Gamification vs. Game-Based Learning: What's up? w/ Dr. James York & Dr. Jonathan deHaan (Ludic Language Pedagogy)

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Hello and welcome to our latest episode of our podcast.

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My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the Progressive Education Nonprofit Human Restoration

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Project.

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Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters,

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three of whom are Paul Agarto Perez, Kane Lezia, and Corinne Greenblatt.

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Thank you for your ongoing support.

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You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org,

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or find us on social media and YouTube.

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On today's podcast, we're joined by two founders of Ludic Language Pedagogy, or LLP.

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LLP is an open access academic journal and community focused on publishing actionable

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ideas on ludic, or playful, ideas and language language, through tabletop RPGs, live action

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role-playing, card games, and video games.

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For example, two recently published papers include Teaching Spanish with The Legend

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of Zelda Orcarina of Time, and Places, People, Practices, and Play, Animal Crossing New Horizons

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Here and There.

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Joining us are Dr. James York, the Editor-in-Chief of LLP, and a Senior Assistant Professor at

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Meishi University, where he teaches and conducts research on the application of games and play

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and literacy, and Dr. Jonathan DeHaan, who is Associate Editor and Associate Professor

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in the Faculty of International Relations at the University of Shizuoka.

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I also shouldn't have added on that you're both in Japan, which is interesting in and

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of itself.

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Jonathan focuses on teaching literacy with games as well.

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James and Jonathan are currently writing a book on ludic pedagogy, and they led a session

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at our recent conference to restore humanity on ludic teaching that you should definitely

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check out.

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We'll put that in the show notes.

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Thanks again, James and Jonathan, for joining us.

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And James, we're just going to start off with you and just kind of go through some of our

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terms, as many academics do, and really just describe the difference between these concepts

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play, ludic, game-based learning, gamification.

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What is this world that we're living in when it comes to ludic learning pedagogy?

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Yeah, great.

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Thank you for the introduction, Chris.

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Yeah, I am a doctor, but I am a researcher, but I'm also a practitioner.

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I think that that's where a lot of my research focus comes from.

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Yeah, I am a teacher and being able to interface between what's happening in classrooms and

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what's being talked about in the world of academia, I think, is a unique position and

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one that I'm trying to use to its fullest, I guess, to reach teachers and to help researchers

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at the same time.

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Regarding these terms, I guess we can start with the term gamification, which is perhaps

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the most well-known term among teachers, also the most confused term, I guess.

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It seems to be a word that has used as an umbrella for anything to do with games or

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game-like approaches to teaching.

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You may think, well, gamification, is that like playing Monopoly in class?

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Gamification, is that like saying, giving students XP instead of giving them a grade?

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Is it Minecraft?

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Is Minecraft gamification, right?

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So I think there's a lot of confusion around the terms, both gamification and game-based

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learning.

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Definitely not.

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So I think that it's important to define these terms, that gamification should be different

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from game-based learning.

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It needs to be separated in order to talk about these things properly.

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So gamification essentially is this idea of using the elements of games in non-game context.

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That's the kind of clinical definition that you'll find in textbooks.

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Generally how this has been interpreted and applied to these non-game contexts, and let's

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stick with education then, is that, like I mentioned, the reframing of the classroom

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as a game.

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Teachers really glom onto this because it's nothing new, really.

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The classroom is already kind of gamified in the fact that there is quantifiable outcomes.

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The grade that you get, that's kind of a score that you get in games.

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You have these activities, which could be considered, I guess, levels in the game.

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There are winners and losers in the class, so teachers go, okay, I just need to rename

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things in my class, and then it's kind of gamey, and kids love games, so they're probably

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going to love this.

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That's basically how gamification is implemented in classrooms.

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It's okay, instead of doing a reading activity for homework, I'm going to give you a reading

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quest that just by changing the terminology makes it more glamorous and more, well, supposedly

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appealing to the students that are going to do these activities.

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And also tagging on things that feel gamey that add to the extrinsic motivator element.

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I know 10, maybe 20 years ago now, there was the badging phenomenon, putting badges attached

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to everything, like the Boy Scouts or something, where you get your badge for completing three

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homework assignments on time, and that would give you 100 XP to level up and put a hat

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on your avatar or something in the tech system, or class dojo, which is used in...

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They advertise, I think, 95% of classrooms, or schools, 95% of schools use class dojo.

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Yeah, it's definitely taking the world by storm.

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Yeah, so this idea of, like you said, rewards-based gamification, extrinsic motivation, tapping

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behavioristic qualities of gamification, the problem with it then for me is that it doesn't

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change the underlying structure that's already there.

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If we want to change schools and make them better, quote unquote better, then just by

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changing terminology and by focusing even more on extrinsic motivation and behaviorism,

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it doesn't really do anything.

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So that's kind of the problem that I have with this term gamification and its implications

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for education.

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So in opposition to that, then we have this idea of, well, what's game-based learning?

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And game-based learning is simply just any learning that is facilitated through the use

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of a game.

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So where gamification is using game elements, or at least applying game elements to the

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construct that's already there, game-based learning then is saying, well, we're actually

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going to use a game, a real game, to achieve something.

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So okay, you could use civilization to learn about the world, the map of the world or something.

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You could use Minecraft to do a kind of group, what's the word, like collaborative activity

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to build trust with each other, to learn about deforestation, to learn about farming.

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It's this idea of using a game to learn something.

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Right.

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And this is something that I think that anyone who's grown up in the last 30 years probably

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played SimCity or Oregon Trail when they were in school.

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And everyone pretty much remembers the major life lessons, I guess, or historical lessons

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of Oregon Trail.

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People know Dysentery probably solely because of Oregon Trail.

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And it wasn't something that we were forced into through some kind of lesson plan.

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It just existed in classrooms and kids played it because it was fun.

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You bring up Oregon Trail as an example of game-based learning is actually super important.

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Okay.

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If you imagine a student playing Oregon Trail, and then this, sorry, this links to my critique

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of game-based learning actually, is that if you think about students playing Oregon Trail

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in the classroom, you're probably going to think that the learning just comes from playing

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the game.

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It's kind of a package unto itself.

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The learning should just naturally happen.

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Oh, you're going to play Oregon Trail today to learn about X, Y, Z, right?

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Now that's the problem with game-based learning is that it has no pedagogical ideology.

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It has no kind of teaching attached to it.

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Game-based learning, in fact, could be implemented in a behavioristic manner in that you're going

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to play this game to get 10 points, right?

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There's no teaching around it.

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There's no reflection.

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There's no onboarding.

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So I think game-based learning, one of the issues with it is that, okay, so I'm going

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to bring a game into a classroom, but how do I actually pedagogically scaffold that

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towards learning?

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So if we just sum it up, then we've got gamification, which is saying we're going to take these

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elements of games and apply them to the classroom as a kind of fake simulation layer on top

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of what already exists, not change underlying structure.

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There's a problem there.

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Game-based learning, okay, we're going to use games towards learning something, but

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how the teacher actually does that really matters.

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So I think that that's a kind of blind spot in game-based learning is that we're going

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to bring this tool in and we're going to expect learning to happen.

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And so that maybe leeways into what me and Jonathan and the team at LLP, Ludic Language

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Pedagogy here is trying to do in that saying that, well, the pedagogy focus, how do we

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actually use these things if students are really into Among Us or Stardew Valley or

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Apex Legends, League of Legends?

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How do we actually pedagogically scaffold an activity around that game or playful activity

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towards learning that is in line with HRP's kind of proposition?

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It's transformative, it's humane, and it is the best that we can do for students.

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That's probably the best I can do right now.

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Please add to it, Jonathan and Chris, yeah.

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I think one of the things that James quickly said about Oregon Trail is that there, I think

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you said that there aren't pedagogical models baked into it.

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And I think we can split that apart just a little bit, right?

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If we look at Oregon Trail, it is designed by people for people.

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And so the designers thought about the best way to onboard or introduce or tutorialize

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or to present the information in that game, right?

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And this is where Chris, yeah, no, this is where Chris and HRP is also thinking about

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like, how do we communicate effective design principles to teachers?

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Because in Oregon Trail, the designers did present things in a way and they designed

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the graphical interface, they designed the levels, they designed the progression to be

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effective, right?

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If they had not designed the game in an effective way, nobody would play it.

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It wouldn't be fun, right?

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And so there is a sort of systemic interactive model.

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There's hints, there's tips, there's events, there's text, there's information

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that does teach people about the experience of the Oregon Trail.

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OK, that's right.

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There is that, that games are designed effectively.

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If they weren't designed effectively, no one would play them because they'd be too hard, right?

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I just finished a five hour video essay review of Tokimeki Memorial, this hardcore dating

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simulation that which broke down this entire model, right?

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It's very difficult.

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It's impenetrable, right?

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OK, so but and then but then to go back to James talking about about Minecraft,

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Minecraft is designed also to onboard people.

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There is a tutorial in Minecraft, but there are things in Minecraft that are a little

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bit obtuse or obscured or ideas that are underlining what Minecraft is.

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For example, I just watched a video essay on how in Minecraft you can abuse the villagers

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and transport them to another place to build a sort of work camp to to farm certain elements.

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And it's basically you're you're you're engaging in colonialism, right, where.

