Created by Cal Smith
This lesson plan imagines a one-and-a-half-hour interactive session taught as part of a Board Games course for undergraduate students. While the session is designed for 20-25 students, adding more groups to the activities section would not be too difficult. Slightly more time should be allotted to presentations. The lesson plan includes two main sections: (1) Questions and answers related to the assigned reading and (2) An activity to familiarize students with the practice of archival studies. As many undergraduate students have likely never visited an archive, the lesson offers a primer on archival methodology and asks students to begin to think about the relationship between board games and the archive.
Objectives
General
- To learn to have productive discussions in a group setting. To listen to other’s perspectives and to incorporate our own into the conversation.
- To build a foundation for understanding how archives can be used in a research project. To consider both the power and the limits of archives as repositories of certain histories that we retell.
Specific
- To practice library catalogue searching skills. To understand how libraries define their collections and how to navigate them.
- To consider the socio-cultural importance of board games in relation to both their creation/use and their collection (or lack thereof).
- To highlight archives as keepers of specific narratives about a place and a time. To understand how archives transmit what Mbembe calls an “instituting imaginary” that defines how we picture the past.
- To produce work in groups that synthesizes students’ varying interests. Section 3 (questions in groups) could be substituted for discussion questions brought by students if designed into the course structure. This would further emphasize the importance of students’ interest in the topic and readings.