The Playful Learning 2020/2021/2022 Conference was held from 6th – 8th July 2022 in Leicester
To continue the learning and playing over the year, our presenters are starting to add resources, challenges and thoughts to the 20202122 programme overview. Look for the inset activity boxes and check back regularly for updates!
Roger Saunders asks any attendees and presenters if they would be interested in sharing idea, activities and thoughts via his podcast, the L&T Chat Show. Contact Roger on roger.saunders@dmu.ac.uk. Recordings will take place from September for release over the 22/23 academic year. A great opportunity if you’ve tried something new out and want a chance to talk about how it went.
What’s Coming Up?
In the midlands or fancy a trip to Coventry in September? The next Remix-Play event hosted by Sylvester Arnab and GameChangers is there on 14th September. You can sign up for registration details now at: https://gchangers.org/event/remix-play-5/
Our next in-person PLA event will be held at the University of Huddersfield from lunchtime on Thursday Nov 17th to lunchtime on Friday Nov 18th 2022. Theme and further details to follow! Save the date!
And save the date for next year’s conference: July 5th – July 7th 2023 in Leicester
from http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/learning-design/?p=1377
If you missed the deadline to be included in this round-up, never fear! Contact Playful Learning on Twitter and we can include you next time!
Our next in-person event will be November 17th and 18th in the north of England (theme and venue tbc). Save those dates if you want to join us!
The Playful Learning Conference
After two years of absence Playful Learning will be back on 6-8th July 2022, in Leicester.
Places are filling up fast, so book now if you want to join the event. There’s also a parallel online day for those who can’t make the event in person. https://conference.playthinklearn.net/blog/
Member News
Journal of Play in Adulthood A reminder that the Journal has an open call for papers, but we’d especially welcome those presenting at the Playful Learning Conference to consider writing up their material as a journal article. It’s Diamond Open Access (no charge to read or publish), peer-reviewed, and typically articles are 5-8,000 words but all formats are considered (guidelines here). Deadline early September for publication in the first issue next year, early 2023. Andrew Walsh
WonkHE Education Espresso WonkHE are running free ‘Education Espresso’ events over the Spring/Summer, and the last event on 27th May was around Pedagogy and Playfulness. It featured an interesting discussion of play in leadership from Susannah Quinsee and examples of gamification within curriculum from Isaiah Wellington-Lynn. The recording will be available soon from: https://wonkhe.com/education-espresso/
Playful work? Would anyone be interested in an online “playful work” (sort of) course? I’m pondering setting something up that would be a small amount of content, together with a series of “challenges” spread over a few months to be more playful in the workplace – if you’re interested in being a guinea pig for a first draft version, either for free, or a small charge to cover a platform for it (depending on the platform I use!), email a.p.walsh@hud.ac.uk with “playful work guinea pig” as the subject line. If I get enough guinea pigs, I’ll contact people once the first draft is set up! Andrew Walsh
Do try it out if you haven’t seen it before – it’s a great example of Twine as well as exemplifying many Playful Learning techniques.
This new version includes a map, a side quest for those doing the quest as a group – as requested by user, tips for group work, and a mini-game where you battle the spider (diagram) Enjoy and share!
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If you missed the deadline to be included in this round-up, never fear! Contact Playful Learning on Twitter and we can include you next time!
On the 19th and 20th May 2022, the Playful Learning Association held it’s first in person event for some years! 26 of us got together to spend some time thinking about playful spaces, hosted at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge by our co-chairs Alex and Katie. Here is a record of the event through photos!
Alex Moseley introduces the eventAttendees getting to know each other at Anglia Ruskin University
We kicked off with a game of Herd Mentality as an ice-breaker. Making the most of some outdoor spaces we discovered on campus.
Attendees playing ‘Herd Mentality’ – try to blend in by giving the same answer as everyone else!
Then we were talked through the process of creating a prototype for a Climate change boardgame by Matteo Menapace @baddeo
Matteo has created the game Daybreak, a cooperative game about climate action.
Matteo Menapace taking us through the board game design processTweet from Alex Moseley
(Look out for the Daybreak Kickstarter, which launches next month!)
Three visiting PhD students from Denmark (Kim, Tina and Vici) then introduced the topic of Playlabs, looking first at the theory and then the opportunity for us all to put it into practice.
Entering the PlayLab – lego, floor markings, craft tables and am opened up space
Playlabs are designed to support active and experimental processes.
