Wyrmworks Publishing How can slaying a dragon help you learn a new language? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better.. Recently the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul has been devastated by unprecedented floods. Over 420 cities have been affected with more than 20,000 people in shelters, 330,000 displaced, the lives of nearly 2 million people have been upended, and the toll of those missing and deceased is still rising. Infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving many areas isolated and in desperate need of aid. This is where you come in. It's time to roll initiative. CZRPG, who is one of our friends who's based out of Brazil and directly affected by this, has put together the Rio Grande Flood Charity Bundle. It's a collection of fantastic tabletop roleplaying game resources and comics valued at over $200, and it's now available for just $20. 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Shane Dunkel Welcome. Thank you for having me. Wyrmworks Publishing So what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the tabletop gaming crowd? Shane Dunkel Um, yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to explore the topic with you. So basically, I'm a gamer first, educator second. You know, I've been playing D&D since the mid 90s. My first roleplaying game was actually Star Wars, the old West End game in 1988. And then I didn't actually get into D&D until about 1991 or 92. So I guess um, yeah, that's been in my blood longer than my educational career and teaching career. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, so tell us about English Language Institute and how you started using tabletop games to teach English. Shane Dunkel Sure, sure. sure So like I said, I'm a gamer first and I…at the English Language Institute, we are kind of the one stop shop for all the international students here at the university. So we have speaking classes, we have writing classes, we have extracurriculars, I host a board game group every Friday with roleplaying, and we have a conversation hour and a book club. So there's lots of opportunities for students to be able to use English and practice English. With me specifically, I'm kind of the speaking coordinator here. So I was teaching a lot of speaking classes, let's say intermediate level and higher level. And since students here tend to have a lot of grammar and a lot of vocabulary, we would focus a lot on culture and what's called pragmatics in the language sense, you know when to use something like turn-taking or how to apologize or politeness strategies. And traditionally, on the last day of class at the higher level, I would bring a board game. You can see there's tons of board games here for my classes, and I would bring a board game, and we would play it, and they're usually speaking, and they're usually social deduction games like Coup, or Werewolf, and I was noticing that students were… their English was improving more in those contexts, rather than the roleplay contexts of just like you know, you're at a bank or something. Or you're at a car dealership negotiating with the salesperson. I was noticing that their their output, their spoken utterances in the board game and slash, you know, speaking game was more authentic than in the, the roleplays I already had for the activities in class. So then I decided to do a big research study where I, I had a control group where I just did what I normally did and then I had an experimental group in my classes where I used you know, some speaking games to assess their English skills and in, as I like to say, in two of the three contexts, the the spoken board games, the social deduction games context, they were producing more authentic utterances. I went to YouTube, for example. Oh, that there's thqt old tabletop video on YouTube with Wil Wheaton, and he would play games with other celebrities. And I was using them as like a baseline for the students to compare against. So yeah, so then I was like, well, it's sold now. I'm gonna start bringing in more board games and more board games. And then, you know, just, the students like it. Oh, this is a little anecdotal evidence, but interesting thing was that at the end of the quarter, we are in the quarter system here eight weeks for us. And I asked students like, "Did you have fun playing board games?" They're like, "Yes!" And like, "Did it feel your your English got better playing board games?" And they're like, "Yes," but then I asked them like, "Well, do you want to play more board games in the class?" They're like, "No." And I was like, "What? Why not? It improved your English," and they're like, "Well, it doesn't feel like we're learning. It just feels like we're playing board games." And I'm like, "Yeah, but that's when you were sounding the most, you know, authentic," you know, and so that's why I think there seems to be a hesitancy because there's some what we call face validity. Like it doesn't feel like you're learning if you're playing a game, which I would argue is completely wrong in so many contexts that that's what I'm trying to push here. Wyrmworks Publishing That's fantastic. Yeah, it's it's like, oh, well, you know, I'm paying for classes, not to play games." And Shane Dunkel Right, yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing So So yeah, it's just like, "Well, this couldn't possibly be as good as, yeah, something more formal and structured." Shane Dunkel Yeah, yeah. They want to be able to, you know, take the notebook out and write down the stuff and then