Presenter(s): Kyley Canion Brewer—History
Faculty Mentor(s): Kevin Hatfield
Session 3: The Way We Were
Reacting to the Past, known colloquially as ‘Reacting’ is a role-playing pedagogy used in higher education that flips the classroom and encourages students to take a more active role in their education . At present some twenty historical role-playing games are currently in print and available to educators’ world over . However, rather than acting as a conclusion, the success of this new pedagogy provides us with a platform to further improve the experience of these games . This project takes an existing Reacting game: “Red Clay, 1835: Cherokee removal and the meaning of sovereignty” and seeks to adapt and make it more accessible to the college classroom . This project is conducted as a case study with particular amendments being applied to a specific game in an attempt to further develop the reacting pedagogy . The existing systems of ‘points’ used within Red Clay act as an infrastructure through which the contextual aims of each student’s role are framed . By changing and streamlining the points system the aim is to allow more students to better understand, and thus further engage with not only their roles on an individual level but also the historical premise of the game as a whole .