While I'd done a version of the course a year earlier, including some of the innovations I planned to include in Spring 2016, only 8 students registered and the course wasn't as well developed. This time, I spent most of my winter break from classes writing a more complete set of rules and mechanics for the simulation, and lining up its core concept: Roman praetorian families competing for wealth in our solar system's asteroid belt.
The course began with a full complement of 20 students, and absolutely no one dropped the course. This is unprecedented in my experience. For the game I divided the students into five "families," each of which would compete (and/or cooperate) with the others to earn wealth and reputation. Wealth could be acquired through mining asteroids or pirating other families' ships and selling them for scrap. Reputation could be acquired by engaging in social intrigue of various sorts: spying, rumor-mongering, and so forth. Each score was recorded as a number of points, and combined to create the total score.
One of the greatest challenges I faced in running this class was keeping the "class" and "game" portions independent of each other. While it's not immediately clear why such separation is important, try to think about it this way. The course has some pretty clear learning outcomes, and these must be achieved regardless of course format. I have to meet them, just as any other instructor would. My incorporation of RPG content into the course is sort of an aberration. So, focusing too much on the game would detract from students' ability to learn to deliver various types of speeches needed to pass the class. My fix involved making the "game" portion of the course happen outside of classtime (for the most part), while using it to provide a context (and some content) for the actual speech activities.
Below, I've included the FAQs from my syllabus.
Next post I'll explore more details of my approach to the course, and in subsequent posts I'll explain the rules, how they were implemented, and some of the research emerging from the course.
FAQs
Here are some preemptive
responses to questions you might have about how this class is organized. Please
be sure to raise any others that come to mind, as we move along in the
semester.
What do you mean by "participation" in this
game thing, and how does it apply to my grade?
At various points in
this syllabus, I have made reference to your participation in this course. Let
me take some time to describe what I mean, in greater detail. Participation
means showing up, being on time, taking part in discussions of texts and
readings. Participation includes just showing up for class, but it also means
that you participate actively in class activities. So, this course will include
participation in two other elements: (1) Participation in Simulation and (2)
Participation in Role-playing. These elements will be discussed in the next two
FAQs.
You will receive a
grade based on your participation in this class. It's worth 100 points of the 1000
total points available. Roughly half of the grade is for attendance and half of
it is for your engagement with our simulation. You should take part willingly
and enthusiastically, and engage effectively with other students, both in an
out of class.
What is a simulation and how do I participate?
In the clearest
possible terms, a simulation is a real-seeming (but speculative) scenario. Your
participation usually occurs in some sort of role, in order to pretend that
it's real and that you can affect events as they unfold. Simulations are used
for teaching a variety of things, especially applied tasks, like performing
CPR, or dealing with customers, or responding to an emergency situation. Lots
of people use simulations to prepare for things they expect to encounter in the
world, to be ready (as much as they can) when they do so.
In this course I
hope to create a simulated situation that requires you to use your speaking
skills to inform, persuade, and make decisions in a small-group context. The
simulation provides a sense of a larger context in which the speaking occurs
and the decisions are made. You will compete and cooperate with others to
respond to the situations and events encountered as part of the unfolding
"story" of the simulation. My role will be to write and adjudicate
the simulation, and to provide "real-world" responses to your own
actions' impact on the simulated world.
How will I interact with this simulation?
Each student will be
assigned a role: A particular person whom you will "play" almost like
an actor playing a part in a play or film. You will use the boundaries of your
role as a guide to your particular participation in the simulation. You will
pretend to be that person in the simulation, and you should remain
"in-character" as you do so, role-playing the part.
Of course you also
will be engaged in speaking and other classroom activities. Those, too, will
require some degree of in-character play. Just roll with it, and take the
opportunity to see how this kind of role-taking affects your speaking persona.
In fact, you might be surprised how often you do this, anyway, in different
contexts and with different people.
What is role-playing?
Role-playing is
"playing pretend," basically. Every kid at some point pretends to be
something—a character in a book or movie, a person with a particular job, etc.—and
it's a big part of learning how to be a person living in a world with other
people. Even fanciful role-playing allows us to try out ways of being in the
world that are not necessarily familiar or comfortable, and to expand the
repertoire of responses we can have to the people, situations, and events we
will encounter in our lives.