study that notebook later. And unfortunately, like, you know, speaking languages is messy, all languages. And, yeah, and I think that the board game context was able to, you know, technically speaking, what's happening is that like, when you play a board game, you're thinking about strategy and how I want to win which means that for my students, they're not thinking about grammar and vocabulary. So then they're outputting exactly at their level, because they're too busy thinking about how to win rather than what to say, and so I can see their real level, and yeah, and that's why I tried to let them know about, but they still were just like, "No, we want to have tests and books," and I'm just like, "Ugh." Wyrmworks Publishing Wow, what a fantastic way to test, you know, for so many people that struggle with testing Shane Dunkel Right? Yeah. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing I mean it's so much more, like you said, authentic and Shane Dunkel Yeah! Wyrmworks Publishing And you know, this is in a natural setting. You know, here's it's not sort of how much can you binge the night before the test? Shane Dunkel Right. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing This is you're in, you know, a natural setting. We're actually going to, it's practical, where you'd actually use these skills. And yeah, and you're you're testing in that setting. Shane Dunkel Right, yeah, that was yeah, that was the focus of my research was actually on the assessment form of using board games, not the like, you know, because I mean, in the class, I'll still do some other activities, but the actual assessment how they output is the board game, because that's the ultimate test where like you said they're doing something and I always like to say that, you know, those speaking games test native speakers the same way too. Like not everyone can do those games. Not everyone likes social deduction board games, because they're hard. You have to have certain speaking skills in order to do that. So like, instead of like board games, where like sometimes you'll roll the dice, and you're fighting the system of the game, or whatever perimeters the game has set up to win it. Social deduction games are unique because you're there's a system, but really, you're fighting against the other players, like they're… Are they lying or not lying? And then so those those social deduction games get to like the core of speaking skills, more than you know, because we do board games for other things that were just fun. But it was those social deduction games in particular and then roleplay, which I think we'll talk about later that really opened some more doors for them to be able to improve their English but have fun while doing it. Wyrmworks Publishing This also, it makes me think about…I hear these stories, and I mean, I literally just a couple days ago heard a conversation about someone who is getting a bad grade because they're partnered up with someone who's not putting the work in, and so they're suffering because of the partner, or they have to do extra stuff. Well, here's a way that you can actually partner up in a sense have and have multiple people. But you're not, you're not going to suffer for someone else. Shane Dunkel Right. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing But it gives you that that interactive kind of aspect to it, which especially with language is really important. Shane Dunkel Yeah, and the best part is like because it's a group activity and like, obviously, the person who wins gets the A because they won the game. But then the other people the next time you play it will copy them because they want to win, so they're gonna copy the strategy that the winning person did, and the winning person kind of like becomes the model of the, of how they should use it in their context, the ESL context. And so then it's like, automatically there's, again, face validity because they use the strategy they want. And so the lower level students, you know, I don't actually flunk people if they don't win the game. It's not like that at all. It's just more like this is your level based on what you did in the game. And then, you know, and then what they'll do is they'll copy that winning person the next time and try to do that as well. So then, it's like you're teaching yourself kind of, which is great. Wyrmworks Publishing Oh, wow. Okay. So. So any other differences in the language learning outcomes between traditional classroom activities and playing tabletop games, and then, you know, we will bridge into roleplaying games too. Shane Dunkel Sure. Sure. So I think the biggest differences is again, it's it's this accessibility of their output. So like, for example, in a traditional class, they're going to study grammar, they're going to study vocabulary. There's going to be a listening test. It's going to be a speaking test. It's going to be writing, you know, it's all leveled. And it's also very academic, you know, so the idea is that while the students are in program at a university, they're studying academic English because they're going to go to their classes, they're going to listen to their professors, and then do that work. Board games and roleplaying games, depending on the context are a little trickier because well, first of all, they're not academic, you know, so I have to go away from I first had to bring students like I said, in the first part of our interview that I have to bring them away, I have to sell them on the idea that what you're doing is learning. It could be academic, but