Roll the dice: Play your way into higher education classrooms

This chapter is designed as a game for higher-education instructors to play as they transform their courses (any course, any discipline, online, hybrid, or in-person) into semester-long narrative adventures. The game—Playtocracy—aims to help educators consider the importance of play and games in education and turn their courses into adventurous learning journeys that help students playfully engage with course material and with each other. These ideas come from my own experience as a faculty member in a public institution and as a teacher with 20+ years of experience in early childhood classrooms. Following the idea that higher education needs to learn from good preschool practices—such as a focus on relationships, balanced days, or on students’ interests guiding learning—the play-journeys here prompted and described place each student as the “hero” at the center of all the action as they take on challenges that foster, support, and demonstrate their own ideas and growing expertise in specific domains. In this way, higher-education courses can model an idea of community growth that illustrates an attitude of lifelong learning together. You are invited to play—just roll the dice.