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You can do things in games and not be aware that you're doing things in games or that

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they have meanings, right?

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And so, I mean, so, for example, like Animal Crossing as well, you brought that up in the

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introduction like it is a model of capitalism, it is a model of a mortgage system,

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it's a model of consumerism that perhaps the player can see that the designer did

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put in the game.

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But if the learner is not aware of what colonialism is or what capitalism is, it's

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very difficult for someone to play a game and then reflect on it and go, oh, right,

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like I shouldn't be engaged in colonialism in this amazing Voxel game, right?

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No, no, really. Right. And that's and I think that's and that's where LLP starts with

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is like there are there are systems in games and there are ideas in games and experiences

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in games that learners might not be that probably won't be able to unpack by themselves.

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Right. Like how does how does sexism appear in certain online games?

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Right. Or how do we unpack that and actually apply that to the real life?

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I think that's where James's comment about games not having certain learning

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principles in is very apt, right, where games, a lot of educational games are not designed

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to include a sort of debriefing stage and application stage and an analysis stage.

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They're just focused on the experience and games are fantastic experiences and media

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are fantastic experiences. I'm I'm sort of addicted to watching The Big Short right now.

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Right. This about the housing crisis crash in 2008.

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Right. And it's just like. It's amazing.

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But but I would like to talk to a financial banker and get their understanding of it and unpack

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that stuff for me. Right. Like I can't unpack it by myself because I don't have that knowledge or

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that ability to apply those lessons in my real life. Right.

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So I think games are well-designed experiences, but teachers are also interactive and can design

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additional well-designed experiences around them to to to apply them in an even greater.

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They can amplify the well-designed experiences to be more well-designed experiences.

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Right. That was. Yeah. That was the point I was trying to make, actually.

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So thank you for for clarifying the fact that games themselves may have some pedagogical

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design baked into them. But yeah, the point was that your what was it?

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The colonialism example, for example, a teacher, a teacher could manufacture that experience

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for students and then unpack it. Right. They could.

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Absolutely right. Not everybody is going to going to like colonialize the villagers to mine

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emeralds. Right. Like I didn't do that. I've played hundreds of hours of Minecraft.

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I've never. OK, my kids do abuse the villagers. I'll take that back.

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What I think is interesting about what you're saying is that I think it speaks to a greater

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conversation that we could at least tap into slightly surrounding Ed Tech broadly,

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even beyond games. For example, we recently have been talking a lot about

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Conmigo, which is the new AI companion for Khan Academy, which in theory is a tool that

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kids can go on Khan Academy. They can have a conversation with a chat GPT chat bot type thing

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and it will tutor them and help them come to answers. And honestly, AI is an incredible tool

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to break down code, to break down math problems. It's really neat.

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But that doesn't mean that you just put all of 30 kids in your room on a computer to do AI chat bot

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stuff without any teaching intervention or purpose behind the content in the exact same way that we

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wouldn't tell 30 kids play Oregon Trail and then the bell rings. And that's that's the end of the

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period. Like there's there's an additional layer there. And something I want to make sure we got

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to is that this doesn't just apply to video games. And you guys talk about this a lot. It's board

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games, it's tabletop games, it's role playing activities. And it also dives into the conversations

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around the systems that the games are in. But also conversations about how you play the game itself,

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like strategy. A good example I have is I used to teach the Cold War and McCarthyism. So when people

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were investigating communism, they thought everybody was a communist spread like wildfire.

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We used to play what was called the red dot game, a very simple game, you cut up a sheet of paper,

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like tear it into a bunch of pieces. Let's say there are groups of eight, the teacher will take

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a red dot, put it on one right red because of colorblindness, and then put black on all of the

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other ones. So you have seven black dots, one red dot, discreetly give it to every single kid,

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they look at the dot, they put it in their pocket. And the goal of the game is everyone has to vote

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out the red dot. And pretty much about 60 seconds into this game, chaos ensues, because everyone will

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just start screaming at each other, because they just assume everyone else is the red dot,

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and very rarely does anyone actually win. And what tends to happen is everyone isolates from

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each other else, they think everyone else is the red dots, you have this group of people that

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kind of all span out at the end of the activity, there's like 30 people around the room, and they're

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all hyper suspicious. That in and of itself, the strategy of that and how you feel and how you play

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it, emulates the literal thing that happened during McCarthyism. That's exactly what people

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did, they sold out their neighbors, they were worried about someone being over their shoulder

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at all times, etc. Go ahead, Jonathan. Yeah, no, exactly. Like, that's phenomenal,

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because you're describing, and I'm sure like you're describing, you're describing a system,

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which is really elegant, well designed, there's hidden information, there's instructional

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principles baked into that. But then of course, you're going to debrief it, and you're going to

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talk about what it means, and the accusations and how this feeds into psych, you know, psychosis,

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and things like that. Not psychosis, but you know what I mean? Like, you know, right? And so,

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I think what James was just talking about, and bringing it back to the definitions, like, yes,

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this is the kind of stuff that we want in the classroom, like we do want to have these elegant,

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like the red dot game is frugal, right? It's just a piece of paper, right? It's a face to face

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simulation, there's all these hard skills and soft skills and knowledge and strategies, and

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you can write essays about it, and you can do all this kind of stuff. Like, I think that's a

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really wonderful example of ludic language pedagogy, right? And there's tons of language

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in there as well, or ludic pedagogy. What I think is really interesting, and what we would love to

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try to convey in this podcast, is that, what do you call what you just did? Do you call this

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game-based learning? Do you call it game-based teaching? Do you call it gamification? Because

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I think that's just like, it's just a very side box of saying, I think it's very hard

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for laypeople, for even researchers, to label what that is, and I think that leads to the problems

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about gamification. Someone will say, red dot game debriefing, writing essays to prepare for

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the regents exam, or whatever, or class dojo and rewarding people with a sound effect for being on

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task. Let's just put those in the same barrel, right? And that's it, and that's the thing,

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that's just the nature of the academic silo, of jargon, of people's literacy, of going

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Minecraft, Oregon Trail, class dojo, rewards and punishments, grades, levels, achievements, badges,

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red dot game debriefing, they're all the same thing, right? Because kids like games,

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right? And so that's, I think that's the anti-edtech, anti, like, is the thing we're

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fighting against, not fighting, well, fighting, or trying to deal with, because it is a literacy,

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like, it's an understanding. It's restructuring, right? It's systemic rather than a tag-on,

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because the concept of gamification, as it's typically said through school,

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is you're a teacher, these are students, let's do things better using games. But what we're really

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getting at here is actually redefining what good teaching is, because games like the red dot game,

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but also having your kids play video games in class, is fairly radical if you are doing that

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for longer than 15 minutes. If you're debriefing and talking about it, if you're doing this

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consistently, and it's not a one-off, that is going to make your classroom loud, it's going

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to make it hands-on, it's going to make it experiential, and that is quite literally,

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yeah, it's teaching as a subversive activity, you know, literally redefining what it means to

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have a classroom. And I think that's a complicated conversation, and that's just people's, like,

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human attention spans, thinking about the future, being able to deal with the systems of education,

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that's a much more nuanced, difficult conversation to have than,

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I can reframe my classes, quests and badges and achievements and XP, right? And so that's

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interesting. Yeah, that's the third rail, right? The thing that I'd like to add here is then that

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we kind of talked dismissively about gamification, because it doesn't really change the underlying

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structure of the classroom, okay? Of course, you know, grades, scores, quantified feedback

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can be effective in knowing how well you're doing. Yeah, of course, Alfie Cohn's rewards and

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punishment. Feedback is good, of course, we do like feedback, but yeah, gamification doesn't

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really change the underlying structure, okay? The issue that we have with game-based learning then

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is, well, one is, is there any pedagogy there that the teacher's doing? That's the first thing.

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The second thing that I think that we touched on is maybe teachers listening to this when they

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think of game-based learning, it's like I said, the Minecraft, the video games, the digital games,

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and it's, well, how the hell am I going to bring Minecraft into the classroom? How the hell am I

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going to get 30 devices so that students can experience the Oregon Trail, for example, even?

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And I think that's one of the issues with this terminology, game-based learning, is that it has

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been kind of hyper-focused on the digital. Whereas what Chris just introduced is this red dot game

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that would for us definitely, I mean, it is a game of sorts, so it would come under the umbrella

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of game-based learning, but the way that game-based learning has kind of been sold is that the red

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dot game doesn't really fit into the narrative. So that's why we're using this term ludic, which

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comes from the word play, meaning that we're looking at things from the massively multiple

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online RPG games like World of Warcraft, the Among Us games, the Minecraft games. Okay, of course,

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they fit under a ludic umbrella, but we'd also like to include all of this stuff that teachers

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are actually doing, like the red dot game. How can we pedagogically support that, scaffold that

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towards learning as well under a banner of game-based learning using the term ludic?

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That's the difference in terminology that I'd like to just focus on is that game-based learning,

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because it has been fairly techno-utopian and focused on digital, it has let teachers down

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in a way. And so by opening the gates to all kinds of play and games under the term ludic,

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I think is a little bit more humane and the way that we'd like to see things going.

