{"id":766,"date":"2020-01-11T07:12:07","date_gmt":"2020-01-11T07:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.tees.ac.uk\/tjuthompson\/?p=766"},"modified":"2020-01-11T07:12:07","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T07:12:07","slug":"catastrophic-the-card-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.tees.ac.uk\/tjuthompson\/2020\/01\/11\/catastrophic-the-card-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Catastrophic: The Card Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, seeing as the whole world is rapidly heading to hell in a hand-basket, it seems entirely appropriate that we\u2019ve been road-testing a game called Catastrophic<\/a><\/em>. Now, I\u2019ve made no secret of the fact that I like games and gaming, and I think there are aspects of this that can enhance our teaching sessions. Over the years I\u2019ve attempted to embrace this, with varying degrees of success. For every Minecraft or Twine success, there\u2019s a car-crash tumbleweed-strewn session I\u2019d rather forget…<\/p>\n

In fact the last book I read was Playful Learning: Events and Activities to Engage Adults<\/a><\/em> (2019) brought together by Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley. It\u2019s a good book which I\u2019d heartily recommend, mainly because it has lots of practical examples of things that you can actually do yourself in your own teaching. Now that I\u2019m no longer AD (Learning & Teaching), I can state publicly how tedious I find many L&T books due to their focus on theory at the expense of practice. I think this is particularly pertinent when you\u2019re starting out as an academic and want support on getting stuck in and trying things out. My key take-away from the book was the importance of establishing ‘permission\u2019 to play and have fun – essentially letting your students know it\u2019s okay to play and that this is part of the learning session. I think this is where I sometime fall down. I\u2019m not always clear enough at setting this up and just assume that because I know that play is a good way to learn in HE, everyone else gets that too. But they don\u2019t and it\u2019s a particular issue when working in universities where adult learners may feel that they\u2019ve signed up for more ‘formal\u2019 traditional teaching.<\/p>\n

So just before Xmas Helen Carney<\/a>, Amber Collings<\/a> and I sat down with a pile of mince pies to test out the game. To quote the game\u2019s website<\/a>, “Catastrophic is a game of community, conservation and catastrophe. Cultivate and support the development of the most robust community of plants and animals, weaken those of your opponents, and adapt to survive the events the planet and your opponents continually throw at you.” The game was developed by the excellent Dr Pen Holland<\/a>. She\u2019s based at the University of York<\/a>, who has a strong history in using gamification in teaching biology. You use the cards in your hand to create new plant and animal species and then link them together in dependent ecosystems. The more trophic levels you establish, the more inter-related everything is. But then natural disasters and environmental changes occur which impact your species. Have you made them robust and flexible enough to survive?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Initially, we just went for fun new species with odd features, but then when the nuclear winter and subsequent droughts occurred, our species were unceremoniously obliterated! It was devastating – particularly for three academics in biology… The website says that it\u2019s a “joyful” game, but that\u2019s only true if you find the apocalyptic destruction of your fledgling ecosystems joyful. That\u2019s when we started to appreciate the nuances of the game, and our friendly session got a little more competitive. I genuinely can\u2019t remember who won (which suggests it wasn\u2019t me…) but it was a lot of fun. The cards look really smart, plus the scientific underpinnings of the game are sound and work really well in creating a game which feels authentic. And we learned stuff too! Next we need to get our undergrads to play the game. I can\u2019t wait!<\/p>\n

Over the Christmas period, we\u2019ve also been playing the following (loosely biology-related) fun card games which you may also like:<\/p>\n