In this episode, Trinity's The Collaborative hosts Dr. Katherine Troyer (Assistant Director) and Dr. Lauren Malone (Academic Technologist) dive deeper into one form of game-based learning: Games for Learning (G4L)!

We start by defining G4L, which are games that you bring into your courses less because of the content of the games and more as a vehicle for teaching (and letting students practice) key skills and concepts. We quickly discuss how G4L can be used across the curriculum and for a variety of course goals before moving into five case studies of how we've used games in our own classes to facilitate conversations on everything from implicit bias to the importance of strong transitions in essays. With each case study, we discuss the types of games we used, the issues we were working to address through game play as well as the three scaffolding steps needed to build meaningful play (setting up for the concepts being explored and the game being played, playing the game, and then creating opportunities for reflection and application).

This episode is perfect for anyone looking for new, fun, and meaningful ways to help students understand complex and important concepts and practice challenging and valuable skills!