like, academic just means politeness levels. It means register. So I have to do what's called scaffolding where it's like I set up the activities so that it exploits what they already know about learning English from their context. I'm introducing what I this new, this new context, which is board games and roleplaying games, and then I have to really methodically connect those to justify why we're doing this when they want this. And, you know, so far, you know, it seems to work. You know, like I said, some of my research showed that while they have a problem with why they're playing the board game, they don't have a problem with playing board games, they like that. So maybe I could do a little better in the, in the idea of this scaffolding where I have to connect what their expectations are to this. Whereas like, with other activities, I can I don't need to do that. Like I just take the academic context, I pull out an activity and we do it. And then they you know, they they say what they say. Whereas like, again, the other, the board game, roleplaying, I have to really I have to really lay down the cobblestone path between those two so that they can walk freely back and forth. And I fully admit that when I first started doing this, yeah, like students were just falling in the mud all the time. They're like, "What is this? Why am I…," because the other thing I didn't think about was that not everyone plays board games. So it's like if I'm, if I have a group of 15 students, and four of them always play board games and two of them kind of played board games, but the rest who have never really played board games, there's a harder sell for them to bring them into the board game community, because I'm sure you your listeners, everybody, me included, we all love board games. It's kind of second nature for us to sit down and play a game. But that's not true for everybody in the world, right? Wyrmworks Publishing Right. Yeah, of course. You know, different cultures value different things. Shane Dunkel Exactly. Exactly. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. But so, um, but you know, I think about I think about the impact that playing roleplaying games had on just on my vocabulary. I mean, and I mean, you get into all different levels of academic history, and you name it. Shane Dunkel Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing But so but but thinking specifically about learning language. And, I mean, well, for one, it's a completely different vocabulary set. Right? Shane Dunkel Exactly. Wyrmworks Publishing And even the syntax is different. You know, I know when I'm typing, and I say, you know, I type something like, you have advantage on this role. Like all my grammar checkers are like, "You have AN advantage." No, no. Shane Dunkel Right. Yeah. So so really quickly. Yes. I don't know if I'm jumping ahead, but so the way I hide that behind the DM curtain, so it's that I've talked about scaffolding before between just the idea of playing board games in the academic classroom. Yes, you're absolutely right that when you… I think the first time I played it, I just launched like I would into roleplaying and then that scared a lot of students because exactly what you said, "What's advantage? What's a and especially if they're playing a wizard, right because it's like, like spell level, spell slots. They're just like, "what?" like, "What is this craziness," you know, and so, and then the second time I tried it, I just pulled all of that into my brain since I knew it. And so instead of saying, "You have advantage," I would say, "Roll two of these dice," you know, "and we're going to take the higher number," and then after and that's much more accessible, right? So then the next like, after a month or two, I would say, "Oh, by the way, that thing when you're rolling two dice and taking the higher, we call that 'advantage,' you know, so it just means you're getting a better hit or a better something when you roll the two," and then I would say like, "Oh, guess guess what happens if you take the two dice and you have to take the lower of the two ones. What do you think that's called?" They're like, "Oh, is that disadvantage?" I'm like, "Yeah, see? You got it." So yeah, you're right that like that roleplaying vocabulary, if a person is into it, yeah, we can open up the GM and the players guidebook and then go into it, no problem. But again, roleplaying tends to be like in its own community. And so when we're introducing people to community, I try to keep all that in my brain and just have them do things and then later assign all of the names of the rules to that stuff. which unfortunately means like, yeah, I usually encourage new players not to be a wizard, even though they want to be. I'm like, "Well, you can try, but I'm just gonna let you know there's a lot of stuff that you'll have to keep, you know," and they're like, "I want to do this spell," and I'm like, okay, and then I am usually the one behind the DM screen keeping track actually of what they're doing so that I can… They'll be like, "I cast this. I cast this. I cast this," and I'm like, "Well, actually, you can only cast one of those." "Why? That's just…" Just trust me., Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah, you're all Fighters starting out. Champion Fighter. That is all. Shane Dunkel Yeah, yeah. A lot of dwarves and a lot of Fighters in our beginning groups. Wyrmworks Publishing Right. So you you bridged from you started out doing roleplaying or I'm sorry, doing board games, and then you got into roleplaying