Making (and then breaking) and minimalist lego elephants (from only 6 red bricks)
The discussion was around finding a balance between transforming your teaching to fit the new space and reproduction of your familiar way of teaching – with students sitting down and watching you present at the front.
Creating models for common expressions, then guessing them
We ended Thursday by heading to the Thrive vegan cafe for Games and cakes
Playing Daybreak in the Thrive vegan gameboard cafe in Cambridge
Friday began with everyone heading into Cambridge to think about Playing Outside through a Secret Portals group activity.
We used a map to find Dinky Doors and then the challenge was to create our own door from found materials.
A selection of Dinky Doors around CambridgeTeam PortELLES building a portal from found materials
Discussion followed on how to use the town/city you are based in as an induction activity for students.
Before we said our goodbyes, as always, we had an open slot for PLA members to offer/test/share their current work.
Summary of the event from Emma Bearman
Thank you to all the presenters and attendees for coming along and creating such a great event.
Want more? Missed out this time? Our next in-person event will be November 17th and 18th in the north of England (theme and venue tbc). Save the dates!
After two years of absence (for obvious reasons) Playful Learning will be back on 6-8th July 2022, in Leicester. The audacious plan is to run three years of conference in one (and also an online-only version). Call for sessions is now open – time to release those pent-up creative juices!
John Lean and Mark Peace are delivering a seminar for the Manchester Games Studies Network on 19th January, focusing on their work on Man Met’s new co-curricular Rise programme. During this seminar, they’ll explore how its design is influenced by games and play, specifically Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This seminar will offer a playful interpretation of the use of video games in higher education, focusing on the idea of games as metaphors, and will inspire discussion on how we can encourage students to play more with their learning journeys. Sign up on Eventbrite.
Have you created/modded a game (or curated a list of games) specifically for research skills / academic skills / critical thinking in Higher Education? If so, Daisy Abbot wants to hear all about it! She is doing some analysis of research games and working towards creating a range of pedagogical patterns that suit games for higher order thinking skills – make sure your work is part of it! Email D.Abbott@gsa.ac.uk Thanks!
Speaking of research games, if you have been playing the Creative Thinking Quest(or sharing it with your students) it would be great if you could also fill in the survey – Daisy has only had 5 responses so far so why not give her an early Christmas present in the form of precious precious data! You’ll also be helping to improve the tool for its next version. Play now.
Nicola Whitton has had a brilliant response to her survey on adult playfulness, but would still like more, particularly from men, teachers, and anyone not located in Europe or North America. If you can spare 5 mins please help. Please take the survey and share with your networks.
Let’s Play
Last month we offered you a GeoGuessr challenge – congratulations to the top 3 scorers, Martyn, Kat and Pip!
For your December challenge, we invite you to try creating a Christmas Wishlist for a favourite character. Here are some (easy?) ones to get you started:
We had previously advised you to save the date on Nov 26th 2021 for a regional event. We have taken the decision to postpone this until the spring as we do not feel the time is right yet for in-person events.
But one thing definitely going ahead in-person is the Playful Learning 2020 Conference (yes, the much delayed 2020 conference!) on 6th – 8th July 2022 at the University of Leicester. See the conference website for more information.
Call for Playtesters:
Do you design research or creative projects? Daisy has created a Choose Your Own Adventure which guides players through the different stages of project design and helps to improve rigour. It is particularly suitable for students or ECRs in Higher Education, but you may find something there for everyone!
Thinking of publishing your work on Playful Learning, check out the Journal of Play in Adulthood and contact the editor, our own Andrew Walsh if interested. While you’re there you can browse through a new double special issue looking at the Playful Academic and Playful Designs.
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If you missed the deadline to be included in this round-up, never fear! Contact Playful Learning on Twitter and we can include you next time!
Hello and welcome to the final #PlayLearn21 blog. I have fond memories of the 2019 conference, where you could find me playing with Lego under a tree or doing some mindful cutting and sticking. The online iteration has offered a diverse range of activities, from the thought-provoking to the downright silly: here’s my take on the Day 5 task…
The #Integrity task was all about those times when despite our best efforts, we fail to be as inclusive as we could be: judging by the number of responses on the padlet, this is something that struck a chord with many of us. Reading the example about cultural references, where Kermit the frog was unknown to learners, reminded me of a similar faux pas (not a very inclusive term, I know) when I referred to James Bond in a session with international students who looked at me blankly…
Getting inclusivity wrong is difficult to avoid, but the alternative is that we stay with the safe and less playful option: what impressed me about the examples given was the way that everyone was passionate about being as inclusive as possible and highly sensitive to the diverse needs of learners. In order to be aware of ‘failures’ we need to be highly tuned in to matters of inclusivity, and I found these examples inspiring rather than painful (well mostly).