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James, just addressing the first part of that. And then I want to get to what it means to be

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ludic in physical spaces as well. That external motivator piece, something that I've been watching

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very closely because I myself am a pretty avid board gamer, video gamer. I'm truly a nerd.

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And this has been ongoing, but I feel like really recently there's been a massive pushback

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to external motivators in games. So there's been hyper-vigilance towards,

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is the game wasting my time? Is the game trying to move me forward using almost

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behaviorist methods of shiny things on screen, et cetera? Or is the game fun in of itself?

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We've seen recent releases of games that are all style, no substance. And then games like

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Baldur's Gate 3, which just came out, it's one of the best-selling games of all time,

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won all these different awards, contains no microtransactions, is fun to play,

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you can play it any way that you want. And I'm curious if there's a way for us to interpret

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this movement that you all are doing through the lens of exploitative mobile games or

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exploitative AAA games that don't value people, et cetera.

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I love exploitative crappy games. I think that they are wonderful. And I think that the more of

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them the better because we can bring them into the classroom and we can use them to show students

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how manipulative systems and people are. And if we don't have those, then there's not a

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shortcut to really showing people how awful other human beings are.

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It makes a really good case too for when you can use extrinsic motivation, because it's not like

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there's no role. I think that some people get stuck in the binary, right? They get stuck in this idea

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of extrinsic motivator bad, intrinsic motivator good, but it's more nuanced than that.

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It's a good framing concept, like the idea of freemium versus AAA games versus indie games.

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And how do they relate to what's happening in classrooms? The freemium games due to their

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nature is that they're free to download. And so they want to keep you on the app, the game

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as much as possible so that they can generate money. And they do that through manipulation of,

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timed rewards, gems, basically they keep you on the app as much as possible.

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Okay, this is kind of pessimistic, but you can see that if maybe high school or junior high school,

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teaching, if the content is such, can I say bullshit?

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I went to a new supermarket the other day and I checked out and they're like,

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do you have a point card? I'm like, no, I don't have a point card. Would you like a point card?

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I don't want a point card, right? Because it's the same thing. That's the freemium bullshit,

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right? It's the, I will give you this thing to hook you back into keeping,

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continue playing, right? And coming back. Yeah. So that's why gamification is used in schools,

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because the content's crap. It's like, I'm going to have to use all this, all these rewards to keep

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you on the, on, on the treadmill, right? Right. Like I came to this store for the cage-free eggs.

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That's why I came to this. What are you talking about? No, because that's why I, I, I decided to

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go to this store for a specific purpose and then they're trying to sell me this freemium

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gamification bullshit. I have no idea what you're talking about. But building off of that though,

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I want to be clear too, if we're going to continue, maybe not necessarily the egg route,

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but the mobile gaming route, premium games tend to burn out. Like there's a few that are hyper

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popular, but the ones that are hyper popular, if you notice, tend to be the least exploitative

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team fight tactics. Like the league of legends, uh, game is incredibly well done. Does it have

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in-app purchases? Yeah, there's a ton of them, but they're not actually impacting the game.

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And big asterisk here, cause there are caveats. Most people aren't addicted to this in the sense

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that I'm spending thousands of dollars a month to keep playing it versus something like Diablo

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Immortal, which kind of infamously launched and had a giant number of people burn out of it within

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the first few months because the game itself is done through purchasing. It took everything out

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of the air and then moved on. And if we think about that from a teaching angle, that's the same

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as saying, Hey, my class is it's fun just cause it's fun. And every now and then we have some

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extrinsic motivators because we have to, to keep you all going. I mean, there's a little bit of

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that in there, but at the exact same time, every single lesson is not, Hey, you're going to earn

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your a hundred points today because after a while that's, it's strenuous. It harms you. It's stress.

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People do burn out on gamification, right? Like the point that James made in his excellent

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digital culture and education paper is that in, if you start to implement these systems of rewards,

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you need to keep them going. Right. And you need to keep like ramping up the dopamine hit

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to keep people in that system. Right. And that's the, that's the argument against capitalism too,

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like capitalism, consumerism. Yeah. We're just going to consume all the resources on the planet.

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And then people are going to burn out. Yeah. I think you can also think about it in terms of

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passion versus profit, right? The game design, is it designed for profit or is it, is it a passion

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project? Like an indie game that, that doesn't try and keep you attached to it. If you like it,

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you like it. If you don't, you don't. Right. I play a freemium game called tricky machines. Okay.

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It's this crazy high, this is janky driving simulation game. It's, it's free to download.

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And you get rewinds because you're going to make a lot of mistakes driving these

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really difficult to drive trucks and forklifts and, and, and trailers around this 3d blocky world.

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I'm happy to spend five bucks or 10 bucks because I like the game and I'm happy to support the

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designers. But that I had, so Chris has the designer tricked me into, into giving them five

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bucks every couple of months. I mean, there's a whole science behind this, like making the

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bundle a certain amount of money. What bundles do I display at different amounts of times? What

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digital currencies do I use? This is like a whole thing, but there's a major difference

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between a developer obsessing over, Hey, I'm going to reap as much money as possible from

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the consumer. And the purpose of the game is the extrinsic reward, AKA the purpose of the game is

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to make as much money as possible versus the purpose of the game is to be fun. And I can sustain

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myself by making a fun game. Yeah. It's the passion versus project profit thing again, right? So is it

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focused on giving the, given the experience or is it about milking the user? Well, but it's not,

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it's not A or B. And I think this, we can get into this later. Like it's not A or B. Like there's,

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the designer still has to buy cage free eggs tomorrow, right? Like they still have to eat,

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right? So they do need, they can't just make an amazing free game and put it out into the world

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because they love everybody, right? They do have to eat.

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Meet Dominic, a typical kid navigating the monotony of school. Every day he trudges through a

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seemingly endless cycle of uninspiring lectures, textbooks thick as bricks, and the ever-present

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drone of the teacher's voice. As the clock ticks, his creativity wilts within the confines of rigid

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curriculum and standardized tests. The fluorescent lights flicker against the beige wall, casting a

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sterile glow over the rows of tired faces. All day dreaming of adventure and excitement outside

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those confining walls. Even the most intriguing subjects lose their allure as they're squeezed

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into the unrelenting schedule, drained of the spark that could ignite a passion. Dominic yearns

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for a spark of real world relevance or a chance to explore his unique interests, but the system

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seems determined to snuff out any hint of excitement that deviates from the script.

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The bell rings, echoing the same familiar routine. The purpose of the Human Restoration Project is

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restoring humanity to education. We believe in fostering a human-centered systems approach

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that revitalizes and rehumanizes the educational experience for students and adults alike.

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00:31:00,300 --> 00:31:04,300
Through our research-backed, informed guidance and collaborative effort with students,

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00:31:04,300 --> 00:31:08,700
teachers, and administrators, we are actively shaping the narrative of public schools.

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We aim to build trust and foster a strong community of backers who share our vision.

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We believe in the power of openness, and with your contribution, you're helping us maintain

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this organization and continue to restore humanity to education. Here's a quick summary of our

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financial situation. Our income sources are donations, grant funding, and professional

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development. We don't generate a profit on our other endeavors like our conferences, resources,

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and videos. We're funded through 2024, but are currently reliant on potential grant funding to

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stay afloat. Our only major expense is payroll. The only two full-time employees at HRP, Nick and

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Chris, each make $55,000 a year. And last year, 92% of our funding was used toward expenses. That's

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payroll, website fees, transcription services, and more. In other words, every dollar counts.

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Human Restoration Project is a 501c3 public charity, and your donation will receive tax

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deduction benefits in the United States. Our EIN is 84-375-3948. As a bonus, all donor gifts

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are produced by Raygun, ethically sourced, sustainably made here in the Midwest, and the

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largest union clothing chain in the United States. And as I can vouch, the shirts are also very, very

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comfortable.

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So would one of you like to address, potentially, what does that actually look like, feel like,

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00:32:37,180 --> 00:32:40,620
sound like? What does it mean to be ludic, generally?

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Okay, there's a couple of different framing devices. First of all, we can think of our

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classrooms as playgrounds. This is something that we've been playing with quite a lot recently,

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is that if we consider classrooms as games, where there are winners and losers with a

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quantified output in terms of the grade that students get, I think that we can do better

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than that by considering classrooms as playgrounds instead. And so the kind of aesthetic difference

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here is that, well, if you consider the game Snakes and Ladders, for example, you know,

409
00:33:09,900 --> 00:33:14,380
you just go through the paces. There's no real choice, I guess. You just roll and see what

410
00:33:14,380 --> 00:33:18,380
happens and your outcome is- No one's like replaying Shoots and Ladders

411
00:33:18,380 --> 00:33:20,700
multiple days in a row. I don't think so.

412
00:33:20,700 --> 00:33:25,180
No, no. And we can kind of consider that if that's the kind of game-like classroom,

413
00:33:25,180 --> 00:33:29,260
then what would a play classroom look like? Well, what do kids do in an adventure playground or

414
00:33:29,260 --> 00:33:34,300
a jungle gym, or whatever you call them in the States? You know, you've got the slide, you've

415
00:33:34,300 --> 00:33:40,140
got this maybe a little castle area, you've got maybe a walkway that they can go across.

