Pre-Conference Workshop: Let's Play- Improving our Teaching in the Medium of Board Games

This workshop paper focuses on exposing faculty to how the medium of board games provides an exceptional space for faculty development for our teaching and student learning. The “Let's Play” intervention [1] takes the form of a workshop where participants have opportunities to experience role reversal through being a learner again. Participants become active learners by playing board games that help them remember the experience of being a learner again. By choosing different types and styles of games, we can provide a space for the participants to discuss broader teaching practices, such as the importance of technical vocabulary, scaffolding ideas as we teach them, and the benefits of student-centered learning approaches. Another critical aspect of this intervention is that we hope to use role reversal to remind teachers how hard it is to learn in the hope that teachers will have more empathy for their learners. In this paper, we describe our workshop structure and pertaining literature and ideas on why board games are part of this medium. NOTE that many past participants are looking for how to use games in the classroom. This workshop does not address that aspect of the medium even though we have experience in this space [2].