games, any specific…talk about that, how that happened? Shane Dunkel So, okay, so mine, I'm an old guy here. I'm 47. Like, I don't mind admitting, but like, so this is gonna sound strange. I was playing war games in grade school. So my dad was a history teacher. So seventh grade math and history and so I've always had an interest in history. And I used to get into some of the old West End Games war games, you know, World War Two, World War One, Civil War was kind of my favorite, you know, so. So back in the day, my board game was one of these, you know, like super complicated war games from the mid-80s. And then I specifically remember when Star Wars came out, you know, I was a huge Star Wars fan when I was a kid, obviously, like everybody else in the late 70s and 80s. And, and when I saw the book of Star Wars, I didn't know what a roleplaying game was. This was 1989 because I was in seventh grade. And I picked it up thinking it was a board game, or I saw game and I thought I didn't know what roleplaying was. I thought it was a game like one of the games I've been playing like, "Oh, it has pieces, they'll have rules. I'll put it on the map and everything will be cool." But then I opened up and was like, "What? I don't understand what's going on. I'm supposed to tell a story and I don't, like, this is not a board game." And I usually I usually played a lot of games solo you know, so I there was a an old group called the Windy City War Gamers I used to go to as a kid and play some war games, but I mostly played board games, you know, at home at my table, and so but then I was like, "Oh I need other people for this game." So I was disappointed. But then I didn't give up. I was like, "Well let me see what this is all about," and I grabbed two or three of my friends and was like, "I don't know what this is. But let's just, we all like Star Wars. Let's try this," and I that was my first GMing a game, and then it was kind of rough, but I enjoyed it. And then yeah, when I got to high school in 91, that's kind of like I think it was second edition. The one with the dragon or the knight on the cover. I forget… Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that would be second edition. Shane Dunkel Yeah, but it was it wasn't the original second edition. It was like the the 2e…it's like the you know, Wyrmworks Publishing Oh, they reprinted the covers. Yeah. Shane Dunkel Yeah, maybe something like that. Yeah. So it was that set I played with, and I remember I you know, back then my high school was an all guys school and the D&D Club was just insane. It was just exactly as crazy as you'd think. It would be with a bunch of guys, the teenage guys playing D&D. And then it wasn't until later, I want to say early, I went to Community College is when Vampire was huge, Vampire the Masquerade. And so I joined that, but I never really liked it. I mean, it was a good system a good game, but you know, I didn't like vampires. I wanted to always get back to the dragons and the fantasy stuff. So then I formed my own group and about 96 and then just kept playing and playing and playing. Wyrmworks Publishing So do you incorporate any specific language learning techniques or strategies during gameplay? Shane Dunkel Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. So for the group here, so the group here in at UChicago that I run it for, there's been at least three major incarnations, and I think the third one is the one that I think is working the best in terms of language learning, because I will do what's called modeling. So what happens is or Yeah, I mean, basically modeling because what happens is, students will, you know, the classic example I give is when I have a new player, they want to go buy something at the store, right? So they need a healing potion. So you know, they'll go to the local whatever apothecary and try to find even that like, you know, they're like, what's an apothecary? I'm like, let's, let's, let's Google that, you know, so I always encourage them to have a little notebook open and write down the words they don't know. But anyways, so they go to the apothecary, and then they'll be like, I want a healing potion. And then I say like, as the storekeeper, I'm like, "Well, hello to you, too." You know, like, like, I try to make it not transactional. You know, I try to say things like, "Are you asking me to buy something?" You know, they're like, "Oh, well, how are you?" You know, like, like, you know, like, in real life, I'm not going to walk into someplace and be like, "Give me that." I mean, you could, but it wouldn't be the best, right? You're like, "Excuse me, I hate to bother you. But, you know, do you have such and such?" "Oh, yes, over here." So I try to model that kind of interaction. When they get, you know, that transactional stuff and then I threw a curveball one time, because when they went to get a healing potion at the store, I was like, "Do you have a doctor's note for it?" Because I wanted to, I wanted to kind of teach them prescription and going to CVS to get a thing. So I was like, "Do you have a prescription for that?" And they're like, "What? Like a prescription?" I'm like, "Well, it's a potion; it could be pretty, you know, you know, it could you know, mess with your body. You know, I think you should get a doctor's note first before I sell this to you." So they kind of go to the local hospital and then you know, get a get a doctor's note to go buy a healing potion, which is basically like, hopefully when they get out to real life and they have to go to see a doctor and get a prescription and go to CVS, they can be like, "Oh, I kind of already did this in a weird way." So yeah, my my group at school tends to be a little I mean, not not completely real life, but there's a lot more weirdly intricate things that happen at my games that I want. I'm not going to subject my… because I have two groups, my domestic speaking, you know, my American friends who have been playing with forever, like they're not going to have to do that. You know, but with my students, yeah. 