Designing Historical Games for Classrooms

Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educators is a complete introductory guide for designing analog and interactive choice-based historical games for history classes. It is designed to support educators who wants to design games or who want to guide and assess student game-making projects in history class.

Chapters lead the educator-designer through a range of topics, including the core features of historical games and simulations; the educational power of using historical games to study history; and the role of playing and designing analog and choice-based text in the classroom (such as board games, card games, roleplaying games, and interactive historical games designed with Twine). It also shows how to design historical games using the Historical Problem Space framework as a practical design guide, which shows how to structure, teach, guide, manage, and assess student-designed historical game projects, both analog and choice-based text. The book also provides sample plans, guidelines and rubrics for fully implementing student-designed historical game projects, and detailed examples throughout the text – from tabletop and choice-based text games – provide practical help for teachers and students.

This applied guidebook will be essential reading for pre-service and in-service teachers of Social Studies and History Education. It is a guide for any educator that is looking to design historical games for classroom learning or have their students engage in the critical learning of historical game design.