Lisa K. Forbes & David Thomas

Lisa K. Forbes: Assistant Clinical Professor, Counseling Program, University of Colorado Denver, United States

David Thomas: Executive Director of Online Programs, University of Denver, United States and Assistant Professor Attendant, Department of Architecture, University of Colorado Denver, United States

Lisa and David are founders of the Professors at Play community project, online at professorsatplay.org

Interviewed December 2020 by Sandra Abegglen

SA David and Lisa—would you like to say a few words about yourselves and in particular what you’re working on at the moment?

DT As a guy who’s been in the online business for a long time, of course I’m busy trying to cope with the reality of everyone being online now. That’s been interesting, but in terms of the play work, there are different threads of it for me. One thread I’ve worked on for a long time has been how to be more playful at work and in organizations. Lisa and I have been working together on this community called Professors at Play, and it’s really intersected in surprising and meaningful ways with the whole shift to online learning.

LF Yeah, so I mean, your intro summarized everything. Play therapy is therapy for kids aged 3–12. I do research with intensive mothering practices, trying to change the narratives around motherhood in our culture. David and I met about two years ago, and ever since then we’ve been trying to meet frequently and talk about play, fun, and teaching. At first, neither of us knew what that looked like or how to do it.

Over the past two years, we’ve really been working on implementing that in the classroom. This spring, I did a research study on my own teaching practices of bringing play into my teaching, and then this summer we started Professors at Play. Five months later we have almost 600 members in our community—it’s just blown up. I think playfulness can be a nice tool to help us be better at our jobs by not being so rigid.

SA That’s very insightful because I how I found you is through the Professors at Play website. Was it started out of the move to remote teaching and learning?

LF No, it honestly didn’t have anything to do with the remote teaching at the time. David and I would come across people who were really interested in play and learning, so we would set up meetings with them and just chat. After each of those meetings we’d say, we should keep connected. Let’s see if we can get more people involved and keep the conversation going. We wanted to start a Listserv to have somewhere where we could all keep that conversation happening, and it just so happened that it was during the middle of COVID. I think there are a lot of people that joined Professors at Play because they were naturally playful or they’d already been doing this in the classroom, but I also think the majority of people joined because they were struggling with this abrupt shift to digital teaching and learning.

DT When Lisa and I met, I was very focused on the aesthetics of fun, and how it applied to games. Then I realized that the business community were very interested in being more playful. Even though my professional career was teaching and supporting teachers in this online stuff, when I met with Lisa, she said, so how do you make teaching more playful? I’m like, no, teaching is over here, play is over here. Lisa said, no, that’s not going to work. I want to know how to do more playful teaching. I said, well, I don’t know how to do that, but I’ll go with you, let’s find out.

So I think that our adventure together, being fearless about how play can change teaching, really was the same story as Professors at Play. We just did it because we wanted to stay in touch with people, and then COVID created a moment in time where there was a crucible of thinking about your teaching. All of a sudden, teaching came to the forefront. Professors, for the first time in a long time, were wondering: Am I engaging my students? Professors at Play was like this light that conveyed that, well, we don’t know how to do it either, but come and join us while we figure it out. That’s really the heart of Professors at Play. It’s an intervention to say, yeah, this just sucks, let’s have some fun while we figure it out—and that’s where we are right now. Through creating this project, we’ve mastered a lot of research and a lot of experience. I don’t want to sell it short, but Professors at Play really is just a project of pure joy.

SA For those who aren’t familiar, could you tell us a little more about Professors at Play?

LF It’s picked up quite quickly. I imagine a tiny snowball at the top of the hill just rolling down, picking up all this snow. It’s this huge, massive thing now compared to five months ago. We started the website that you saw, Sandra, where we have a blog and a resource page. We also started with a LISTSERV, which included around 600 people. David and I thought, well, if we have all these people, we’ve got to do something. So why don’t we hold a virtual Playposium? We held that in November, and we had 361 people register. Right before the Playposium someone said, what’s the hashtag for the Playposium for social media? And we were like, we don’t have social media. We then set up accounts for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We recorded all of our sessions at the Playposium so then we had to have a YouTube channel. It’s as though the next step just unfolded without us really planning it. It was just the next right thing to do and we created it.

