Blood Saga of the Viking Instructional Technologists

The other day I had an academic job interview. They asked me to put together a presentation and teach them something, preferably in a hands-on way. Being an inveterate geek, I decided to demonstrate the efficacy of role playing as a teaching and learning tool. This was risky, since it heavily relied on participant buy-in to be a success, but I figured it would either be fantastic or an utter disaster, and an interview isn't the time to be meek and risk-averse. So I went for it.

I've been experimenting with a short exercise designed to demonstrate the basics of character and conflict for a while. My demo is framed as a struggle for succession after a patriarch's death in Western Iceland in 1000 AD. I used many of the techniques I've learned as a gamer to make it both engaging and full of conflict. The father's death is a kicker for the three children, and each character has a bang ready for each of their two siblings. There are three "outsiders" - a crone, a neighbor, and a prince - each of whom has reasons to back one of the children. Everyone else in the room adjudicates and votes on who will be the new prince or princess. Everyone has between half a page and a page of information to process and transmit.

I'd tried it out with friends and knew that it could work. In the interview presentation (for nine people) framed it with a broad talk about games used for teaching and learning, which was met with interest (a good sign). When it came time to play the game, I asked for volunteers and easily got three. These three were the children in conflict. I then passed out the other roles and got started.

The three volunteers immediately took to their roles - one character is an aggressive warrior, one is an educated scholar, and the third is a popular poet and skald. The poet chose not to air the family dirty linen and declined to accuse her brothers of their crimes and shortcomings. The other two were far less tactful, and bared all the evil business in public to smear one another and their sister. The outsiders weighed in, and the votes were cast - ending in a clear victory for the cowardly scholar (what do you expect from a bunch of academics?).

Only one participant expressed any cognitive dissonance with the open-ended exercise. My facilitation was extremely light - they looked to me occasionally to see if a rebuttal was OK, but the conversation became free-wheeling and self-directed. Afterward, I asked them to tell me about the time and place, demonstrating facts and ideas they had accumulated, which was more or less the point of the exercise. It went very well. I was impressed with the immediate engagement and level of concern the players expressed - the guy playing the tough warrior, when he lost, told the assembled host that they would regret their decision. How cool is that?