So as I write, I have just finished my first year as a dean after spending 24 years teaching at a different community college. I didn't teach at the community college this year because I was given advice to not teach during my first year as a dean. It was good advice, because I really needed to reinvent myself as an administrator rather than a teacher playing at administration. However, I found that I need to teach so that I can feel more grounded in my new college-- and I just missed it.
But, I had one small issue. I mainly taught Philosophy and Humanities courses, and both of those are areas I supervise. It would be a bit awkward to go to someone who essentially reports to me and say, "If you have an open classes, and you think I would be qualified, I would love to teach one." No pressure there, right?
The one area that I have taught in that wasn't under my supervision was Political Science. I approached the issue carefully, starting with the dean and then going to the lead, and it turned out there was an opening for an American Government class.
Now it had been a while since I had taught American Government, and I was actually quite excited. I started perusing the journals and catching up on the field, which has been both interesting and exciting. And it turns out, that not much has changed since I last taught the course in earnest twenty years or so ago. There was a President Bush who had been involved in a war with Iraq, a strong contender for the presidency named Clinton, Jerry Brown was the governor of California, and Russia had troops in the Crimean Peninsula. Still, it was clear that my old notes would not suffice and that I would have to design the course anew, as if I had never taught it before.
In looking at the course, I started to think about flipping the classroom. That was something I had been experimenting with when I was teaching, and I was eager to continue with that experiment. My plan was to teach the course the traditional way and then flip it the following semester. I realized that it would be better to just design the course already flipped (leading me to recognize a weakness in the whole "flipped classroom" paradigm).
The gaming part came in a more roundabout way. I had been attending a technology conference at my former college for many years, and had gone to sessions on gaming in the classroom. There was a lot of talk about multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, which I couldn't really relate to as not much of a gamer myself. My working hypothesis was that it was a great excuse for people to play games under the guise of doing research on pedagogy, but I still persisted in attending those sessions because I felt like I was missing something.
Then I had a colleague who designed her Humanities class to be a game. It really engaged the students, but it was quite frightening in the the rules were being developed as the game went on, and the game was in constant danger of spinning completely out of control. She ended up refining the idea into a very successful course, but it was an incredibly brave move, perhaps the bravest thing I have ever seen an instructor do.
What finally pulled things together for was a happy coincidence. A current colleague of mine was being interviewed by Jane McGonigal for her next book, which reminded me that I had long been meaning to read her last book, Reality is Broken. This book is a very well written account of how gaming can be applied to a number of situations. I started to see that it was less about using technology and computers and more abut understanding what it is about games that engages and inspires people.
My "aha" moment came when I started to think about how politics is a game (thanks to partly to the Netflix series, House of Cards). Candidates vie for support that ultimately leads to votes, but also involves raising money and rallying support among volunteers. A simulated election may well be the type of game that my course needed. Now that I have the loose concept, it is time to flesh the idea out.
I move forward here not without quite a bit of trepidation. I used to joke that it was easy for me to take a risk because, after so many years, I was due for a big screw up. But I truly could afford to have a class not work because I had a long history against which any mistakes could be measured. Now I am in a relatively new position, and I risk being the dean who got to gimmicky and messed up his class as a result, someone who can talk a big game but can't make it happen, a cautionary tale against trying too hard to adopt the flavor of the day. Well if that's the case, I guess the cautionary tale will be well documented.
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