DT Now there’s been some demand for additional speakers, so we’re actually starting programming for ongoing workshops and talks. Now we’re starting to realize that there are all these affiliate organizations, such as the Strong Museum of Play, and we’re finding other associations and play researchers. The goal now is to build a bigger network so that we’re additive and not just duplicative of things that are going on. So really, I think when Lisa says it’s a snowball, the snowball is not even halfway down the hill. It’s still gathering speed.

SA I’m curious to know, how do you bring play and fun into your practice?

DT Lisa is the tip of the spear of these interventions.

LF It’s a complicated answer, I would say, first, there is play as an activity. For instance, you could do a game in class, or you could do a playful activity to teach a concept. Then there is just playfulness. That’s a way of presenting yourself, reducing the hierarchy between faculty and students, making it more of a safe learning environment where their stress is reduced, and a whole bunch of other elements that go into that. I think it’s multi-layered. Part of play can be things like ice breakers. I call them connection formers because I don’t like the term ice breakers. I think it has a negative connotation. I call them connection formers because that’s what they do. They connect people and they reduce stress. At the start of almost every class, I’ll do some type of fun activity that really has no connection to the content. The whole purpose is just to get people in the learning space forgetting about their stressful day and connecting with each other. In my study, the students said that it reduced their stress, and it was like a form of self-care. They felt like they were centred and they could actually approach the heavy topics better because they had that moment of levity. I think that’s one way of being playful, but it has no relation to the content at all. Faculty often miss that stuff because they aren’t aware of the value of it, as it’s not connected to the learning, and they have learning objectives to hit. I think that’s an unfortunate thing because I saw from my study what an impact those things have—even if they’re not directly related to the content—on the learning process that comes after that. Then there is play that you can design within your class to teach the content. Maybe it’s a playful discussion or a game that you’ve created to really teach that content for that day.

In our Playposium, we had one faculty member named Roberto Corrada. He’s a law professor and he does this entire course play where he has the students read Jurassic Park. They have to come up with laws and strategy for protecting ... what is it?

DT Extinct animal parks.

LF Extinct animal parks. It’s just genius, and that goes across the span of the entire course. So, there are little things that you can do, and there are larger things you can do. It’s a complicated type of answer, but that’s how I conceptualize it.

DT One thing Lisa said is that some people naturally embody it, but what sometimes people miss is that the professors themselves need to be playful. I mean, we’ve all been through the whole thing of establishing your social presence at the beginning of class by showing a picture of your dog, and then it’s all business. I think that the professors that we connect with the most have a natural playfulness. They invite the students to engage with them, and that really is play, even though it’s not what we think of as play.

As I reflect back to before Lisa and I started working on this, I’ve always been a playful professor. Some of that’s just my nature and who I am. Some of that is my gender and my privilege. It’s just easy for me to be like, hey, I can be a little looser than my students because they’re younger than I am and I’m an old white guy. What became interesting to me is that there’s a baseline. You have to enter the classroom with a playfulness and then the techniques really start to pay off. I think sometimes if you divorce the techniques from the playfulness, it really does feel like forced fun. Like why are we doing this? It’s like when you do these jeopardy games and then the rest of class is stressful. The jeopardy game isn’t inherently going to unlock playfulness in your class. Your approach is your mindset.

LF Yeah, I think that’s a good point. I teach mental health counselling and, to cut a long story short, there’s this research called Common Factors. It basically says, well, there are five hundred different counselling theories, and more than that, really. How come it doesn’t really matter which one you use? Therapy can be effective no matter what the approach is. So what is it that makes therapy effective? Common Factors research has found that the most influential factor in successful therapy is the strength of the therapeutic relationship. I believe it’s the same thing in teaching. If you have a strong relationship with your students, the techniques and the tools are going to be much more effective. I think it speaks to what David was saying in that if you have play without playfulness, there’s a disconnect and students don’t grasp on to that.

DT This is where I have to set Lisa up and say that I think she has a very elegant observational model of how play unlocks in these levels. I’d love for her to share it because when she structured what she was doing in this model, all of a sudden I realized that play is not just the sugar that helps the medicine go down. Play is fundamental to these human practices.

