Katerina Zacharia (Loyola Marymount University)
Marientina Gotsis (University of Southern California)
Teaching Greek tragedy in the classroom presents numerous challenges to the instructor and the modern student. At the crux of using high-impact pedagogy for the teaching of a Greek play, is the balance between honing the requisite critical skills for comprehending the original plays, and the equally compelling need to create a “pleasurable-enough” course experience. Educational games face similar challenges with game designers struggling to balance “fun” and pedagogy but ultimately being absolved since context affects outcomes. Tyack and Wyeth draw parallels from post WWI epic theatre, where “audiences were motivated to attend […] because of their factual approach toward representing and analyzing recent societal events.” (Sebastian and Whitehead 2008)(2017, 3)
Classical Greek literature has influenced commercial games aesthetics, worldview, narratives, plots and character development, yet more of the market has focused on visual realism at the expense of narrative (Sebastian and Whitehead 2008). We chose to develop a game that would be agnostic of technology (delivered in either analog or digital format), independent of visual aesthetics, and instead focused on the core values and narrative essence of a specific Greek Tragedy. The result was the interactive game Enthralled aiming to enhance group reflection, document perspective-taking and decision-making in a group setting, and explore the fine line between fact and belief. This pedagogical intervention is based on Euripides’ Bacchae. The narrative consists of multiple brief scenes adapted from the original play. The main character of each scene is questioned at the end of each scene. The character’s response is drawn from a deck of cards and may or may not be congruent with the play or the character. After a close group reading of the adapted text, players are asked to judge the character on a binary outcome and to provide a judgement rationale, manifesting individual and group comprehension of the incentives of the behaviors of the dramatic characters. The game is re-playable with the goal of achieving a majority vote via deliberation.
Enthralled was playtested with undergraduate students in Spring 2022. A formal mixed methods evaluation of the course and game were conducted seeking to answer several research questions, starting with measuring entertainment efficacy as defined by self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci 2000). We measured interest/enjoyment, value/usefulness, and perceived competence, and collected additional data from open-ended feedback, self-assessment surveys on collaboration, and reflective surveys. Empirical evidence of games for promoting empathy, pro-social behavior, and perspective-taking found high productivity, but the research is too embryonic to point to clear paths toward achieving multiple educational goals (Schrier 2020; Boyle et al. 2016; Saleme et al. 2020; Dishon and Kafai 2020; Peña et al. 2018). Our study results were overall positive, meeting and exceeding our expectations on intrinsic motivation and collaboration outcomes. This study is an important step toward the investigation of the impact of creativity, collaboration and interactive entertainment in Classics using a transdisciplinary approach.