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Anthony Crider

As educators adopt more engaged teaching practices, multiple-choice and essay exams become increasingly incapable of capturing and reflecting student learning. In this talk, we will highlight engaged role-playing and experiential approaches, including Reacting to the Past games, Cultures of the Imagination, and selections from Anthony Weston’s book, “Teaching as the Art of Staging.” We’ll next look at new examples of the implementation of these in a variety of classes ranging from first-year seminars to astrophysics. We will then review the effectiveness (and occasional ineffectiveness) of rubrics in assessing student learning during these activities and at the end of the semester with Epic Finales.

Attendee Benefits

The "Reacting to the Past "curriculum offers many games that are ready for adoption “as-is” in many college classes. The rubrics and grading methods are templates that are easily ported into many classes. The more creative examples of roleplay (e.g. the Epic Finales from a class about extraterrestrials) are meant to be more inspirational than directly adopted.