LF I think what David is talking about is … before I started my research project, I had this theory of how play was meaningful in the class environment, where if you played and had fun, then people started laughing and connecting and creating that bond and community. When there’s a sense of community and connection, people are going to be more comfortable and more likely to be willing to be vulnerable. When we’re more willing to be vulnerable, we’re more likely to take risks, and when we’re more likely to take risks, we’re more likely to fail. Failing leads to longer lasting learning. So that was the model I had worked up in my head. It’s just my research, and the model that I designed out of my research is more complex. It’s hard to explain verbally, but that’s the gist of it.

DT Lisa has this theoretical model, which I love because I think it’s just so good at describing things. Then she’s got the research model—the model that actually came out of the research—the more complex model. What I love about it is that it gets people away from the idea that play is just this little bit of delight that you drop into some otherwise painful process. Instead it says, no, this is a healing practice. This is how people connect in human bonds, and through those bonds of community you’re willing to risk and explore and think and engage. Play is actually a very human mode of mode of inquiry and understanding, and it’s just motivating on the inside.

I’m like, why didn’t someone tell me that a long time ago? The work that Lisa has done to bring that to bear in a psychological language has really enlivened all the work that I’ve done, which has been more about aesthetics and how it looks, how it works, how to recognize it and how to talk about it. It’s been a wonderful symmetry of how our approaches work together.

LF It was a qualitative study, so there were a lot of their experiences of play. So you start with playfulness and play, where I talk about laughter, fun, novelty, and excitement, and how it removes barriers and reduces stress, anxiety, and fear. It puts you in a place to learn and approach the seriousness from a more centred place. At the same time, it creates those relationships in that sense belonging, which I call relational safety, because it creates trust. Then from there it awakens intrinsic motivation, where students said they were more focused on the learning process instead of grades like they normally are. They actually enjoyed coming to class and they enjoyed the challenge. Class felt intriguing and exciting and energetic, and they just felt more motivated to learn. That was huge to hear, because that’s always been everything I’ve tried to get from my students. From there it’s like this vulnerable engagement where they’re highly engaged in the class and activities. It’s hands-on and interactive. I don’t lecture at people very often, and so within that, people are doing things, trying things, and taking risks. They’re open to feedback. This relates back to the idea of relational safety, because if you have a strong relationship with your students, you can give them just about any feedback and they’re more likely to be able to hear it. From there, learning is enhanced. I think when I first started this journey, I thought, okay, I’m going to make my class more fun and playful and it’s going to create better learning outcomes. I didn’t realize all this in the middle of these four steps; I think I wasn’t quite sure how those are all connected. So that’s the visual that keeps me going. I mean, play is hard to do, and my experience is that people don’t take it seriously a lot of the time, and sometimes I’ll get flack for it. When I look back at that model, I know it works. I’m going to keep on going because I know that for students, it really matters to them.

SA What has your experience been with playful practice, now that most of us are teaching and learning remotely?

LF I think being online has actually opened up more opportunities for play in terms of creatively thinking of playful approaches. Before, when I was teaching in-person, I was confined to the walls of the classroom and the perimeter of the university. We’re now teaching digitally, and I have the physical environment of each student’s home where they can get up, move, and go and get things. I also have access to the entire web and when we’re learning digitally, all of the students are on the Internet. So these ideas have expanded in that way.

In a sense, being online is more challenging because it’s harder to make interpersonal connections, and so I think that digitally teaching play is even more important than teaching play in in-person learning. It’s more important, but it’s also harder because it’s more difficult to connect through a computer screen, obviously. I think there are some limitations to the model I showed you in terms of the deep level of connection, because I don’t know that I’m getting as deep a sense of belonging in my digital classes than I was in my in-person classes. But my students have classes where there’s no play and it’s just lectures over Zoom, and that’s hard for them I think. So it’s important, but it is harder digitally.

DT I think that when we moved online, it ripped away the veil of “I’m a good teacher.” We were pretty naked on Zoom because I can talk in a classroom and I can feel like I’m doing pretty well and keeping people’s attention. On Zoom, I’m basically a radio DJ. I’m talking to the screen. There’s no feedback.

I think this put teachers in a state of shock … that they weren’t as engaging as they thought they were. I’ll tell you that in a classroom say of thirty students, if I can engage half the class, I’m going to feel like the class is engaged. If I’m online and I’m only engaging half the class, I’m looking at fifteen Zoom cameras turned off. All of a sudden we can see the absence that’s always been there. If I can get the class to laugh, everyone benefits. It just raises the mood for everyone. Online, if I’ve got thirty people laughing independently with their microphones off, everyone’s isolated. I agree with Lisa. It’s simultaneously easier and harder in different ways.