416
00:33:40,940 --> 00:33:46,940
So with a playground, it is a structure, it is a defined structure that someone has made,

417
00:33:46,940 --> 00:33:52,300
but they've made it to be played within lots of different ways. So the kid could use the castle

418
00:33:52,300 --> 00:33:57,500
as a, to say that, oh, I'm the king of the castle and you guys are all peasants or whatever,

419
00:33:57,500 --> 00:34:01,180
or you could have someone that just only goes down the slide 15 times, you know,

420
00:34:01,180 --> 00:34:04,380
see how fast he can go, or maybe he slides down backwards and stuff.

421
00:34:04,380 --> 00:34:11,900
So the point is that I think that if we as teachers can create a structure for students to play

422
00:34:11,900 --> 00:34:21,420
within, we're doing something that's a lot more in line with what HRP would consider important in

423
00:34:21,420 --> 00:34:29,500
schools, is that it's more agentive, there's more participation. So the first kind of idea of being

424
00:34:29,500 --> 00:34:35,820
a ludic teacher is to think of your classroom as a playground, and then how can you create space for

425
00:34:35,900 --> 00:34:42,300
students to play? And this word space, we're actually using as an acronym for the kind of

426
00:34:42,300 --> 00:34:50,300
five key tenants of progressive, transformative, good education. So the S would be safety.

427
00:34:50,940 --> 00:34:56,220
So how can we create safety for our students to play? How can we create, for example, a classroom

428
00:34:56,220 --> 00:35:04,780
that values learning by failure and redoing things? So it's a safe place where students can

429
00:35:06,460 --> 00:35:11,820
talk about themselves and not feel like a kind of a fear of being reprimanded. Okay, so that's the

430
00:35:11,820 --> 00:35:19,100
first core tenant of a quote unquote ludic, playful environment is to have a safety participation.

431
00:35:19,100 --> 00:35:25,660
So if you look through educational material on progressive education, on playful education,

432
00:35:25,660 --> 00:35:31,500
on again, good education, it should be connected to the real world. So the participation element of

433
00:35:31,500 --> 00:35:36,300
the classroom, how do we have students get involved in society? Okay, so that's the second

434
00:35:36,300 --> 00:35:42,940
core tenant. So SP, next would be A. So it's agency, how can we have students, you know,

435
00:35:42,940 --> 00:35:47,740
be active learners doing things that are important to them, you know, have some autonomy, have some

436
00:35:47,740 --> 00:35:55,340
choice. So we've got SPA, next is C. So this is another key core tenant of educational literature

437
00:35:55,340 --> 00:36:01,660
being critical. So how can we create critical students that are not just regurgitating things

438
00:36:01,660 --> 00:36:06,780
verbatim from what the teacher said, but actually diving into material? Who wrote this? Why did they

439
00:36:06,780 --> 00:36:12,380
write it? You know, it's a lot more, it's about literacy. The final point, so we've got SPAC,

440
00:36:12,380 --> 00:36:17,020
E is about experiences. So valuing students' experiences in and outside the classroom,

441
00:36:17,020 --> 00:36:23,820
thinking about their identity, making meaningful experiences for students. So I think that if a

442
00:36:23,820 --> 00:36:33,100
teacher can consider their classroom as a place that provides space for students to play with

443
00:36:33,100 --> 00:36:39,180
these five core tenants, then we're on the right track to being a kind of ludic teaching experience,

444
00:36:39,180 --> 00:36:44,940
essentially. Is there even a difference between ludic as a concept when it comes to learning,

445
00:36:45,580 --> 00:36:52,460
and the concept of learning? As in, isn't all good play learning and all good play learning?

446
00:36:52,460 --> 00:36:57,660
I think I said the same thing twice, didn't I? Yeah, in both ways, right? So when you describe

447
00:36:57,660 --> 00:37:03,100
this concept of space, what I hear is, well, it's progressive education. I don't really need to add

448
00:37:03,100 --> 00:37:08,860
on anything to that to necessarily make it progressive ed. That is progressive ed. I think

449
00:37:08,860 --> 00:37:14,700
when some folks think about the emotional connection to play, they think of the word

450
00:37:15,260 --> 00:37:23,340
fun. And that's not necessarily true. Although games can be fun, games can also be very serious

451
00:37:23,340 --> 00:37:28,220
and rigorous and difficult and challenging and tackle like real problems. I've played everything

452
00:37:28,220 --> 00:37:32,780
from, you know, I'll play some like dumb game on my phone to pass 10 minutes because I'm bored. And

453
00:37:32,780 --> 00:37:38,780
it's like a quick dopamine hit to I'll play like Albion online or something like hardcore MMO and

454
00:37:38,780 --> 00:37:44,140
make a spreadsheet for hours and be doing like math calculations. And I'll end after like three

455
00:37:44,140 --> 00:37:48,380
hours thinking to myself, why am I doing this? But I'm like working. I'm working harder than I

456
00:37:48,380 --> 00:37:54,860
do on my day job playing this game. But yet I still continue to do it. The idea of this space,

457
00:37:54,860 --> 00:38:00,540
having these five core tenants, the space to play, being totally aligned with progressive education.

458
00:38:00,540 --> 00:38:07,660
Yes, it is. It's also completely aligned with playful education literature as well. It's also

459
00:38:07,660 --> 00:38:14,060
aligned with radical critical pedagogy literature. It's also aligned with general,

460
00:38:14,060 --> 00:38:19,580
good educational literature, which I just mentioned. So the idea that all of these things kind of

461
00:38:19,580 --> 00:38:25,740
coalesce, that is why I'm able to call it a ludic approach, because it does align with so many

462
00:38:25,740 --> 00:38:31,340
things. It's not only progressive literature, but it also aligns with play and play literature. So

463
00:38:31,340 --> 00:38:37,020
yeah, I think that having these just boiling all these core tenants down was a real kind of

464
00:38:38,060 --> 00:38:42,460
revolutionary thing for for mine and Jonathan's thinking on this topic of what is ludic teaching.

465
00:38:42,460 --> 00:38:46,460
Yeah, that there is no, there's nothing new. It's just only truth, right?

466
00:38:47,020 --> 00:38:52,540
What's exciting about that to me is that it gives you an example, right? Because the one of the major

467
00:38:52,540 --> 00:38:58,860
issues that you run into as a progressive educator is that the thing that you have to model on is

468
00:38:58,860 --> 00:39:03,980
either your own classroom experience, which tends to not be progressive, or perhaps like looking

469
00:39:03,980 --> 00:39:10,940
like Sudbury schools, but it's not accessible, right? I can't easily walk into a quote unquote

470
00:39:10,940 --> 00:39:16,860
progressive education classroom and feel it and see it understand what's going on. But again,

471
00:39:16,860 --> 00:39:22,380
pretty much everyone born in the last few decades plays video games actively or has played a game,

472
00:39:22,380 --> 00:39:27,820
and they can understand that. Like that's a super accessible thing for most folks to go play a board

473
00:39:27,820 --> 00:39:32,060
game or video game. We talk about this, but like this is getting into like semiotic domains of

474
00:39:32,060 --> 00:39:37,260
understanding teaching and learning through the domain of games and play and learning,

475
00:39:37,260 --> 00:39:41,180
and just making that realization that oh, hey, these are really similar, if not the same thing.

476
00:39:41,740 --> 00:39:49,020
So the question that you asked a few minutes ago about like, about fun, it's philosophical,

477
00:39:49,660 --> 00:39:57,580
it's remarkably hard to define what fun is and what play is. So in the book,

478
00:39:58,940 --> 00:40:06,540
and the work that we're doing right now is to try to talk about ludic by downplaying

479
00:40:07,500 --> 00:40:14,380
the what of games, like downplaying the technology in a way, and focusing more on the who

480
00:40:14,860 --> 00:40:20,140
and the how and the why. And so what we've what we've come back to, and this is this is this

481
00:40:20,140 --> 00:40:24,460
wonderful refrain of like, there's nothing new only truth that we're exploring in the book is that

482
00:40:25,580 --> 00:40:30,860
in 2004, like, like Mark LeBlanc and other people, they looked at different kinds of fun.

483
00:40:30,860 --> 00:40:35,420
And the things that you talked about were like, well, you could, you could play Pokemon or

484
00:40:35,420 --> 00:40:41,260
Animal Crossing, or Stardew Valley as just a pastime just to relax, it's fun to just like

485
00:40:41,260 --> 00:40:45,500
collect things and relax with your friends. Or you can play something that's incredibly hard,

486
00:40:45,500 --> 00:40:52,220
like people are playing Dark Souls, or, or are really like for the challenge. And underneath the

487
00:40:52,220 --> 00:40:57,740
umbrella of fun, there are both of these things, right? There are different types of fun that

488
00:40:57,740 --> 00:41:02,140
people like to have just like there are different ways that people like to learn, right? Like we

489
00:41:02,140 --> 00:41:07,980
can go out and we can do inquiry learning, or we can we can draw flashcards, we can we can do all

490
00:41:07,980 --> 00:41:16,700
these different things. I think if teachers start to think more about why their students might like

491
00:41:16,700 --> 00:41:21,820
to play games, and why they might like to engage with the world, and who their students are, and

492
00:41:21,820 --> 00:41:26,860
how they're going to use the games, I think the question of the what just sort of answers itself,

493
00:41:26,860 --> 00:41:33,580
right? Like we necessarily have to look at different interactive experiences to get at those

494
00:41:33,580 --> 00:41:38,060
goals. It's sort of backwards design, right? It's very hard. And I think it's, I think it's

495
00:41:38,060 --> 00:41:42,540
sort of a trap to say, I love Elden Ring, that's a great, that's a great game, we're going to play

496
00:41:42,540 --> 00:41:46,140
Eve online, we're going to do all this kind of stuff. And then we're going to sort of figure out

497
00:41:46,140 --> 00:41:52,140
what we can learn from that game. Is the sort of trap that people I think have fallen into, right?

