This was the first chance to playtest ‘Persuasion’ with the new cards (produced using Squib). We welcomed in a group of year 13 students from a local college amd ran a 2 hour session.
Spolier: it went very well
The group was pretty small (about 10 students) and so just right to make sure that I could give them the necessary support with the game as they learnt to play it. For larger groups, it might help to have someone else who understands the game, or a teacher who is ready to step in and help.
I started the session with a short ‘lecture’ in which I gave a little background to the idea of managerial influence and persuasion - we had a couple of discussions about the characteristics successful managers need (always useful if ideas like communication, confidence and experience come up). The bulk of the session consisted of playing the introductory (Level 1) versio of the game, and then introducing the employee cards to play a slightly more advanced version.
After both rounds I distributed discussion questions and encouraged the students to think about the game they had just played and the mechanisms that it involves. This seems (anecdotally) to be critical in helping them understand how the game relates to the ideas that I introduced in the lecture. It also helps build their confidence as they recognise that their ideas and insights are valuable and ‘correct’. In the discussion that followed the second round, I encouraged the students to think about how their experience with the game might be explained using theories that they will have encoutered on their course. Although it wasn’t planned, asking those students who found this question easy to explain this to students who were not familiar with the concepts (or to our own student helpers) also proved beneficial.
There were a couple of issues with the cards and in the way the game was introduced. There was a typo on the slides and on the discussion sheet (!) and I noticed that I had actually introduced a slightly more complex version of the game in the second round than I had planned - actually I think this works better and I will keep it.
Overall the experience was very close to the one that I wanted to give - I felt the students (and their teachers) left having had some fun and having had a positive experience (perhaps even learning something). The game continues to work very well, although it does need clear instructions and more thought to how it could be developed to at least a third round.
As a 2 hour session, I was very happy with pacing and with the amount of content.