This is where I wanted to tie in Professors at Play, where we just don’t know how to do this online thing. I don’t think students know how, and I don’t think we know how. We’re still inventing, and I think that’s why people started flocking to Professors at Play, because at least there were people offering methodologies for engaging students in things like crazy ice breakers, escape rooms, funny quiz shows, and full class simulations. All of a sudden we were like, shoot, if I’m going to be trapped in this little Zoom box, I might as well try some of this stuff out. So, I think it’s an exciting time to be doing this, and I don’t know that playfulness would have been as present in people’s minds if they were just doing the same old class, telling the same old jokes, and doing the same old activities.

LF I don’t want to make assumptions, but I think another piece is that it is common for faculty to have perfected their classes that they’ve taught in-person over decades, sometimes, and maybe they do tweaks here and there but generally they have it down. In moving to online and digital teaching, they had to shift completely what they had been doing for so long. Personally, I found it to be an opportunity to try some things differently, shake it up, and step outside the box a little bit because I was having to redo everything anyway to put it online synchronously and asynchronously. I think it was a huge opportunity to just do something different and expand. Hopefully people are seeing that play is a way to do that.

DT And I want to emphasize again, that we’re in this too, it’s not like we’ve figured this out. We’ve just committed ourselves to playing through this mess. This summer, I taught an architecture course that was normally a hybrid class, but this time it was delivered fully online. I found myself facing some of these same struggles and I was doing a lot of things wrong. Lisa’s always in the background saying, you should do more of these wacky things. You should do more of these fun things. I’m like, I’m trying to, but I get international students, and these architecture students are a pretty serious bunch. At the end of the whole thing, I did a lot of fun stuff. And by the way, I should tell you, the class was the architecture of fun. So it’s a ringer. Like, my class is going to be fun because of its subject matter. At the end I’m reading through the course feedback, and it’s just like, we love the wacky activities, we wish there would have been more of them. I learned my lesson, which was that I wasn’t brave enough.

LF Or, just listen to Lisa.

DT Yeah. I should just listen to Lisa.

SA On that note, are there favourite online tools that you use?

LF I’ve found that for the connection-forming type of activities, if you just Google free computer games, there’s a bunch of ideas. Have you seen Flappy Birds? It’s a free computer game and it’s totally pointless. It’s just this little bird and you press the spacebar and there’s these breaks in the pipes and you have to get the bird to fly through the pipes. It’s really hard to do. Most people can’t get past level one or two. In the chat box I’ll send the students a link to that website. And I’ll say, “Open this up. You have three minutes. Whoever gets the highest score at the end of three minutes wins.” It’s totally just for relaxation, fun and play. I have them unmute themselves if they are okay with that, and the laughter that comes from that is just so heartwarming.

There’s this other one. David found a website and it’s ... I can’t remember the name of it, but it has to be thousands of questions and you just scroll for minutes. I call it “scrolly questions.” I’ll send the students into small breakout rooms and give them the link. I’ll say, one person, share your screen and be the scroller. The person starts scrolling and then whoever’s turn it is, say stop randomly. Whatever question the little cursor lands on, you have to answer the question and then just take turns scrolling and answering questions. It seems goofy, but I go around between breakout rooms, and I hear the students having the most connecting conversations that I’ve ever heard in a classroom situation. Normally our icebreaker questions are kind of surface level, but these are such random questions that it gets into these facets of the students’ lives that would never have come out in a classroom otherwise. What are some other ones we’ve tried, David?

DT I like breakout rooms with weird objectives. For instance, I would send people to a breakout room and say, don’t come back until you’ve found something that you all agree that you don’t like. Instead of saying, hey, talk about your favourite place to go for vacation, they come back and they’re like, none of us like tomatoes. Who knew? It humanizes people. You’re asking about tools, and I think that’s what’s interesting is that play transcends the tools.

LF I think that’s a good point. Mainly I use Zoom because I think you can get better interactions within that. At least that’s what I’ve found. Within Zoom you can post links in the chat box and then they’re off into a different cyberspace world. It’s like constantly changing the virtual environment, so that they’re not doing one thing for too long. I think that’s useful. You can use Google Docs within that and Flipgrid, and within that you can use Google Forms. I create escape rooms through Google Forms. I’ll send them to smaller group breakout rooms and give them the link to the escape room, and they have to break through all the locks in order to re-enter the main classroom. If they break the final lock, there’s a secret pass code to get back in the main Zoom room.

