Playing the Past: Using Game-Based Learning in the Medieval Studies Classroom
Donna Trembinski, St Francis Xavier University
This workshop will introduce participants to Reacting to the Past (RTTP) ¬– an organization focused on teaching history through immersive role-playing. After an initial discussion of the consortium and resources for teaching with RTTP, the session leaders will lead participants through a game session of Charles VII and the French Estates – a mini-game about the development of royal French power in the fifteenth century. Participants will take on the roles as members of the royal court, the nobility, the clergy and the merchant-class to renegotiate the balance of power of the estates. The goal of this exercise is to have participants experience how immersive role-playing might work in the classroom, but also to see how games must make choices in transforming historical forces into playable rules, sometimes diminishing historical complexity. We will end our session with a debrief about how the game went and what criticisms of the game we might want to note (and address) if using this mini-game in class.