both within her teaching and her creative practice, a belief in the city as a stage for learning is key.

An independent publication edited by Carla Hamer and Ally Standing 2020