To me, it’s less about using a bunch of different tools and more about creating that connection and being creative within Zoom. There’s so much you can do that I had no idea about five, six months ago and it’s really just about trying things out, breaking the norm, and breaking the status quo of what teaching is in my mind, and just doing it differently to see what works.

SA Sounds interesting, I especially like the idea that you need a code to come back to class. Rather than the idea that you have to be here right now in this Zoom class; it’s reversing the idea where class becomes a desirable space to be—you need to work hard through this fun activity to come back to class.

LF It’s so funny because the secret code I had for the last one I did was “bananas.” So the winning group and all the others come in, and we’re all just waiting for the last group to finally come back. When people are connecting to Zoom, their camera comes up and then it says the audio is connecting. So you can see people joining the class again, and then they say, “Bananas!” And they’re like, oh, because they realized they were the last ones. It’s so fun.

SA Where do you get your inspiration from for things like this?

LF I’m on a rampage, so I’m surrounded by a bunch of playbooks that I’ve ordered by a number of different authors, and I’m just reading as much as I can. The Professors at Play community has been really inspiring, especially our Playposium. By the end of that day, I was so overwhelmed with amazing, playful ideas that I needed to go back through the videos because it was just so much. I get inspiration from just connecting with certain people here and there who have a different angle on play, because play means so many different things. I think my whole life I’ve always really hated traditions, normalcy, and the status quo. When I get to break the rules a little bit, it feels really invigorating for me. There’s this internal sense of inspiration that comes when I just get to bend the normal teaching practices, at least that I’ve been taught and modelled. I’d say for sure that David has been a huge inspiration for me as well. When I first knew that this was a possibility, I went to one of his workshops on wacky workplaces or play in higher ed, and since then he’s really been a guiding light in this for me. It’s been nice to have him by my side.

DT Yeah, I mean, my answer is almost identical to Lisa’s. I’ve been an academic researcher of fun for a long time. My colleague from New York University, John Sharp, and I wrote a book about the aesthetics of fun and I’ve been really heady about this stuff. But then watching Lisa teach these classes and just seeing the students explode with delight, all of a sudden I was just like, this is interesting to me. I love idiosyncratic architecture. I love weird stuff. I was just very removed from it. My joke at all of these talks is that, as my wife would say, how can you be the professor of fun when you’re the least fun guy I know? I say, I don’t like to have fun. I just like to think about it. But through the Professors at Play work and working with Lisa watching people come alive to play, all of a sudden it was just like, wait, this thing that I know a lot about matters. And so it’s been really wonderful. At the heart of it, I agree with Lisa. It’s like we have built this energy between us that says, this is okay, this is good, this is awesome. Look at the things that it’s done. I think that’s what Professors at Play is, because I agree one hundred percent that watching all of the presenters from all over the world, I’m like “This is so great! Why don’t more people do this?” We’ve got to get more people talking to us. Every time I meet someone that’s doing something and making it work, I just get more excited to keep trying and keep doing more.

There are lots of books on theory, practice, all the gamification stuff, all of that. There’s so much out there but it’s not in a curriculum yet so it’s hard to find. That’s the other component of Professors at Play that we work really hard on, which is to try to point people to things like, hey, here’s this random book from game studies. Here’s Miguel Sicart writing about the ethics of play. If you read the book, it’s so relevant to teaching with play. Here’s Stewart Brown. This guy writes about why playfulness is important for creating a happy life. Well, read that book too because it’s about teaching it. I think that we’re just starting to find all these common threads and trying to put them in a place for people to be able to use them.

LF I think for me, it’s really been the community. When I first saw David talk and then he and I started talking, we found random people here or there that were interested in this too. Before this, at times I felt like he and I were the only people who were into it. Sometimes I’ve felt that when I talk about play in teaching, a lot of faculty are like, that’s cute. I started to keep it to myself and not tell people what I was doing in the classroom, and so in meeting David, it was like I was given permission to play. Now, every time I talk to somebody in the community or go to a workshop or the Playposium, it’s just gives me more fire. It’s like, yes, we’re a community. There are people doing this. People have been doing this all along, I just had no idea, and there are pouches of people everywhere. It’s inspiring to me that the community is getting bigger and bigger.