498
00:41:52,140 --> 00:41:57,900
Like, Among Us is great, how are we going to use it? It's a recursive loop again, right? Like that's

499
00:41:57,900 --> 00:42:01,660
also something that we're talking about, like the Ouroboros, that's the snake eating its tail.

500
00:42:01,660 --> 00:42:06,060
I think from the other end of the spectrum is, I've got to teach Spanish

501
00:42:06,060 --> 00:42:12,220
tense. What's a good game to teach 10 Spanish tenses, right? That's another pitfall that people

502
00:42:12,220 --> 00:42:18,060
fall into, I think, though, it's not completely bad, though. Like, if if the goals are good,

503
00:42:18,060 --> 00:42:21,180
James, right? Like, that's, that's the thing we talked about as well. Like, if the goals are

504
00:42:21,180 --> 00:42:27,020
interesting, then you can start doing really interesting things like, let's say, high tech

505
00:42:27,020 --> 00:42:33,420
high, or some or request to learn, right? They've got these progressive goals. By going from the the

506
00:42:33,420 --> 00:42:41,420
why, then back to the how, and talking about who the students are, the what just makes sense then,

507
00:42:41,420 --> 00:42:44,460
right? Because you're going to be doing all these other pedagogical things around it, right? But if

508
00:42:44,460 --> 00:42:50,140
you said, I have to teach, I have to teach English one, I have to teach Spanish one, I need the

509
00:42:50,140 --> 00:42:55,580
students to learn 400 verbs by the end of the semester, you're going to go to Kahoot, you're

510
00:42:55,580 --> 00:43:01,660
going to go to class dojo, because that's the most efficient way to get people to drill the content

511
00:43:01,660 --> 00:43:06,380
that's been mandated by your administrator, right? If you don't have the freedom to play, you're going

512
00:43:06,380 --> 00:43:13,580
to the backwards design puts you in a bad place. It forces you to embrace a more radical pedagogy,

513
00:43:13,580 --> 00:43:18,220
though, because that's a perfect example of something that is not retained. It's short term

514
00:43:18,220 --> 00:43:23,260
results, and a behaviorist mindset, because it does well on testing, but does nothing to engage

515
00:43:23,260 --> 00:43:27,820
the learner over time. In the exact same way that I mean, I took eight years of Spanish, but also

516
00:43:27,820 --> 00:43:33,580
I've attempted to use Duolingo, which is ostensibly a flashcard app, right? That doesn't really teach

517
00:43:33,580 --> 00:43:41,020
you how to do that. But if you were to play a game that was in another language that was immersive,

518
00:43:41,020 --> 00:43:45,180
your chances of remembering that content beyond just flashcards is much higher.

519
00:43:45,820 --> 00:43:50,620
James James has just done that with tactics ogre. So James is a very proficient Japanese

520
00:43:50,620 --> 00:43:57,900
speaker, and he is now writing a paper where he played a quite hardcore tactics game in Japanese.

521
00:43:57,900 --> 00:44:02,540
He streamed everything. It's on his Twitch channel, and you can see him trying to unpack things.

522
00:44:03,180 --> 00:44:08,780
I'm still curious, like, what did you actually learn, James, from this progressive, humane,

523
00:44:08,780 --> 00:44:15,180
exploratory way of approaching learning Japanese rather than then grinding another, you know,

524
00:44:15,180 --> 00:44:20,300
100,000 words through Duolingo? This is the problem, too, the Chris that I'm sure you bought up

525
00:44:20,300 --> 00:44:25,340
against is that they have. It's really easy to show data from a more behaviorist agricultural

526
00:44:25,340 --> 00:44:30,940
model of farming students rather than creating a permaculture garden where people where everybody

527
00:44:30,940 --> 00:44:34,940
can be their wonderful flower and explore the things they want to learn. Because demonstrating

528
00:44:34,940 --> 00:44:41,340
what demonstrating that I'm poking you, right? Demonstrating what what students have learned

529
00:44:41,340 --> 00:44:47,580
through inquiry is much more challenging, right? It's much more challenge. I have actually a little

530
00:44:47,580 --> 00:44:52,140
pushback against that. See, I'm poking you because I want you to I want you to push back on this.

531
00:44:52,140 --> 00:44:59,900
It's because it's systems of education find themselves in many other monetary capitalistic

532
00:44:59,900 --> 00:45:05,820
economic systems that cause us to look at learning through one specific lens, which is traditional

533
00:45:05,820 --> 00:45:10,700
test score academics. Now, interestingly enough, we can make the argument that progressive education

534
00:45:10,700 --> 00:45:15,500
actually does increase test scores. We have that data. But as as you probably both know,

535
00:45:15,500 --> 00:45:20,940
there was the eight year study like way back in the day. This is what 70 years ago was the 1930s,

536
00:45:20,940 --> 00:45:28,460
I believe. And they looked at progressive schools and looked at things like college success rates,

537
00:45:28,460 --> 00:45:35,500
job academic job, job success rates, academics, even like life, like health risks and stuff like

538
00:45:35,500 --> 00:45:40,460
that. And they found across the board that progressive schools did better than their public

539
00:45:40,460 --> 00:45:44,140
school peers. Now, the data is a little skewed because you have to account for the fact that

540
00:45:44,140 --> 00:45:49,340
progressive schools tend to be richer kids, they tend to have more access to things, etc.,

541
00:45:49,340 --> 00:45:52,940
which speaks to the idea of education can't solve economic problems.

542
00:45:53,820 --> 00:45:59,740
Right. It's just the straight. It's education replicating class structures rather than right,

543
00:45:59,740 --> 00:46:04,460
there is not social mobility. Right. If people are stuck at a certain level, there's not social

544
00:46:04,460 --> 00:46:09,980
mobility either. Right. Right. But you can extrapolate the data and still find that kids

545
00:46:09,980 --> 00:46:17,340
who went to more affluent, typical public schools were more engaged, had more monetary success,

546
00:46:17,340 --> 00:46:21,100
and were happier and healthier, healthier people as a result of going to progressive schools.

547
00:46:21,100 --> 00:46:25,260
It's just like this has been studied time and time again, the research is all out there.

548
00:46:25,260 --> 00:46:31,260
It's just not nearly as clean. It's not clean. It's not clean because you write like because

549
00:46:31,260 --> 00:46:35,980
then you then you get the conflating factors of like, well, the parents are highly educated,

550
00:46:35,980 --> 00:46:40,060
and they're also feeding the kids better food like farm-free eggs or cage-free eggs again.

551
00:46:40,060 --> 00:46:44,540
Right. There are more books in their bedrooms. They're participating in different extracurricular

552
00:46:44,540 --> 00:46:50,780
activities. It's hard to look at that data and the social cultural factors around it.

553
00:46:50,780 --> 00:46:55,820
Right. I was even getting into like, the pedagogy isn't necessarily as clean. So speaking of like,

554
00:46:55,820 --> 00:47:03,900
the game element, it's a lot easier to just say Duolingo X into Y versus play immersive game in

555
00:47:03,900 --> 00:47:08,220
the class and everyone's doing something different. So it's like A, B, C, D, E, F,

556
00:47:08,220 --> 00:47:15,980
G, H, I, J into X. It's way more complicated. And I just wrote a paper in Ludic language pedagogy

557
00:47:15,980 --> 00:47:20,060
about like the methods, the materials and the mediation where I had 60 students.

558
00:47:20,060 --> 00:47:24,620
We all played the same game and students were exploring like, well, I'm going to teach with

559
00:47:24,620 --> 00:47:28,380
this game or I'm going to look at the language of this game or the cultural models. And it's just

560
00:47:28,380 --> 00:47:33,980
like, as a teacher, I have to do different things and I've got 60 students doing different things.

561
00:47:33,980 --> 00:47:38,780
And so I have to structure it as a sort of portfolio based class. And I have to have students

562
00:47:38,780 --> 00:47:43,580
demonstrate their own learning and reflect on things. I didn't give them a vocabulary test.

563
00:47:43,580 --> 00:47:49,420
I don't know how many words they learned, but I can show 20 groups, beautiful,

564
00:47:49,420 --> 00:47:55,660
transformative journeys through this class. Let's pull this slightly back then. Right. So the idea

565
00:47:55,660 --> 00:48:01,580
of, well, what did you learn from Tactics Ogre, James? Okay. I played a game. Did I learn anything?