'Cause I want to model the kind of interactions they might do in real life, you know, going to buy a sandwich at a store or something. So I try to make sure that my NPCs are always…they have personalities. They have different voices, but they're very professional, you know, strangely realistic in a way. Does that make sense? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, I love that. And you know, I think about just anyone that has sort of disabilities and neurodiversity that relate to just picking up on social cues and things to be able to use roleplaying games to teach that. You know, I think about my own kids that are, you know, they've got sort of life skills stuff in school. And Shane Dunkel Right. Exactly. Wyrmworks Publishing And I think, you know, being able to sort of act through these things to help them understand, you know, how these, how these interactions work and to be able to practice it in a, you know, in a simulated setting, but, you know, it's fun, it's not, it's not just this sort of, "Okay, well, now we're going to… it's like it's, it's, it's just, you know, it feels more natural at that point, and you're not you're not sort of thinking of it from like an academic or whatever standpoint, you're just thinking, "Oh, well, you know, I gotta go get a healing potion," or you know, or whatever and, you know, "I need to talk to the barkeep and get some information," or whatever and to Shane Dunkel Right, Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing pick up on that. Yeah. Shane Dunkel Yeah. And that's great for small talk, because like one of the things students in our school always complain about is that they don't, they don't feel they have small talk skills. They don't know what to talk about or stuff like that. And I think that yeah, like the bar example, like just getting information. It's a great little small talk, you know, situation. I mean, you know, of course, we'll make it fun and interesting for them, but it's like, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to have the barkeep go crazy or something, you know, but they're definitely going to be like they they're going to warm up to the information. So it's like, you know, you know, "Hey, I think we should have, you know, ale as we talk about this," and they'll be like, "Okay," and then like, you know, they're drinking and it's like, "So what do you want to know again and why do you want to know it?" and then get them to, you know, output and also not just speak from a like, "I need this," but like, you know, form a relationship with the barkeeper, you know, so that they know that if they go back to that character, they know how to interact with that character. And then you know, that can be like a boss at work or something, you know, it's like somebody you can always see again and again and again. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, it can also, thinking about for… my daughter struggles with picking up on like sarcasm and metaphors and a lot of stuff like that, where it's like if you're not, if you're not saying what you mean, it's like, okay, is that…? and I mean, she's working on getting better and she'll stop. She goes, "Is that a metaphor, you know, and… Shane Dunkel That's great. That's great. I love it. Wyrmworks Publishing You know, I'm thinking about okay, well, you have to interact with the local Thieves' Guild, you know, and they, they never say what they actually mean that right. Yeah. And so to be able to sort of have to navigate that to you know, to figure out what are they actually saying here? Shane Dunkel Yeah, yeah. And that's so great, because it's like, yeah, it's it's really the same skills that an international student learning English has to go through because sure, they're going to have the cultural knowledge in their own context, but yeah, like English metaphors, English. You know, sarcasm is really tricky, tricky to pick up on so I get to simulate that for them in this in this comfortable setting, where they can explore that so that if they make a mistake, you know, I can, instead of being a real person and being like, well, I can, like I can, I can make a joke or I can, you know, I can slowly disarm that tension and then bring them back to a normal way or not normal, but a typical way of interacting with someone. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah Shane Dunkel And they can transfer out in the real world hopefully. Wyrmworks Publishing Right. Yeah, absolutely. Idioms and yeah, I mean, there's so many applications there. Oh, man. Yeah. Wow. That's fantastic. Yeah, um, so what kind of feedback have you gotten from students? And I'm interested in sort of faculty and you know, and, and other reactions to kind of across the board. Shane Dunkel Yeah, that's I think the latter is more interesting. Students like it, you know, they, they'll buy into it pretty quickly. You know, I mean, I've had students who are like in economics, and they'll buy into the roleplaying group because they want to improve their English. You know, I think most of my students though, are typical gamers to begin with. They might be board gamers coming to roleplaying. They might be roleplaying already in their home country and their own language. But you know, from the student's point of view, I don't think I've gotten any pushback, let's say for using roleplaying or board games, but the faculty has a different story. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably everything you're thinking of, you know, "It's not academic. You're just playing games. I don't know why you're doing this," you know, and especially with languages because it's funny. I'll have other people in different departments talk to me kind of like you're doing, because they want to apply it. They're kind of thinking outside the box. They want a new like, for example, Harris is the public policy school, and there's a lot of international students there, and I was talking with one of the teachers about how to use Hegemony in their class, you know, because Hegemony is a great class simulator, you know, it's got economics, it's got public policy, it's got all this stuff built into it. So those kinds of schools you know, I think are they're trying and they're asking me because I'm kind of the board game guy here now. And but other language faculty people are like, "No, we can't do that. Or, you know, this is this is it's not, you know, academic," you know, and I'm just like, "Yeah, but you're teaching languages like me," like, you know, because I do have the freedom where my students don't have midterms or finals, they're in my classes and we're learning whereas the other languages here, sometimes they they're on that schedule, they have midterms, they have finals, they have weekly tests, they have to have benchmarks for certain academic purposes. And they're just really scared to make a jump or try to experiment a little bit because if it backfires, those students could, you know, be in a bad place academically, and it's hard to fix that. But, you know, that's I'm trying to do is model a class where you could incorporate this stuff and with official assessments, because that's the whole point of my research was like, it's not just using a game in the classroom for output. It's like this can be assessed and that could go on a student's record. And here's how you would do that. But a lot of a lot of instructors are set in their ways, let's just say. Wyrmworks Publishing Sure, and I mean, and that's understandable. You know, you Shane Dunkel Yeah, Wyrmworks Publishing you learned it this way. This is this the way, you know, this is the way you're supposed to do it. And I totally, totally get that, and, and yeah, it's dangerous to say, "Hey, we're gonna do something totally different." And what if it doesn't work? And yeah, you know, people are paying a lot of money for these classes. And Shane Dunkel Right, exactly, Wyrmworks Publishing So yeah, I mean, you care about the students. You care about your professional reputation. You care about the school's reputation and that's a lot of pressure. Oh, but Shane Dunkel Indeed! Wyrmworks Publishing but traditional, you know, academic standards, and you know, and all that Shane Dunkel Yeah Wyrmworks Publishing and they mean well, and are there for a reason, right? Yeah, at the same time…. Shane Dunkel Yeah, you know, exactly, yeah. And that's why like, you know, hopefully since I have the freedom to be a little more flexible, yeah, maybe I'm trying to set that standard or set that benchmark where you know, like, Okay, if you want to because I did have a couple of the Spanish departments been awesome. They've been like, "Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this." Like, for some reason, some of this instructors there are really open. And Portuguese too, from the same department, but like, yeah, they're a little more like, "Yeah, how do I do this? Or how do I do that?" You know, they're willing to be a little more flexible with their instruction. Oh, and then off the record, why not? Like I guess this is on the record, but it's not secret. But at Northwestern I talked with the professor German professor who's using D&D in his group when they're doing D&D in German. So like, yeah, we became fast friends, because yeah, he's doing the same kind of thing. But his requires a lot more translation on the students' part, because they're American students learning German. My students already have a certain level of English. I'm just inserting more of the real life context into the roleplaying so yeah, and but yes, I mean, there are people who are trying, you know, and it's not like anyone's stopping me here, so that's good. Wyrmworks Publishing Roleplaying games are pretty big in Germany. So you know that Shane Dunkel Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing an immediately useful skill to learn that if you Shane Dunkel Yeah, he was always telling you about like how hard it is to translate certain things like "warhammer" into German. It's like, there's like four or five different ways to do it. I'm always like, "Oh, yeah, that's okay. I just use warhammer because it's up to the students to understand that terminology." Wyrmworks Publishing All right. You just rescued a djinni from the hands of an efretti and it offers you 3 wishes to help you achieve your goals to improve lives. What do you wish for? Shane Dunkel Well, I would not be doing my duty unless I'd said this the first wish. I wish for a million more wishes. So that's the that's the first wish, but if that's off the table, if I can't do that, yeah, I would