DT I’d also go back to student feedback. I mean, when you see students all lit up and they’re thanking you for teaching and you’re like, WTF? Why haven’t I been doing that all along? Then I think that you get inspiration from success, and you get hungry, where you’re like, I want to do more of this.

SA So on that note, where do you think that higher education is going in the next decade, and where do you hope it will be going? These may or may not be the same thing.

DT Well, here’s the thing. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the future of higher ed because in a certain sense, that’s what I’m part of all this online stuff. I think the future of higher ed is going to be a lot more technologically mediated, and a lot more networked. I think that the era of the closed classroom and the professor as the expert is coming to a close, and that has been hastened by COVID.

Students are going to become empowered, so I think that the role of the professor is going to have to change. Whether or not you like the word play, I always say that play has these two connotations in English. On the one hand, it’s child’s play, like goofing around. On the other hand, is like mechanical play, where there’s a sort of looseness. Really the word means both things. It means moving things around and seeing how they fit together. I think that professors are being forced into a playful pose because students are like, I can look up a lecture, I don’t need to sit here and listen to you lecture to me. I want you to help me play with these ideas and put them together and learn the practice of thinking the way you do. So, because of COVID, I think that the future of higher education is going in that direction. I’m kind of hopeful that that will happen as well.

There’s another line of conversation here that could be very, very deep, which is that play upturns hierarchy. Higher ed is built on hierarchy. Who knows the most? What’s your institution’s ranking? What’s your GPA? Play is reflective, and COVID is upturning things, and I think play is a response.

When we talk about decolonizing the curriculum or we start talking about racial justice, I don’t think higher ed is ready for these things. I think it wants to be ready for it, but I don’t think it is, and so I think that something really weird is going to happen. I don’t know what that is, but I am pretty convinced that the idea of the fool who doesn’t know the danger and just marches through all the chaos may be the emblem that we need. That’s what I’m hopeful for. I’m hopeful that we can play ourselves out of this mess.

LF I think the obvious answer is that it’s going to become more digital. I think it’s been headed that way and COVID has definitely advanced the stages of that. What I think is going to happen is that in ten years, not much will be different, maybe it’ll just be more digital. In terms of the hierarchy or the status quo in terms of what a faculty member is, I think those things are probably going to stay the same. That’s just the skepticism in me. I was doing some reading for one of the manuscripts I’m writing up right now, and there are a couple of sources that talk about pedagogy. This hierarchical, listen-to-me, lecture-based approach, it’s like five hundred years old. There is research more recently that says, hey, that’s not the most effective way to teach. But at the same time, faculty sometimes struggle to adopt a more playful or a more hands-on engaging style, and I think that’s because we are so used to teaching in this lecture-based format.

I mean, in all of my years in undergrad and graduate programs, that was how I was taught. Now as a faculty member ... it’s easy to just do what those modelled to you. I think it’s hard for people to think outside the box. I wrote one of our blog posts that said academia killed my creativity, because I think you’re just recruited into this traditional way of thinking and being in this status quo. It’s really hard to do something outside of that because your creative mind is shrivelled. Also, I think it’s scary to do something new and different because you can get a lot of criticism for that—like doing playful things. People say play is trivial, play is a waste of time. My class is too serious for play. There’s a lot of skepticism, so if you do it, it’s a risk, and I think it takes a lot of energy to rethink teaching in that way.

The other thing that I have to disagree with David on is that students want this more playful approach. I partly agree, but also when I asked my students at the very start of the semester what their thoughts about play and teaching and learning were, they said, well, I don’t know how that’s going to work because how are you going to get a bunch of grad students to get up and move around the classroom? One student said, I’m not really looking forward to it because I just want to sit there. The lazy student in me just wants to listen to a lecture and take notes. That same student then said, but I don’t learn very well that way and I know that about myself, so I know that playful learning will probably be better. I think that student was just saying, my brain is so conditioned to be lectured at. Sometimes students will push back against that, and I believe the reason for this is due to the concept of neuroplasticity, where what you do every day creates strong neural pathways in your brain. If you’re lectured at for decades, that’s the way that you feel the most comfortable learning. So of course, when a faculty member stops lecturing and uses play, you’re going to be like, wait, what? This is weird to me. Where is the rubric? What do I write down from my notes? I think it’s like a little bit of faculty being recruited into teaching a certain way, and I think it’s also pressure from students, as if they just want to take their notes and take a test and leave. Sometimes I think maybe it’s just because they’re used to it.