566
00:48:01,580 --> 00:48:08,460
If I had just studied vocabulary via flashcards, I would have quote unquote, learnt more content

567
00:48:08,460 --> 00:48:14,780
in the time that it took me to play Tactics Ogre. But the level that I retained that information

568
00:48:15,900 --> 00:48:21,420
would probably be a lot less than the words that I learned by playing this game. So it's a kind of

569
00:48:21,420 --> 00:48:27,020
quantity versus quality argument here. Right. Really quick interjection. That is mirrored in

570
00:48:27,020 --> 00:48:32,700
how they study progressive education in regards to tests. Whenever students take tests, they tend to

571
00:48:32,700 --> 00:48:38,140
do the same or better on state tests, et cetera. But folks that go through progressive pedagogy

572
00:48:38,780 --> 00:48:44,300
get more complex answers correct. So they are worse at the rote memorization questions. Like,

573
00:48:44,300 --> 00:48:49,820
what does this word mean? But they're way better at what is the theme of this passage or something

574
00:48:49,820 --> 00:48:55,340
like that. Interpretation, critical thinking, these measures. That's great. So the problem

575
00:48:55,340 --> 00:49:00,220
here, we're going to go pessimistic though now, unfortunately, is that the thing that

576
00:49:01,020 --> 00:49:06,380
my universities, well, I spoke to Chris outside of this podcast about it. For example, the

577
00:49:06,380 --> 00:49:11,660
university entrance exam in Japan, or maybe the SATs, something in the States, what they're looking

578
00:49:11,660 --> 00:49:20,780
for is that quantity over quality. So you could say that even though my experience of learning that

579
00:49:20,780 --> 00:49:27,820
way was good for me, and I learned things in a deeper way, I didn't get actually as much as I

580
00:49:27,820 --> 00:49:33,980
could have done if I just did flashcards, which is the thing that is valued by universities and

581
00:49:33,980 --> 00:49:39,980
higher education. So that's a huge problem I see. Right. You work in the systems that you find

582
00:49:39,980 --> 00:49:44,380
yourself in and you push in any way that you can on the systems that you can influence.

583
00:49:45,180 --> 00:49:53,020
The trouble that we run into is that the folks internalize the message that, yes, I should work

584
00:49:53,020 --> 00:49:59,100
to change the systems that I have control over. But their interpretation of what systems they have

585
00:49:59,100 --> 00:50:05,660
control over is heavily skewed in the sense that they could be taking much bigger risks and changing

586
00:50:05,660 --> 00:50:09,420
much bigger systems. They just don't know it because they haven't tried. They've limited their

587
00:50:09,420 --> 00:50:17,020
own potential. This hits directly onto the idea of play and what is play. There's a few definitions

588
00:50:17,020 --> 00:50:22,220
of play. The one that me and Jonathan are using in our book that we're writing is from Ian Bogost,

589
00:50:22,220 --> 00:50:32,380
which is to manipulate a system towards gratifying experiences. So it's manipulating constraints

590
00:50:32,380 --> 00:50:39,020
within constraints. For teachers then, they need to know what their constraints are in order for

591
00:50:39,020 --> 00:50:46,220
them to be able to make this space to play. So the more cognizant they are of the constraints

592
00:50:46,220 --> 00:50:51,100
that they find themselves within, hopefully the more that they can actually push back on those

593
00:50:51,100 --> 00:50:55,580
boundaries towards generating these gratifying experiences, which I think we're both talking

594
00:50:55,580 --> 00:51:01,260
about from a play angle and from a progressive education angle as well. Right. It is really

595
00:51:01,260 --> 00:51:06,300
about literacy, right? It's very much about literacy of understanding what your constraints are

596
00:51:06,300 --> 00:51:11,340
and how you can use a ludic approach to push back on those constraints and to continue to

597
00:51:13,340 --> 00:51:18,220
make or take more freedom, right? I love what Chris said about you do what you can

598
00:51:18,780 --> 00:51:24,060
as the nature finds a way or the water goes through the cracks sort of approach of.

599
00:51:25,580 --> 00:51:31,100
Just a really simple example, there's a teacher that I was working with a couple of years ago

600
00:51:31,580 --> 00:51:39,980
and there was a mandated textbook in the curriculum and he had gotten through the

601
00:51:39,980 --> 00:51:43,740
textbook a little bit quicker and there were a couple of weeks left in the class and he came

602
00:51:43,740 --> 00:51:48,780
to me and said, what do I do? And literally he didn't know what to do with three weeks.

603
00:51:49,420 --> 00:51:54,380
He could have, for me, it's like, oh wow, I'll do a mini project, right? I'll have students go

604
00:51:54,380 --> 00:51:59,740
like do some mini inquiry research or I'll have them make a podcast or I'll have them just stand

605
00:51:59,740 --> 00:52:02,780
up and talk about like what makes you happy. I don't know. They just do something nice for

606
00:52:02,780 --> 00:52:08,220
a couple of weeks and I just said, but because of his literacy, I'm just like, well, just do a

607
00:52:08,220 --> 00:52:12,780
couple of the chapters again, like just do a little bit of repetitions, right? Like ask the students

608
00:52:12,780 --> 00:52:17,740
which chapters they had trouble with and just do those chapters again. He didn't know that he could

609
00:52:17,740 --> 00:52:21,260
do the textbook again, right? He had thought that he had just gone through all the content

610
00:52:21,820 --> 00:52:29,500
and now his job was done and he was totally lost. I think what's really cool about this specific

611
00:52:29,500 --> 00:52:36,220
line of thinking surrounding progressive pedagogy is it does give a very tangible way to start,

612
00:52:36,780 --> 00:52:43,260
right? If you go on YouTube and you type in like me, like if you type in my name, okay,

613
00:52:43,260 --> 00:52:48,140
one of the first things that you'll find is me talking about the benefits of a badging system

614
00:52:48,140 --> 00:52:55,180
from like 14 years ago because I didn't know what I was doing, right? I integrated an XP system.

615
00:52:55,180 --> 00:52:59,900
It was like my second year teaching. I did all of these really dumb things and I went through

616
00:52:59,900 --> 00:53:07,260
a master's program where I was taught Jereau and hooks and Ferrari. I learned the critical pedagogy.

617
00:53:07,260 --> 00:53:13,260
I did all this stuff and it still didn't resonate. And that's a wonderful transition into something

618
00:53:13,260 --> 00:53:18,460
that I stumbled into as well. We teach language in Japan, James and I, and we teach a lot of

619
00:53:18,460 --> 00:53:24,300
conversation classes and so you ask students like, so, hi Taro, how are you today? I'm fine,

620
00:53:24,300 --> 00:53:28,780
thank you. And you? I'm fine. What'd you do this weekend? Watched a movie? Okay, go sit down,

621
00:53:28,780 --> 00:53:36,860
right? Instead of that, I take now like a week, like also 90 minutes a week, I have classes 90

622
00:53:36,860 --> 00:53:42,780
minutes a week. We take a period or two just to get to know each other. And I ask much more

623
00:53:42,780 --> 00:53:48,460
different questions like, who are you? What are your superpowers? What are you afraid about? What

624
00:53:48,460 --> 00:53:53,580
are you afraid of in this class? Like what would you not like to do in this class? If you had three

625
00:53:53,580 --> 00:53:57,820
hours of time, what could I help you with? It's what you just said, like it's very human of,

626
00:53:58,860 --> 00:54:05,420
are you happy? And are you healthy? And who would you like to be in the future? And how can I get

627
00:54:05,420 --> 00:54:09,180
you there with the limited time that we have in this class? I've only got to meet you for

628
00:54:09,180 --> 00:54:14,940
22 hours, 22 and a half hours, I can give you 10 hours of homework, another constraint. What can

629
00:54:14,940 --> 00:54:19,260
I do in the 30 hours I'm going to be with you? And by starting with that human perspective of,

630
00:54:19,260 --> 00:54:24,940
this is who we are, this is who we want to be. Students do remarkable things, like amazing

631
00:54:24,940 --> 00:54:33,660
projects, like my students are like, redesigning the toilet systems to be more humane towards

632
00:54:33,660 --> 00:54:39,420
international people in Japan, right? Because the length of the language barrier, or they are trying

633
00:54:39,420 --> 00:54:45,340
to revitalize areas of Japan because of its declining population and aging population,

634
00:54:45,420 --> 00:54:49,740
like the downtown areas are just becoming wastelands. And so I have students going in

635
00:54:49,740 --> 00:54:54,460
and like talking to shop owners and saying, what can I do for you? I mean, I'm a student,

636
00:54:54,460 --> 00:55:00,460
right? I teach them, these are the magic words, like I am a student. It's just the magic word,

637
00:55:00,460 --> 00:55:05,340
like people will help them. If they say I'm a student and I want to do something, it's just like

638
00:55:06,540 --> 00:55:08,780
lightning in a bottle and people start talking to them.

639
00:55:08,780 --> 00:55:12,140
I was going to say, how do you tie that to ludic pedagogy?