say that, you know, it's funny. So oh, by the way, just to contextualize this, are we talking about like me in real life or me in games? Wyrmworks Publishing You could go either way. Shane Dunkel OK, like for example, I've always said, to me in real life, one of the one of the wishes would be everyone has to live in a foreign country for at least one year. Right? Everyone needs more perspective on other people and how they live and the experiences they go through. So that's my first wish would be like everyone I wish everyone would has to live in a foreign country for one year, so that everyone gets the experience of being frustrated with language, culture, other people, other whatever. And there might be more tolerance across the board, if that were true. Yeah, the second one is maybe I wish for a little more understanding from everybody a little more patience and understanding too to kind of go along with because I think that would be great for for any, not just you know, culture or language. but from human to human interaction in general. And then the third one is tricky because yeah, I know I'm gonna go with the million more wishes for the third wish so I'm covered so if I don't think anything now I can always wish for it later. And this my first two wishes because it is an efreeti, so there could be a little negative outcome. It could be like everyone has to live in a foreign country, but then they can't move back home ever. At least I have some wishes to fix that when the efreeti tries to put me with certain things. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, so what one message would you like to give educators or institutions considering implementing similar methods? Shane Dunkel Do it. Yeah, I think that the biggest barrier is just doing it. You know, people research it, they experiment with it, but they never do it. You know, they they think about it. They might try it one or two times, but they don't commit to it because it'll fail. I failed many times. Like the first time I tried D&D, it failed miserably, because I didn't anticipate the fact that in D&D, what is the ultimate conflict resolution in D&D? I'm going to kill the person. So the very first game that one of the very first scenes I was running… Oh, god…Phandelin in the Lost Mines of Phandelver. And they went into Phandelin, and they were supposed to get a room, but for some reason, the three students who were playing didn't want to pay for the room and then the barkeep was like, "Well, you can't you can't stay here unless you pay," and they were like, "No, we're gonna stay here," and they walked up and then kick the door down and started sleeping in the bed. So I had the town guard come and be like, "What are you doing?" And they kill the town guards without even talking to them, so that I was just sort of like, oh, okay, so I had more town guards come and then more than that, I decided I'm going to TPK, because this is ridiculous if this is what they're gonna do. And yeah, and so, so it's going to fail when they try it. You know, I had to be like, Oh, that's right. Yeah. So I had to find ways to kind of make D&D more talking and less fighting, because other systems do that. But D&D is kind of notorious for the OK, murderhobo, you know, thing where it's like, okay, I'm just gonna stab and steal. But not everyone plays like that, you know, so it was just more getting players to understand, but anyways, the point is that when this friction starts, teachers will usually drop it. They don't want to deal with that, and I'm just saying stick with it, you know, do it and modify it just because it even says in the rulebook, change what you don't like. You know, it's not like D&D is like you have to do this this way. You know, they even say if you don't like something, change it, because it's about having fun. And in the academic context, it's about having fun, but also being, you know, assessing students. And then lastly, it's also about like doing it. You can't just like do it a couple of times, like really try to, so I think the longevity of what I'm doing is proving to be… or it proves me, at least in my brain, correct, because I'm still able to keep doing this for I've done it for like two years now. And board games, roleplaying in the classroom. So, you know, just do it. So that's what I'm trying to say, I guess. Wyrmworks Publishing So, you started this with the club and then moved in the classroom? Shane Dunkel Right, yeah, yeah. So I wanted to kind of have it in for I wanted to collect anecdotal data first to see what would happen and stuff like that. Now the board game okay, so two paths: the board game was in class. That was always in class, but at first it was for fun, and then I did the research and did it for assessment purposes. The roleplaying game was a club first, and then I am still actually slightly moving into the context of the classroom, because I need to, you know, I need to work on an instructor's guide, you know, like, like a DM Guide, but for teachers who want to use it in the classroom, or at least for me, it was the classroom because, yeah, there is a lot more you have to account for. Like I said, you can't have murderhobos running around — that doesn't really help with the speech, at least in my classroom. So, so yeah, so right now it's in a group with sometimes playing in the classroom is for anecdotal data, because I mean, you know, my future research is going to be about D&D physically in the classroom too. