Impact workshop at the Sociological Forum in Morocco

On the 7th of July Agata Komendant-Brodowska and Anna Beitane led a workshop on Game-based teaching on polarisation at the International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology in Rabat.

The Forum, held from July 6–11 in Morocco under the theme “Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene,” brought together more than 4,600 scholars and educators from around the world. The workshop was led by ActIPLEx team members from Warsaw and Tartu, Agata Komendant-Brodowska and Anna Beitane and it was designed for educators interested in testing an educational game (co-developed within the project) in their classrooms. The long-term goal of ActIPLEx is for the game-based workshop to be widely used by educators with their students for reflecting on social polarisation and exploring the underlying mechanisms of the process.

During the session, participants first had the opportunity to play “The Paperclip Game of Opinions”—an educational game that helps demonstrate how social polarisation can evolve. Playing the game themselves allowed educators to experience it from their students’ perspective. The second part of the session took the form of a co-creation workshop.

As Anna Beitane said, “We wanted participating teachers to reflect on their experience and help us refine the format to better suit their classroom needs”. “The game is meant to be an engaging experience, and to help students explore and better understand the mechanisms behind polarisation, but without entering political issues and builiding on existing polarities right away”, adds Agata Komendant-Brodowska.

The point of the game is that students can experience how easily polarisation develops—without engaging with real-world controversies, as the game topics are completely abstract. All the materials for the game will be prepared within the next months. And if you’d like to get to know more, please look it up here.