640
00:55:12,220 --> 00:55:18,380
This idea of agency and interaction, like the way that I used to teach classes was much more

641
00:55:18,380 --> 00:55:23,100
teacher-fronted, right? All right, here's the textbooks, open your book to page 17,

642
00:55:23,100 --> 00:55:28,860
all right, here's the dialogue that you've got to read, okay, person A, person B, now switch,

643
00:55:28,860 --> 00:55:33,020
let's pull some vocabulary out, let me drill you a little bit. And so now it's much more about,

644
00:55:33,820 --> 00:55:39,500
that is interaction, right? From a very behaviorist language perspective, a

645
00:55:39,500 --> 00:55:44,780
cognitive perspective, that is effective teaching, right? The students are interacting with each

646
00:55:44,780 --> 00:55:50,620
other, they're outputting. But for me now, I'm reframing the agency and the interaction

647
00:55:50,620 --> 00:55:56,380
to be much more of saying, you've got the freedom to do anything you want in this class, pretty much.

648
00:55:56,380 --> 00:56:02,780
Yeah, okay. So can I tie this into the playground metaphor then? So the idea of teaching

649
00:56:03,740 --> 00:56:07,740
as a playground rather than a game, I'm going to presume then, Jonathan, you've set up some

650
00:56:07,820 --> 00:56:12,860
kind of constraints for the students, you have to do a project, you will be graded on this project,

651
00:56:12,860 --> 00:56:18,540
you must evidence your learning on this project, that is the jungle gym that you have created,

652
00:56:18,540 --> 00:56:22,860
and then you've given students the space there to actually play with it how they want to on their

653
00:56:22,860 --> 00:56:28,540
terms. But we went through a curriculum reform process about four or five years ago, I was part

654
00:56:28,540 --> 00:56:33,020
of the decision-making team, and I said, like, we really need to have a project-based learning

655
00:56:33,740 --> 00:56:38,540
curriculum to this department. In Japan, not enough schools have a PBL class,

656
00:56:39,100 --> 00:56:46,060
I think I can put together a project-based learning curriculum. The dean was on board,

657
00:56:47,820 --> 00:56:55,180
and we got a new hire to help me put together this project-based learning curriculum.

658
00:56:55,180 --> 00:57:00,780
Okay, so this was like through the institution of, there was a window for curriculum reform,

659
00:57:01,020 --> 00:57:04,460
you have the conversation with people, right? Hey, we're going to reform the curriculum,

660
00:57:04,460 --> 00:57:08,540
what should we do? And another person might have said, well, we need to have more conversation

661
00:57:08,540 --> 00:57:13,500
classes, we need to have more flashcard learning, we need to have more test prep. I said, we need

662
00:57:13,500 --> 00:57:17,660
to have more inquiry learning, and I think I can put together a decent project-based learning

663
00:57:17,660 --> 00:57:24,860
curriculum. So conversations with the department, drafted syllabi, which were negotiated with the

664
00:57:24,860 --> 00:57:30,460
dean, got a new hire who was totally on board, hired for this position, and we continue to play

665
00:57:30,460 --> 00:57:38,060
around with, what is it like, what's the seven habits of highly effective people, that's in the

666
00:57:38,060 --> 00:57:44,380
first year course, all this kind of stuff. And so we do, we have a syllabus, and it's rigorous,

667
00:57:44,380 --> 00:57:49,500
right? Students have to keep learning diaries, there are multiple critiques that have to be handed

668
00:57:49,500 --> 00:57:55,420
in, there's transformative reflections at the end of the semester, they have to write an exit memo

669
00:57:55,420 --> 00:57:59,820
to the next year's class, they have to document their learning, they have to write reports in

670
00:57:59,820 --> 00:58:03,660
their second language, their first language, and their third language to get extra credit,

671
00:58:03,660 --> 00:58:10,140
like it's this, and it just, and it just snowballs, right? I'm going to spend about an hour today

672
00:58:10,140 --> 00:58:17,420
revising it for next semester to add in more of this space. Now that I've started this process,

673
00:58:17,980 --> 00:58:22,220
I can add in more things. So instead of me checking the diaries, I'm also going to have

674
00:58:22,220 --> 00:58:26,460
them peer checking each other's diaries and giving comments to other people. I'm going to buddy them

675
00:58:26,460 --> 00:58:32,300
up, right? So that they can buddy up with different people each week to sort of peer

676
00:58:32,940 --> 00:58:41,340
feedback on their learning diaries, right? So that's how I was able to think about my constraint,

677
00:58:41,340 --> 00:58:45,340
which I could not have taught this class 10 years ago under the constraints that I had at the time,

678
00:58:46,060 --> 00:58:52,380
but now I'm taking more and more, approaching things in a very ludic way. We don't use games,

679
00:58:52,380 --> 00:58:57,980
we don't use games in this classroom, but it's incredibly ludic, right? Like, and by, right,

680
00:58:57,980 --> 00:59:02,540
I do show them examples of games, like, for example, the fun theory, like the piano stairs,

681
00:59:02,540 --> 00:59:07,020
right, or the world's deepest garbage bin, or this kind of stuff.

682
00:59:07,020 --> 00:59:11,740
Which would not fit, just as a disclaimer, that would not fit under a game-based learning approach.

683
00:59:11,740 --> 00:59:17,580
The fun, okay, I could sell that as a game-based, and when I taught a graduate level class at NYU,

684
00:59:18,380 --> 00:59:21,980
it was a games and education class, and I showed all kinds of crazy stuff,

685
00:59:21,980 --> 00:59:28,060
right? Like, I showed the Pac-Manhattan, that was the year before me, right? So they dressed up as

686
00:59:28,060 --> 00:59:32,300
Pac-Man and ran around the streets of Manhattan. So, right, somebody dressed up as Pac-Man,

687
00:59:32,300 --> 00:59:35,420
someone was like, four people dressed up as ghosts, there was a command center where they were on

688
00:59:35,420 --> 00:59:40,940
cell phones, and because Manhattan looks like around Washington Square Park, it looks like

689
00:59:40,940 --> 00:59:47,100
the Pac-Man board, so they played Pac-Manhattan. They built and run Pac-Manhattan, and nobody got

690
00:59:47,100 --> 00:59:50,700
killed by a taxi. It was remarkable. Pulling that back, a huge part of the work that we do

691
00:59:50,700 --> 00:59:57,660
at HRP, and I also find it in that space acronym you have, is this idea of purpose finding,

692
00:59:57,660 --> 01:00:01,980
going on a life's journey, having a purpose. It's not necessarily that you ever even meet that

693
01:00:01,980 --> 01:00:07,660
purpose or know what it is. It's the fact that you are on constant track of figuring out who it is

694
01:00:07,660 --> 01:00:13,340
that you are, who you are on that journey. It's the classic statement, it's about the journey,

695
01:00:13,420 --> 01:00:20,300
not about the destination. The dream or the lofty goal of folks who think about education in a very

696
01:00:20,300 --> 01:00:28,940
human-centered way, see life as ludic. Work is ludic. School is ludic. The way that I interact

697
01:00:28,940 --> 01:00:35,340
when I wake up and I go to bed is ludic. Because if we get away from that word of fun and move

698
01:00:35,340 --> 01:00:41,980
towards these ideas of agency, choice, purpose, these are things I would want to be doing all the

699
01:00:41,980 --> 01:00:46,940
time. These are not things I reserve for the classroom. These aren't things that I reserve for

700
01:00:47,660 --> 01:00:53,740
the office. These are things I want to be doing 24 hours a day, every single day a week.

701
01:00:54,700 --> 01:01:00,140
I can't help but think about folks who are elderly, who have gone through a traumatic

702
01:01:00,140 --> 01:01:04,940
experience, like a near-death experience, etc. They talk about this idea of childhood wonder,

703
01:01:04,940 --> 01:01:10,860
childhood joy, embracing who you were as a kid. I'm just curious about your thoughts on how you

704
01:01:10,860 --> 01:01:16,540
see ludic, even beyond ludic learning, just ludic as a concept universally.

705
01:01:18,380 --> 01:01:21,820
When I have the time to do that, for example, my thesis center, I see them for two years.

706
01:01:22,780 --> 01:01:30,700
We spend time talking about who they are and who they want to be. I don't poke holes in their

707
01:01:30,700 --> 01:01:37,100
dreams, but I definitely push back a little bit when they're like, I really want to be a YouTuber.

708
01:01:38,060 --> 01:01:43,180
And knowing what I know about games and about media, Quintin Smith from Sharp and Sit Down gave

709
01:01:43,180 --> 01:01:48,460
a talk at an elementary school about how many of you watch YouTubers? And they're like, yeah,

710
01:01:48,460 --> 01:01:51,980
all the kids raise their hand. How many like YouTubers? Oh, they all raise their hand. How

711
01:01:51,980 --> 01:01:55,260
many of you want to be YouTubers? All raise their hand. And he's like, all right, let me break it

712
01:01:55,260 --> 01:02:01,180
down for you. You make one video, you love it. It's great. You're on top of the world and that

713
01:02:01,180 --> 01:02:05,020
video gets a bunch of likes. Guess what? You got to do it again tomorrow. And then the day after

714
01:02:05,020 --> 01:02:11,020
that and then the day after that and then the day after that. And so like the reality of

715
01:02:12,300 --> 01:02:19,500
what seems like fun can pretty soon turn into something that's not meaningful or whatever.

