This poster presentation was delivered on October 20, 2022 at the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage.
Description:
Playing games is at the heart of the workshop “Serious Games for Intercultural Learning” offered by the Intercultural Learning Lab at Goettingen University. Leisure games, improv and games designed to take perspective all aim at helping students broaden intercultural competence and practice communication skills. Students voluntarily sign up for this workshop and come with various levels of intrinsic motivation for intercultural learning and playing games. But how do you raise motivation within the student cohort to a maximum and help immerse themselves into the content and flow? For this workshop, a prototype for role play was designed that frames the classroom sessions and the final output and is being conducted by participants over the course of the workshop. The storyline and context create a sense of urgency for players to get involved with activities and the content and supportes the shift from comfort zone to active engagement and guided reflection. “I really thought the role play was cute and it made a lot of sense for our group to help reflect” one student quoted. This presentation will showcase the benefits for group dynamics and immerse participation, challenges that occurred and good practice examples from the classroom. The Intercultural Learning Lab at Goettingen University offers workshops and seminars for students of all faculty and aims at broadening intercultural competencies and 21st Century Skills.
Bio:
Alexandra Schreiber is a lecturer for cross-cultural communication at Goettingen University in Germany. She also oversees and manages its Intercultural Learning Lab. Alexandra’s career began in the tourism industry in New York City. She later obtained a masters degree in inter-cultural studies at Danube University Krems in Austria. She has traveled the world extensively for both business and pleasure. Alexandra designs and conducts workshops for students in higher education, and has a passion for teaching through game-play. She puts the theory she studies into practice taking improv sessions at her local theater.
Click here to read PDF of slides.
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This seminar is hosted by the Transformative Play Initiative in the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. This seminar is made possible by financial support from the Sustainable Heritage Research Forum (SuHRF). The Transformative Play Initiative explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.
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Graphic Design by Liliia Chorna. Music by Elias Faltin.