Re-vision, Re-tool, Re-spawn Gameful Design for Whole-Person, Transformational Learning

Abstract

Gameful design challenges instructors to rethink course design for today’s tech-saturated, pandemic-sequestered situation now that virtual is a crucial mode. We share two recent examples of gamification—curricular and co-curricular—demonstrating how gameful design yields whole-person, transformational learning. First, we describe our co-taught Bible and Classical Literature course, where hero-students journey into the dark, accomplish heroic tasks, earn badges, and engage desire-driven, side-quest learning. Second, we describe “Human Salvo: An Experiment with the Antidote to Zombification,” a virtual, Covid-inspired alternative to weekly in-person chapel offerings. Chapel-as-game responded to our shared experience of Fall 2020, fraught with four anxieties: pandemic/contagion, political tribes, economy, and racial (in)justice (the primary anxieties that characterize zombie genre as well). Examples offer assessable evidence of learning toward specified outcomes. Our aim is to spark creativity among librarians-as-teachers for re-visioning, re-tooling, and (perhaps) re-spawning as game-oriented instructors.