A few key themes jumped out at me, which could be a starting point for a Manifesto for Inclusivity…
Assumptions
Several of the #failbetter examples mentioned assumptions or preconceptions about learners: these ranged from the general, aspects such as language, access to technology and disability to the very specific, for example assumptions about drinking alcohol.
Sometimes I’ve made the mistake of assuming that playful learning is inherently inclusive, when of course that’s not the case. Just like any type of learning, playful activities or games can exclude individuals for all the many reasons given: things like prior knowledge, learning differences or maybe not everyone likes playing (unbelievable but true). I agree with this padlet contributor: “I think its easy to impose your view of why they should play, or write off students as ‘non-playful”. So, how do we balance fun and play in learning with inclusivity and avoid “over-inclusivity paralysis”?
Optionality
The theme of optionality came through strongly as one way of balancing inclusivity considerations with playful pedagogy. Offering choice in activities, the lessons learnt from not offering more options and the clarity with which options are communicated all featured. Word games could exclude some learners including those with dyslexia, movement-based activities could exclude those with mobility difficulties and we may not all be in the same time zone. Being mindful about multiple points of view would appear to be key: “The more needs, and perspectives we consider, the better our output will be” (a tip for the forthcoming manifesto!). How can we have greater awareness of learner perspectives?
Actively seeking feedback
Several padlet contributors wrote about the role that feedback from learners played in making them aware of ways that they could make their playful teaching more inclusive. Feedback resulted in changes such as making Kahoot questions shorter and reducing the volume of music, signposting and explaining multiple options for engagement with content and many more. Having an ongoing dialogue with learners about their experiences appears to be vital in considering inclusion. So what else helps?
Vulnerability and transparency
I was touched by how honest the #failbetter accounts were: these experiences are painful, and I certainly find it hard to think back to those cringe-worthy moments. Some of the examples talked about ‘owning up’ to mistakes openly as a way to demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity. Whether it is thanking someone who has pointed out your error, being honest when things go wrong with technology (I’ve certainly had to use that one recently) or asking students for help, being vulnerable and open demonstrates that we are human and we care.
Final thoughts
Your reflections on those horrible, #failbetter moments have offered me some great ideas to change my practice: often those difficult, emotional experiences can offer important learning, so thanks for your generosity in sharing these.
We may have experienced something like this in the past that still informs our practice, or the memory may be fresh and still smarting: whatever our failing better story, reflecting on and sharing these incidents makes us all more sensitive and inclusive educators.
Of course, this is a never-ending process: just as we feel we have overcome one learning barrier, another appears in front of us. To finish, I’ll share a recent #failbetter experience of my own. In a LEGO Serious Play session I asked learners to choose a brick based on colour: afterwards I learned that one of the group was colour blind and that the task had been completely meaningless to them. Thankfully they helpfully offered their own alternative task based on texture instead. So I learnt something 🙂
Thanks for a fabulous conference, and look forward to seeing you all in person in July 2022!
It was time to get serious on day 4 of #PlayLearn21. A day of #Rigour. A day of collaborative writing. A day of Churprise*!
Playful Learning, as a young field of study without borders or a strong parent discipline (all metaphors intended) benefits and suffers from the same problems as any new or hybrid discipline. We don’t have a defined set of methods, approaches and tools; we don’t have a history of traditions or tacit understandings. Additionally, we suffer from the general outside view that play and games are childish, frivolous, silly, non-serious, only about fun, etc.
On the positive side, we have a clearer sense of shared values (in evidence this week, despite the mix of existing and new members who’ve joined the conference) than many more established disciplines, and we can and do draw on methods, approaches and tools from a range of other disciplines without fear of being ‘out of line’. We can also invent new ways of doing things.
The feeling pervades, though, that we have to qualify our work. Defend it. Insist that it is serious, even if it might be fun at times. That we as playful practitioners/researchers, and our work, have rigour.
My own sense is that we need to develop an inclusive confidence in what we do. That over time – through practice, reflection, sharing, talking, failing, learning etc. – we become more confident in our own field, and in our own rigour.
