The Intentional Teaching podcast has hit a milestone: 25,000 total episode downloads! That represents a lot of people across higher education developing foundational teaching skills and exploring new ideas in teaching. Or maybe a handful of super-fans. Either way, I'm proud of building up this podcast! Now on to the next 25,000 downloads...

Learning at Play with Greg Loring-Albright

Speaking of the podcast, this week's episode features another interview in my occasional series exploring the intersections between the design of games and the design of learning experiences. I talked with Greg Loring-Albright, designer of the forthcoming game Keep the Faith about religions in transition. Keep the Faith is a storytelling game (with some board game elements) in which players collaborative tell the story of a fictional religion and how it changes over the centuries. Much of the story focuses on the culture-making of the religion, that is, its observable practices and traditions and norms, and how that reflects the religion's values. Players are guided through the process of making up that story through the cards and other mechanical elements of the game.

I haven't played Keep the Faith yet, but it sounds fascinating. The game is currently seeking crowdfunding through Central Michigan University Press, a publisher that specializes in board and role-playing games with educational utility. You can read more about the game on its BackerKit page, and, if you like what you see, back the game to receive a copy when it's published later this year.

Greg Loring-Albright isn't just the designer of quirky games about religion, he's also an assistant professor of games, media, and culture at Harrisonburg University of Science and Technology. In our podcast conversation, we dive into the design of Keep the Faith and draw some parallels to more traditional teaching contexts. How can you help students think more critically about a deeply personal subject like religion? How can we bring a productive playtesting ethos to the courses we teach? What kind of agency do students experience in the learning environments we design for them?

If you can imagine using Keep the Faith in a course you teach, you should definitely listen to my interview with Greg. But if not, I still think you'll find our discussion of learning design as game design interesting! You can listen to my conversation with Greg Loring-Albright here, or search for "Intentional Teaching" in your podcast app.

Bonus: I produce another podcast called First Player Token. It's a short podcast about board games, and I do it just for fun. In fact, I started it in the chaotic summer of 2020 when I needed a creative outlet. Somehow I managed to line things up so that episode 59 of Intentional Teaching and episode 59 of First Player Token are on the same topic! This means you can listen to a different (and shorter) cut of my interview with Greg Loring-Albright on the latest episode of First Player Token.

Thanks for reading!

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