The purpose of the
role-playing in this simulation is to help you get your head around what it
means to speak in context. You're not just giving a speech for a grade. Rather,
you're pursuing your own interests, your family's interests, and the interests
of the Empire. The speaking is happening in a deep, fictional context. You will
have a part in that context.
How do I participate in role-playing?
You will play a
"character" who is a member of an influential family, but is also an
individual with particular beliefs, attitudes, and personal motivations, and
who also has social and cultural obligations. The student playing that role
must do his or her best to represent that character, and leverage that
character's resources and means of persuasion in order to influence outcomes in
the scenario.
No one player has
everything she needs to succeed. No one faction of players can succeed without
the cooperation of the others. This means that your individual interests will
conflict, your factional interests may be at odds, but you must somehow find a
compromise in order to accomplish what you must.
Why are we doing this?
It is my belief that
the best learning comes from a feeling of involvement in what one is trying to
learn. A "normal" public speaking assignment doesn't ask much more of
you than to do a bit of research, to write a speech outline and develop visual
aids, and to present the result in front of the class. However, most people
don't spend a lot of time presenting academic-style speeches in their jobs and
social lives. Instead, we apply our communicative skills in ways that are
usually less formal, but also more impactful upon our work, our relationships,
and our careers. Both are important styles of communication, and you need to be
competent in each.
By taking part in
this simulation, you are going to learn some important formal skills in
communication. You will do research to provide you with information about how
to respond to the situations produced by the class's interactive simulation. These
will result in formal speeches, like the Informative Speech and Policy Speech
assignments. You also will need to be able to argue your positions informally, in
assignments involving deliberation or debate. For these assignments, you will
need to be able to respond to the speech of others. Having a role to play makes
that easier, because your knowledge of the situation, your place in it, and
your relationships with other student "players" helps you understand
what you might say, your motivations for speaking, and what you hope to
accomplish (beyond completing the assignment).
So, each student
will take the role of a particular person whose interests are impacted somewhat
differently by the decisions made for dealing with game-based situations. You
must represent your interests, find compromise (when and if possible), and take
some course of action (or inaction). Your responses will affect the situation.
I will decide how it is affected. Your speech will have consequences, just as
in life, but in a more dramatic (and dramatized) fashion.
What role do you play, Johnson?
I am the Game Master
(GM). My job is to adjudicate the game, handle the game mechanics, keep track
of progress, keep score, and ensure that you stay engaged in the simulation. I
will determine in-game effects of your various speeches, if there are any. I know
what you must do to "win" and a have a set of rules to make that
happen. I also (of course) will need to evaluate your speaking activities and
written work. My main focus, though, will be to create an environment with
unresolved tensions—i.e., plot crises, narrative tension—that you must deal
with. It is my hope that such things will amplify the sense of immersion in the
simulation achieved by students in this class: I want you to be engaged in what
happens here.
How will we be able to affect the outcomes of the
simulation?
I will treat your
in-game actions as real, and will incorporate them into the simulation as they
occur. Some of the actions will have little effect, but others may be
consequential, even critical. I also will take into account elements of the
speeches you give in class, using them to craft the overall narrative. Each
game turn is something like an episode of a soap opera. Your actions in each
turn help to create the game narrative as we play.
What does it mean to "win," and how does one do
so?
"Winning"
means accumulating score. You will do this in two categories: Wealth and
Reputation. At the end of play, the highest scoring family wins. I also will
ask you to pick the top three speakers for each speech assignment, and award a
limited number of bonus points to participation based on those tallies. I will
calculate that score separately.
What sorts of research do we need to do?
You will need to
understand what history shows us about various relevant historical periods,
especially the Roman Republic and Empire. You also will need to have some
understanding of humankind's present and future in space, and some knowledge of
a philosophy called, "transhumanism." I will suggest some readings to
get you started (see below), but you also will complete specific research
assignments to expand upon that information. For example, each student will
give an Informative Speech in response to a particular research question,
provided by me. Your research will be in the particular area covered by that
research question, and you should become the class expert on that topic.
As each member of
the class contributes his or her research to the discussion, the larger picture
will become clearer. It is my hope that the Informative Speeches will grow
directly into related Policy Speeches.