In ten years, I hope that higher education will be really playful, and a space where faculty have more time to be innovative and creative in their approaches. I don’t believe it is wise to maintain status quos for over five hundred years. Things change, the students change, and the things we’re teaching change. I’m hopeful that it’ll look different. I just worry that going against the status quo is going to be a little too much ... and hence we won’t.

DT One of the things I’d add to that is if you think about the last decade or so, the iPhone was released thirteen years ago. I mean, the world is different with smartphones. It’s just different. I think that COVID may have been that moment in higher education. It’s different now. I just don’t think that we realize it yet, like we’re living in the future and it’s going to take us a while to recognize that. Some parts of the university world are going to die fighting for the old way, but I think it’s already changing.

I’ll give you a quick example. We have a pretty respected music school. Of all things, what can you not teach online? Music. Well, they found out that their opera singers could train with Metropolitan Opera singers in New York City because the opera singers were not busy doing opera, so they had the time. These music professors are already thinking, well, of course, I want to get back into the studio. I want to work with people in person. But, boy, I’ve got to hang on to this online stuff. I find that so exciting because I think, wait, the future is already here. One year ago, that was impossible, and now that’s just the way things are going to be. So, I’m mostly pretty positive and excited, but I do maintain that play is an important component in all of this.

SA What words of advice would you give to those thinking about integrating play into their teaching practice?

LF I’m a mental health counsellor, so I think you can give somebody all the tools and resources in the world, and sometimes that won’t help because there is an underlying issue or a barrier that keeps people from being able to access those things or see the usefulness in them. So, my advice would be, take some time to reflect on the narratives of higher education, and the narratives of what being a faculty member means to you. For example, what is the status quo that we are upholding and what part of that can you change? When I did that for myself, I realized that the traditional form of lecture-based hierarchical teaching—where I’m the expert standing telling you all of the facts—was not working for me. It was draining. It was leaving me feeling disillusioned about teaching in higher education. Once I was able to see how that’s one narrative of teaching, I knew that I needed to create my own narrative.

What works for me is more in line with who I am as a human, and that is just being more free and playful and not taking myself so seriously, because I have a hard time doing that. My advice is to try deconstructing those dominant narratives that have been taught to us for generations, and choosing for yourself which direction you want to go in.

Then it is a matter of figuring out what that means to you in the classroom. How it looks for me is different than how it looks for David and everyone else. It’s like personalizing play. I think of it on a continuum of not trying it at all and going way too far. Where can you take one little, tiny step with play? Maybe it’s doing an icebreaker and seeing how that works. Take tiny steps because it can feel daunting and overwhelming. So, that’s a long answer but I would just say to everyone, go to therapy and talk about the barriers that keep you from being playful and just don’t take yourself too seriously.

DT My answer is similar. One of the things that I’ve been looking at for a while now with Lisa is what I call “the fun wall,” and she just calls it shame. People have that experience where you want to try new things but you’re afraid. You finally get you up the courage and do it and you’re like, wow, that was really fun. People tend to be that way. They have shame and think that they’re going to look stupid or they’re going to mess up or they’re not going to be any good, and it’s doubled down for professors. There’s no room for error. It’s the idea that I am the master of my domain. For anyone that wants to become more playful in their teaching and unlock some of this, you’ve got to get over that wall. For some people, just telling them that the wall exists, and they’ll plough through it because they’re stubborn.

As Lisa says, one thing to start with is to pick something easy. If you’ve never done anything before, sure, do the dumb jeopardy game. It’s like the lowest form of play in the classroom, but that gets you started. I’d say find someone that you know in your discipline, or even not in your discipline, that’s going to egg you on to go do things. One of the best parts of the Playposium was watching people that I knew had never done any of these things before get so excited watching someone say, “Well, I teach my whole class like this.” You could just see the key unlock. If they can do it, I can do it. A lot of it is simply modelling and exposure, but at the end of the day, I think it’s just about going out and doing it. I think it’s got doubly hard because in a way, we’ve got used to Zoom. Here’s the length, here’s the syllabus, here’s the lecture. I think it might also start with doing something to break yourself out of complacency.