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. But I mean, that's a, you know, for someone who wants to try it, being able to try it on a, you know, either as an extracurricular club thing to kind of test things out there, kind of work out bugs first. Shane Dunkel Yes, exxactly. Wyrmworks Publishing You know, or, you I'm even thinking about in when I was in high school and all the days where it was just like, popping a movie or something like that, and, you know, and to be able to do that instead, on those days or, you know, the last day before break or something like that, to be tested out in in those situations Shane Dunkel Yeah Wyrmworks Publishing before you make a kind of more formal academic applying, it affects your grade kind of thing. Shane Dunkel Yeah, we call it high stakes. Yeah, there's like low stakes and high stakes and the high stakes stuff, yeah, you kind of have to be careful, like I was saying, but it is possible. So yeah, you start with the low stakes, and then figure out the pitfalls and the bonuses and all that stuff. And then yeah, then you finally you tried in the high stakes a couple of times, if it works, you keep doing it, right. Wyrmworks Publishing OK, so what one message would you like to give to skeptics or individuals hesitant to embrace unconventional teaching methods like this? Shane Dunkel It's here, like, like, this isn't like, you know, I you know, the reason why I'm able to do this is because there's many older people like me who played this back in the 80s and 90s and are now in positions of, you know, whatever, not authority, but just we're out everywhere. So this is like, you know, D&D is a huge thing, obviously, you know, back in the day, but even now, because of things like Critical Role, and I mean, there's, there's many roleplayers out in the world, and it's not just a niche thing anymore like it was maybe in the 90s and 80s. Even the 00s to a certain extent, but, but gaming is here in our culture and it is here to stay. So, so rather than kind of figure out ways not to do it, you know, exploit the availability of of all the resources like you and your publishings and the kind of classes I'm doing and, and try to find ways to integrate it rather than fight it. Because it's here. It's it's part of the mainstream culture. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah. And I mean, moreso, you know, fifth edition is the most popular ever. It's Shane Dunkel Right. Yeah. Wyrmworks Publishing still growing. You know, and more people are getting exposed to it all the time. So as they grow up, and, you know, become professors or whatever it is, you know, Shane Dunkel Yeah Wyrmworks Publishing you know, they're gonna want it too. So yeah, that's a really good point. It's here. It's it's sort of like trying to pretend the internet's gonna go away. So Shane Dunkel Right, exactly, yeah. And instead of being like, "hard to keep these kids off their phones in the classroom," be like, how can you use the phones for your purpose so that they're not doing what they want to do, but what you want to do? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, all right. So any projects that you're working on that you can talk about? Shane Dunkel So like I said, Yeah, I'm doing the I'm in the anecdotal evidence collection, evidence collection stage of you know, in the in the, in the classroom as a resource plus RPGs because I'm not. There's actually a couple of other systems I like to. Mausritter, which is like D&D, but for your playing mice. I'm trying to see if that would be a better like, you know, you know, playing a character or just playing an anth… Anthrop… whatever that word is…. I'm an English teacher, I promise! Anthropomorphized, you know, creature might be easier, you know, when they're not playing that kind of stuff. So yeah, I'm just trying out different systems to see which one students react to and do the most output with. I mean, it's been D&D so far. So that's my first one. And there's other there's a lot a lot of stuff in the pipe, but nothing… that's the thing I think I'm focusing on right now, because I did the board game one, I wanted to roleplay one, and then at some point, it's going to be some conglomeration of those things together. Wyrmworks Publishing Cool. That's awesome. I love it. All right. So we will have all your contact information in our show notes, but where is the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about you are to contact you. Shane Dunkel Um, you can contact me at well, if you to go to the ESL.uchicago.edu, that's where that's our website for our department here. You can see me and my contact information. SDunkel@UChicago.edu. And I think we have a blog that, you know, hopefully we can link this to so that people can, you know, get the word out more, but there are some other things that I've put on our blog. So just go to that website and you know, kind of click around and find the blog, and then you'll see some more resources for educators that I've recommended for, you know, trying to get board games or roleplaying games into the classroom. Wyrmworks Publishing All right. Well, Shane, thanks so much for coming on the show. Everyone, check out those links in the show notes. Wyrmworks Publishing That was so cool. Shane, thank you so much for coming on the show. And we've got some kind of exciting plans down the pike in a few years that might relate to this in some ways, but lots of work before any announcements. Wyrmworks Publishing But before we wrap up, I want to take a moment to thank our incredible Patreon supporters. 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