I arrived at the live games session at lunchtime to find an in depth discussion already underway: around ‘rigour’ and how relevant it was to practice on the ground, with colleagues and managers, and within HE structures. It became so interesting that we carried it on for half an hour, before drawing a reluctant end and starting the intended game sessions.
We spent a lot of that discussion focussing on quality (as a measure of internal ‘rigour’) and particularly student assessment – referring to the experience points and levels in Lee Sheldon’s ‘Multiplayer Classroom’ (2011) (which Scott Nicholson [2013] has tried to mixed effect), and the concept of ‘ungrading’ which shifts the focus of learning from product to the process itself.
Meanwhile, work on the crowd-sourced / collaborative Encycloplaydia was well underway. After a slow start on Wednesday evening (UK time) with a few tentative single word additions, a few more detailed entries appeared, and then contributors gained in confidence as the day went on. A pattern I’ve often found in asynchronous activities, but also here I felt it was related to building confidence in our own practice – and what we collectively decide represents ‘rigour’.
A few favourites of mine from the still-growing set:
Balloons – so full of tension and surprise.
*Churprise – ‘a portmanteau word, containing elements of both challenge and surprise’ invented by attendees at the Playful Learning Conference 2019 (Ferguson et al, 2020).
Grok – You understand something so thoroughly that you become one with it and perform the action without thinking about it.
Playfulness – “a state of mind, an internal predisposition that is composed of creativity, curiosity, sense of humor, pleasure, and spontaneity.” (Guitard, Ferland, & Dutil, 2005, p 19). Open to, and seeing the opportunity for, play.
Sew – A needle pulling thread (Hammerstein II, 1959).
I sensed over the day, and over this week as a whole, that we are starting to gain some confidence in our field. That playful learning, as an emerging/hybrid discipline, is strengthening its nerve and its voice.
Ahoy! I’m Rachelle, your guest blogger for today. I’m delighted to be blogging about innovation and hope I can do justice to some of the brilliant ideas we’ve seen generated in the last 24 hours.
I expect I am relatively unknown in the playful community. I came to my first playful learning conference in 2019 for one day, because that’s all I had funding for and for a while, I just stood around being awkward and feeling lost. It didn’t take long until I found a space that I could fit into. I ended up spending the day exploring other spaces, and especially enjoying those spaces that were not planned and just kind of happened. This is what I’m really interested in, those spaces in between, the liminal spaces. We could think of them as the gap behind the sofa where the treasure lives (money), or the writing that was never written between the lines of instructions, where we can build interpretation.
Over the past 18 months or so, I’ve spent a lot of my time developing Escape Rooms for use in educational contexts which is considered by some to be innovative. It has been great fun creating and developing these playful activities and watching students, academics, family, friends (and everybody else who has had a go) work through them. But what most people don’t realise is that I’m not so bothered about the Escape Room bit. For me, the Escape Room is the vehicle that enables me to find those little pockets of innovation around the edges. The bits that really test my skills because information is interpreted differently to how its intended and I have to be playful, live, so that the game doesn’t fall apart for the players! The conversations and process and teams of people who have never met before and then suddenly pull together to unpick and understand something which in most cases is abstract and how, irrespective of how abstract it is, they manage to work through it.
My favourite part of these activities is creating spaces for playfulness in what would probably not-traditionally be considered in this way. This is innovation to me. Those spaces in between where new stuff occurs. Which happens all of the time, if only you know how to find it…. I guess you could say that I am an space conductor*.
*I realise this isn’t a thing so am inventing it. It means somebody who create spaces where innovation can happen.
So, on to the task!
The challenge on Tuesday ‘Technology will save us’ was to invent a Learning Technology. We had points for those who suggested a problem which needed a solution as well as points for those who answered with a solution.
So far in the activity feed we have seen requests for help with practical innovations such as a mask that works with hearing aids and ways to stop socks escaping the laundry basket. Requests relating to productivity; including replicating somebody with a remote solution and turning a workspace into a spacecraft cockpit (accordions, swivel chairs and tinfoil apparently). We also had Darkbot complaining about being too lazy to fulfil their ambitions as the ultimate mood hoover. We also have helpful suggestions of cheating to help with playing Monopoly empire and beating teenagers at the game.
Innovation is all around us
Reflecting on the activity feed during the innovation task, a number of things struck me.
