I went to a workshop called Let’s Play: Designing and Using Games in Your Classroom, led by Dr. Tamara Stenn this week. Organized by the Suffolk’s Center for Teaching and Scholarly Excellence and it was quite an illuminating experience, and in a way quite validating. I have always enjoyed and used little games in classroom to liven up the classroom. The interactive and experiential element is always great for learning.
So, it was wonderful to see someone else advocating and building far more elaborate games in class. Sitting there, I kept recognizing things I do, but what was interesting was how well organized and structured Tamara’s games are. And well thought out. Most of the activities I arrange for the students in the classroom evolved through trial and error over a few years of teaching principles courses at Northeastern and reading about other people’s experiences introducing similar Economics games in class. But this workshop provided a wonderful framework tied to theory on what works, and it pushed me to finally write up and think a little more about my own in-class games.
The framework? It’s Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. It’s quite a useful way to think about what a well-designed classroom activity actually does.
Students play, decide, bargain, or respond. Something actually happens to them.
Students describe what happened, what they noticed, and how others responded.
Students connect the experience to course concepts, models, and vocabulary.
Students apply what they’ve learned to a new scenario, question, or real-world situation.
The key takeaway is that it explains why stopping at just the game is a job half-done. The experience is just stage one. The learning payoff is in the processing — the moment when students look back at what they just did and connect it to what they are studying. And that’s when learning comes full-circle.
Economics lends itself to these kinds of games in-class more than most subjects. Incentives, constraints, trading and trade-offs can be thoughtfully designed from abstract concepts to simple and intuitive demonstrations using games for a fun 15 to 20 minute activity. Here are five games I’ve used in introductory economics courses, and if you want to read a little more about them, follow the link. They are written up with enough detail that someone else could easily introduce them in the classroom too.
