Last semester, I used the Reacting to the Past module Threshold of Democracy with my students. I did this mainly on the recommendation of a colleague as to the strengths of the Reacting to the Past series. I had wanted to attend one of their many conferences so I could test the game out myself prior to playing it, but with family commitments that ended up not working. I instead had to rely on my years of experience outside the classroom with role-playing games.
However, to be honest, while playing Dungeons and Dragons definitely prepared me for thinking about the rules system behind the game, the best training that I had for Threshold of Democracy was the organizing work that I’ve done in political and religious settings. That is because at the heart of each of the Threshold of Democracy sessions is the question “what decision will this group make together”. I recognize that students found this question puzzling, because for the most part in 21st century America, people, especially college students, do not have experience making decisions as part of a group.
There were some problems with how I ran the game. I didn’t provide clear enough instructions for what I wanted in terms of speeches. Neither did I do sufficient job checking to make sure that students were doing the reading while the game was in progress. Behind the scenes I also struggled keeping track of the many different deadlines: for those who don’t know the Threshold of Democracy system, basically each student has to write and perform two speeches over the course of six classes, which is fairly basic. But what this means in terms of scheduling is that each student has a unique combination of deadlines. Perhaps at some college instructors can trust students to keep track of this material, but at my school I know that students need constant reminding about upcoming deadlines.
This semester I hope to turn each of these problems around. In terms of preparing students, I not only created a one page sheet explaining what I want from speeches, I also recorded myself giving a sample speech, as well as providing the transcript and examples of what acceptable notes look like. In terms of pressuring students to stay on top of the readings, I’ve set up online quizzes, so that I don’t have to sacrifice any face-to-face time. Finally, in terms of tracking deadlines, I may have gone a bit overboard: I created a packet for myself for each of the six sessions that not only lists who is giving a speech that day, but also has a copy of the rubric that I will use to grade that particular speech. I also created rubrics for the special projects that are not the standard speeches that the Indeterminate characters.
Sample Speech:
However, to be honest, while playing Dungeons and Dragons definitely prepared me for thinking about the rules system behind the game, the best training that I had for Threshold of Democracy was the organizing work that I’ve done in political and religious settings. That is because at the heart of each of the Threshold of Democracy sessions is the question “what decision will this group make together”. I recognize that students found this question puzzling, because for the most part in 21st century America, people, especially college students, do not have experience making decisions as part of a group.
There were some problems with how I ran the game. I didn’t provide clear enough instructions for what I wanted in terms of speeches. Neither did I do sufficient job checking to make sure that students were doing the reading while the game was in progress. Behind the scenes I also struggled keeping track of the many different deadlines: for those who don’t know the Threshold of Democracy system, basically each student has to write and perform two speeches over the course of six classes, which is fairly basic. But what this means in terms of scheduling is that each student has a unique combination of deadlines. Perhaps at some college instructors can trust students to keep track of this material, but at my school I know that students need constant reminding about upcoming deadlines.
This semester I hope to turn each of these problems around. In terms of preparing students, I not only created a one page sheet explaining what I want from speeches, I also recorded myself giving a sample speech, as well as providing the transcript and examples of what acceptable notes look like. In terms of pressuring students to stay on top of the readings, I’ve set up online quizzes, so that I don’t have to sacrifice any face-to-face time. Finally, in terms of tracking deadlines, I may have gone a bit overboard: I created a packet for myself for each of the six sessions that not only lists who is giving a speech that day, but also has a copy of the rubric that I will use to grade that particular speech. I also created rubrics for the special projects that are not the standard speeches that the Indeterminate characters.
Sample Speech:
- Video (will post when I figure out how to do that on Weebly)
- Reference Cards
- Script
- Assembly Reconciliation Agreement
- Assembly Electorate
- Assembly Social Welfare
- Trial Day
- Assembly Governance
- Assembly Imperialism