Firstly, things need time to develop. I initially took a look as soon as the task was announced and although there were posts and requests for help, there weren’t conversations at that point. I think this is an important point that John also reflected on in the blog from day 1 about the affordances of asynchronous activities and how conversations transform. To me, it seems like conversations slow down and spread out. Making them much more far reaching.
Although the task required an ‘innovation’ be developed, there were far more innovations during these conversations. Reviewing what happened retrospectively really paints a picture of how things unfolded, developed and shifted. In all of these cases, yes, innovative ideas were being presented but there was more than just that. Innovation was happening in the in-between spaces. For example, the creation of robot accordion players and a master plan for the spacecraft cockpit.
Even though these ideas were pitched as ‘innovations’ that are problems to be solved, people were perfectly willing to provide solutions, in some cases working collectively. It made me wonder how much of this is because the stimulus itself is aspirational and playfulness is implicit – does this give permission to play?
It got me to further thinking. How many meetings about meetings could we avoid if we adopt similar strategies? And if we took this approach, would we find a golden thread or would it be chaos? Does it matter either way?
In summary, innovation is happening everywhere, continually. Sometimes all you need is a stimulus, a space and an audience willing to consider it.
What was your experience of the innovation task? Did you find a solution to your problem?
MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL (with a new friend)#Collegiality (10 points)
Welcome to the first #PlayLearn21 challenge. There are 10 shiny points on offer for everyone who completes this task between 4pm on Sunday and 4pm on Monday.
Find someone on the site you’ve not met before (or more people if you prefer), create something beautiful together. Your something can be anything: a poem, a photograph, a mime, a sculpture, a new product, dance routine, a three-hour video about bees, whatever you like, and the more creative the better.
Come up with a way of sharing your beautiful thing in the activity stream and tag your post with #Collegiality to earn your points.
When you see someone else’s beautiful thing that speaks to you, please show your appreciation.
TECHNOLOGY WILL SAVE US#Innovation (10 points)
Isn’t learning technology wonderful? We don’t have enough new innovations do we? Here’s your chance to invent a Learning Technology to solve a problem you don’t even know you have yet.
Anyone can pose a problem. Here’s a couple of examples:
Lecturer Bob is fed up with pressing the ‘OK’ button 500 times in the VLE when adding content.
Mother bear Bobo wants to teach her baby bears to defecate in the woods rather than in their porridge.
Pose your own problem (5 points) and design things to solve other people’s problems (5 points). Don’t be constrained by annoying things like the laws of physics, the Gartner Hype Curve, or your institutional procurement policy.
Share your things with the tag #Innovation. Bonus points might be awarded for creative responses.
STREET SECRETS #Mischief (10 points per artwork)
It’s that time in the conference for a bit of fresh air, optional exercise and a chance to create a piece of GPS Art. Have a look at https://www.nathanrae.co.uk/gpsart for inspiration, tips and instructions.
It’s a bear! Can you do better?
Go for a walk, run, cycle, or just plot a route and create some art.
Share your GPS art to the activity stream with the tag #Mischief. Up to 10 points available for each piece of art.
ENCYCLOPLAYDIA OF PLAYFUL LEARNING#Rigour (10 points)
Some people think that play is silly, frivolous, and not appropriate in the context of adult learning. Having a robust theoretical frame and evidence-base is crucial when we need to be playful, yet taken seriously.
Let’s co-create a resource that brings together collected knowledge of key underpinning theories and practice of Playful Learning in a handy A-Z format. Cite if you like.
The Encycloplaydia will be published in the Journal of Adult Play with all authors credited.
FAIL BETTER #Integrity (?? points)
We all make mistakes sometimes, it’s part of being human.
Sometimes we fail to be as inclusive as we could be, not on purpose but because we’re busy, distracted, or we just don’t think.
Please tell us a story on this anonymous padlet of when you failed to be as inclusive as you might have been: Fail Better (padlet.com)
We want to create a Manifesto for Inclusivity. Please also look at other stories and add a tip for more inclusive practice that might be learned from one of these fails.
Use your own judgement to award yourself points and add a comment to the activity stream with the tag #Integrity and the number of points you have given yourself.
Here’s a little extra challenge for you this week. You will be randomly dumped somewhere in the world, explore around and see if you can work out where you are and place your pin. Do come back here and post with #GeoGuessr when you’ve done it so we can check your score and award you some points!
A challenge proposed by@r3beccaf Highest score on this http://www.agoogleaday.com/ by 2pm BST will earn you +5 bonus points. Participation will earn you +2 bonus points.