I have another friend who has nothing to do with teaching. He’s a crazy guy that does all of these wonderful, weird events and stuff. He and I were talking about writing a book called “Prank Yourself,” about the idea of doing things that make your life more weird and complicated just to break yourself out of complacency. So I would also say that I think if nothing else, even if you’re going to do it in your classroom, start pranking yourself. For instance, every day before you go to class, pick a random word out of the dictionary and you have to figure out how to work that word into your lecture. Just do it for yourself. If you’re a little braver, tell the class you’re doing it and see if they can figure out what the word is.

LF I think it’s just about overcoming your fears. I still get nervous about doing playful things. The first time I really tried to do something different, it was a game where I had questions on these little Post-it Notes and I put them down on the table. This was in person before COVID. I gave each of the students those sticky hands—you know, those things for kids, they’re all gooey and elastic and they look like a hand and you can fling them. So I gave each of them a sticky hand and they had to come up to the front of the class, do an intro and say their name and what track they were in. Then they’d slap a card with the sticky hand card and whatever card flung back at them, they’d have to answer. It’s the most hilarious game, but the first time I did it, my hands were shaking because I was so nervous. Then I remembered David in the back of my head and thought to myself, he’s going to ask me how it went after class ... I have to do it. And so I did! I think each time it’s going to feel uncomfortable, but you just need to have that person who’s going to be your accountability partner; find the courage within yourself and take some risks.

Reflection

Our understanding of play in learning seems to constantly evolve. It started with the idea that learning shouldn’t be a drag and that joy makes learning more meaningful and memorable. As we have continued to engage in this work, we have realized that play in learning is about fun and joy and making learning stick but it’s also about changing the underlying foundation of academia. If anything, since the interview we have become more convinced of, and increasingly bold, about proclaiming the power of play.

We believe that for many faculty, the pandemic was a big push and an invitation to play with their teaching. Overnight, academics were forced to drastically alter their methods of delivery—it was not only a necessary task, it provided encouragement and freedom to play around with what we do. It seemed as though faculty suddenly had more motivation to seek out new ideas for delivery and techniques for student engagement. Perhaps more were open to playing and the idea of play in teaching because the timing was right.

Through our work with Professors at Play and our own pandemic-induced re-focusing of teaching, our vision has focused on a possible “playvolution,” which we see as a powerful and playful movement that reimagines higher education by breaking the boundaries and bending the rules. Play is at the centre of the playvolution 1) as a way of being: not taking ourselves so seriously; 2) as an activity: harnessing the power of play in learning; and 3) as a philosophy: playing with the status quo to break and then remake learning to be more flexible, inclusive, and expansive.

So, play can be things you do in the classroom, techniques—but it is also more than that. It is also a frame of mind, a way of being and an approach to teaching. The playvolution is about approaching teaching differently all together. And that’s where we intersect with some of the brightest scholars of educational reform—playing with the status quo to “create new.”

We are hopeful that the pandemic has inadvertently catapulted us into a more playful and flexible future of higher education. We hope that Professors at Play can be a social support and think tank for faculty to continue to play with their teaching. We will continue to offer blogs, workshops, symposiums, and potentially future publications centring around:

• The Ethics of Play: Transforming culture;
• The Playful Professor: Becoming a playful person in the professoriate;
• The Playful Classroom: Teaching your students to play/through play (techniques);
• The Playvolution: Changing higher education.

As we look ahead, we see more opportunities to bring smiles to faces, share ideas, and change how people think about the work we do in academia. What started out as a research project has quickly turned into a life mission!

About

David Thomas, Ph.D. is the executive director of online programs at the University of Denver and assistant professor attendant in the Department of Architecture at the University of Colorado Denver. His research centres around fun, fun objects (like buildings!) and the meaning of play.

Lisa K. Forbes, PhD. is an assistant clinical professor in the Counselling Program at the University of Colorado Denver. Lisa is a licensed professional counsellor and is training to become a registered play therapist. Lisa teaches counselling techniques, counselling children/adolescents, counselling practicum, and internship. Lisa’s research centres around play in learning in higher education settings as well as intensive mothering ideology, gender conformity, and mental health.