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And yet, the author of the article teaches board games by not telling a story, but by explaining the winning condition. Imho, storytelling in a business/teachi

by WA 4y ago

And yet, the author of the article teaches board games by not telling a story, but by explaining the winning condition. Imho, storytelling in a business/teaching/problem-solving context is overrated.

PeterisP 4y ago
The way I see it, the author of the article teaches board games by arranging the explanation according to narrative principles of good storytelling, arguably making the explanation more effective that way. Though it would be more effective to directly read and apply pedagogical research instead of pulling in vaguely similar stuff from the field of writing and theater as the author does. For example, much of what the original article says matches pedagogy literature e.g. if I look at 'Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom' by Svinicki chapter 7 about goal-oriented motivation for learning or 'Making Learning Whole' by Perkins chapter 7 about reasons and ways to 'put the learner in driver's seat' then this seems to say similar things as this article only in more detail and with some evidence basis. There is no need to reinvent the wheel - we have a whole discipline of science dedicated to researching what works best for learning and instruction, it just needs to be applied.
cableshaft 4y ago
In board games, it kind of makes sense. There's basically only a handful of ways to win anyway. A common joke at my board game night when teaching a game is to start by saying "In this game, the winner is the person with the most points." everyone playfully gasps "Stop the presses!" "Shocker!" ...because it's just so common in the games we play. Now how you get the most points will come in the details, and the end game scoring might not be elaborated on until near the end of the explanation. But starting with 'winner is the most points' or 'winner is first over the finish line' or 'you win if you achieve X' is usually a good way to start the explanation. Most games victory condition is usually either 'most points', a race, or achieving some binary condition, and even those last two can be thought of as 'the winner scored 1 point and the losers score 0 points'. That's how BoardGameArena handles it.

by WA 4y ago

And yet, the author of the article teaches board games by not telling a story, but by explaining the winning condition. Imho, storytelling in a business/teaching/problem-solving context is overrated.

PeterisP 4y ago

The way I see it, the author of the article teaches board games by arranging the explanation according to narrative principles of good storytelling, arguably making the explanation more effective that way. Though it would be more effective to directly read and apply pedagogical research instead of pulling in vaguely similar stuff from the field of writing and theater as the author does. For example, much of what the original article says matches pedagogy literature e.g. if I look at 'Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom' by Svinicki chapter 7 about goal-oriented motivation for learning or 'Making Learning Whole' by Perkins chapter 7 about reasons and ways to 'put the learner in driver's seat' then this seems to say similar things as this article only in more detail and with some evidence basis. There is no need to reinvent the wheel - we have a whole discipline of science dedicated to researching what works best for learning and instruction, it just needs to be applied.

cableshaft 4y ago

In board games, it kind of makes sense. There's basically only a handful of ways to win anyway. A common joke at my board game night when teaching a game is to start by saying "In this game, the winner is the person with the most points." everyone playfully gasps "Stop the presses!" "Shocker!" ...because it's just so common in the games we play. Now how you get the most points will come in the details, and the end game scoring might not be elaborated on until near the end of the explanation. But starting with 'winner is the most points' or 'winner is first over the finish line' or 'you win if you achieve X' is usually a good way to start the explanation. Most games victory condition is usually either 'most points', a race, or achieving some binary condition, and even those last two can be thought of as 'the winner scored 1 point and the losers score 0 points'. That's how BoardGameArena handles it.