716
01:02:19,500 --> 01:02:22,860
And so when my students say like, I want to be a YouTuber or I want to work at a hotel,

717
01:02:23,420 --> 01:02:27,260
we start to talk about like the design of gratifying experiences that James talked about

718
01:02:27,260 --> 01:02:31,980
earlier. And we do spend some time Googling like, what are the most rewarding careers and

719
01:02:31,980 --> 01:02:37,420
why might they be rewarding? And consistently, teaching is on there, even though it's not like

720
01:02:37,420 --> 01:02:43,500
a highly paid job, because some teachers do they get a lot of meaning, right? Again, the safety,

721
01:02:43,500 --> 01:02:49,340
right? Participation with students and agency and critical like, like some, you know, and then like

722
01:02:49,340 --> 01:02:54,540
other jobs pop up, like, for example, radiologist or a dental hygienist or a physical therapist or

723
01:02:54,540 --> 01:03:01,500
something like that, grief counselor, because they it does embody the sort of these ludic

724
01:03:01,500 --> 01:03:07,500
principles of relating to other people and a challenging job and interacting with people,

725
01:03:07,500 --> 01:03:13,500
right? And so even though those jobs might not be fun, they're incredibly

726
01:03:15,260 --> 01:03:20,380
ludic, right? Because it contains all this space in which you're human and you relate to other

727
01:03:20,380 --> 01:03:27,180
people. And so I do like to try to reframe students understandings of society using this

728
01:03:27,180 --> 01:03:35,740
sort of ludic unpacking model. What do you think about this concept of reframing ludic learning

729
01:03:35,740 --> 01:03:43,740
towards the idea of ludic living, quite literally expanding and broadening the term beyond,

730
01:03:43,740 --> 01:03:50,220
like, is ludic just a substitute for a good life, as opposed to is ludic just reserved for a

731
01:03:50,220 --> 01:03:56,620
classroom or learning space? So in earlier draft of the book, we played around, you know, like

732
01:03:56,620 --> 01:04:01,340
there's life is a game, right? And you can reframe, you can, right, you can reframe games as like,

733
01:04:01,340 --> 01:04:07,100
right, there's a system of inputs and outputs and the stratified outcomes and the actions that we

734
01:04:07,100 --> 01:04:12,380
take. It's a machine, right? I wrote a paper in college with, you know, like on diets as being

735
01:04:12,380 --> 01:04:18,540
games. And we specifically steered away from that, right? We didn't want to say school is a game,

736
01:04:18,540 --> 01:04:22,380
life is a game, because I think whenever you start to do that, it does start to get very

737
01:04:22,380 --> 01:04:28,540
behavioristic, right? Of inputs and quantified. It already is. It already is, right?

738
01:04:28,540 --> 01:04:30,940
Soterios Johnson God, let's not get too far into this. But like,

739
01:04:30,940 --> 01:04:36,300
if we want to start diving into like ideas of like capitalist realism, or into like, who's defining,

740
01:04:36,300 --> 01:04:40,860
who's defining the game? If that if we're saying life is a game, well, it's not my game,

741
01:04:40,860 --> 01:04:43,900
it could be a game. But if I'm not the one that designed it, who cares?

742
01:04:43,900 --> 01:04:47,740
I'd like to talk about like Animal Crossing and Pokemon with my students because not because

743
01:04:47,740 --> 01:04:53,340
Pokemon is a good game. I don't think I like I don't like it. But I think Nintendo is playing

744
01:04:53,340 --> 01:04:58,380
the game, right? We are that we are that we are the pieces that Nintendo is playing so that they

745
01:04:58,380 --> 01:05:03,820
make profit and continue reselling Pokemon to the next generation for the next, you know,

746
01:05:03,900 --> 01:05:05,500
however long capitalism lasts.

747
01:05:05,500 --> 01:05:12,780
I think that yeah, if life is a game, if life is a game, it does, it does mean that there's

748
01:05:12,780 --> 01:05:17,260
going to be winners and losers and scores and leaderboards, right? And, and so sometimes,

749
01:05:17,900 --> 01:05:23,740
the difference between that and free play is that isn't it just nice to not worry about scores

750
01:05:23,740 --> 01:05:29,420
occasionally and and just have like a more interesting experience. So I think that that's

751
01:05:29,420 --> 01:05:33,500
that's the problem with schools as they are, they are currently designed as games, right? They are

752
01:05:34,300 --> 01:05:39,900
set up for winners and losers. It's highly competitive, essentially, right? So I think

753
01:05:39,900 --> 01:05:45,420
that having a ludic approach to learning and life is that just taking the focus off that slightly

754
01:05:45,420 --> 01:05:49,420
and thinking about what's the best kind of experience I want to have in my classroom.

755
01:05:50,300 --> 01:05:56,140
For example, thinking about grades, then again, I tell students in my presentations class that

756
01:05:56,140 --> 01:06:00,780
don't worry, whatever you do, you're going to pass the class, right? Don't worry about your grade.

757
01:06:00,780 --> 01:06:05,420
I'm very open with them. It's like, I would like you to take risks and challenge yourself and do

758
01:06:05,420 --> 01:06:10,460
things that are, you know, more, you know, connected to societies, I have them go out

759
01:06:10,460 --> 01:06:16,780
and do field work and, and, you know, collect some real data from real people, rather than them

760
01:06:16,780 --> 01:06:19,820
trying to play it safe, because they're worried about the score that they might get at the end of

761
01:06:19,820 --> 01:06:25,100
the year of the year. So I think that a ludic approach to teaching and living is definitely

762
01:06:25,100 --> 01:06:28,860
something that we should be striving for. Yeah. It's true more broadly as well. Like, if you're

763
01:06:28,860 --> 01:06:33,500
talking about raising money as a corporation, it tends to be the folks who think outside the box,

764
01:06:33,500 --> 01:06:38,380
who don't think about making money, end up actually creating the most creative products that might

765
01:06:38,380 --> 01:06:43,020
in turn actually create more money in the exact same way that people that don't focus on grades

766
01:06:43,020 --> 01:06:48,060
actually tend to get higher grades. They study like grading orientation versus learning orientation.

767
01:06:48,060 --> 01:06:52,940
People who don't focus on grades get higher grades, which is deeply ironic.

768
01:06:52,940 --> 01:06:56,140
Yeah. Okay. So, so I think it gets, it gets back to what James said about like,

769
01:06:57,100 --> 01:07:01,260
ludic being about the design of gratifying experiences, right? And that's different for

770
01:07:01,260 --> 01:07:06,060
everybody, right? What's gratifying to Chris is, is different than what's gratifying to James is

771
01:07:06,060 --> 01:07:11,260
different. What's gratifying to me, right? And, but I think you can start to have those humane

772
01:07:11,260 --> 01:07:17,180
conversations with students and peers about whether or not you are living a gratified,

773
01:07:17,180 --> 01:07:22,460
gratifyingly successful life and what's missing or what you might like to change. And then,

774
01:07:22,460 --> 01:07:27,740
and then it is a journey, right? Of, of talking to students. I mean, if a teacher would walk into a

775
01:07:27,740 --> 01:07:33,500
class and be able to have the trust, and in one of my classes, I do start the class by saying like,

776
01:07:33,500 --> 01:07:37,180
I trust you that you're going to do the work and I want you to trust me. And I want you to say it

777
01:07:37,180 --> 01:07:42,700
out loud, right? Because if we don't have trust, this class is for nothing, right? I don't, I can't

778
01:07:42,700 --> 01:07:49,580
trust you to go out and take pictures of garbage cans or something. If, if I, if I don't trust you,

779
01:07:49,580 --> 01:07:52,300
right? Because you could just get them off the internet and have, and then you just cheat your

780
01:07:52,300 --> 01:07:56,140
fieldwork, right? So if we do start to have that trust and talk about gratifying experiences and

781
01:07:56,140 --> 01:08:02,860
starting to have a ludic life, then I think that is the foundation for, for better education and,

782
01:08:02,860 --> 01:08:08,220
and, and, and a better life. I struggle with it for sure. Like whenever I go to the cabin,

783
01:08:08,220 --> 01:08:13,180
I like to reflect on like, how's my life going? And I was late to the podcast this morning because

784
01:08:13,180 --> 01:08:17,580
I rode, I have a running machine in my office and I just needed to get some stress out, even though

785
01:08:17,580 --> 01:08:23,020
I'm sick. I knew that would be better for my body tomorrow and the day after if I, if I did some

786
01:08:23,020 --> 01:08:30,140
cardio this morning, right? So yeah, it's not always fun. I have a cold and I'm, and I'm rowing

787
01:08:31,340 --> 01:08:35,820
in the morning, right? In the, in the, in the Japanese summer, like it's not a good time,

788
01:08:35,820 --> 01:08:43,020
but tomorrow will be better. Games are good, but teachers are better. So you gotta have,

789
01:08:43,020 --> 01:08:47,100
you gotta have the pedagogy. It's not just about the games. Focus on what you can do as a teacher

790
01:08:47,100 --> 01:08:53,260
rather than what the game can do for you. Thank you again for listening to our podcast

791
01:08:53,260 --> 01:08:57,020
at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready

792
01:08:57,020 --> 01:09:01,340
to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your

793
01:09:01,340 --> 01:09:06,300
favorite podcast player. Plus find a whole host of free resources, writings, other podcasts,

794
01:09:06,300 --> 01:09:13,500
all for free at our website, Human Restoration Project Network. Thank you.

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