Playfulness in Learning

Why play belongs in higher education

Games, simulations and playful approaches create the conditions that deeper thinking needs. When students play, they take risks they would never take in a traditional seminar. They experiment, fail safely and learn from it. Play reduces anxiety and builds the psychological safety that intellectual risk-taking depends on. Taken seriously, play is one of the best routes to deep thinking.

Playful learning in practice

First-year students learn financial concepts through a modified Monopoly game, and playful rewards helped lift participation in voluntary formative work from 10% to 96%. Physical cards, dice games and bingo bring energy to large classes. These experiences are also naturally AI-resistant, because nobody can outsource a heated boardroom debate or a model of their vision for their profession.

Jenni talked about playful learning for accounting students, from sustainability and Freire's dialogic pedagogy to Monopoly, on the L&T Chat Show.

Listen to Jenni Rose on playful learning for accounting students (L&T Chat Show, 2023)

Learning through simulation with Accounting BISSIM

Jenni uses Accounting BISSIM, a business simulation developed by Darren Sparkes, Matt Davies and Lisa Weaver, in which teams run competing companies and are judged on long-term value for all their stakeholders rather than on short-term profit. On the MBA, teams sit on the boards of domestic robot manufacturers over several simulated years. They make decisions on pricing, production, marketing, wages, supply chains and sustainability, and the simulation turns every choice into financial statements that the class then examines together.

Some of the deepest learning comes from the gap between what students say they value and what they do under pressure. Students who argue passionately for employee wellbeing and corporate responsibility one week may, when cash runs short the next, cut wages, skip environmental compliance and leave the safety system unfunded. Rather than penalising those choices, the debrief turns them into dialogue about whose interests accounting serves and which harms our reports make visible or leave hidden. Three design choices make this work. Students apply what they know rather than only discussing it, their marks do not depend on how well their company performs, and the most time and care go into the debrief.

Rose, J. (forthcoming) Simulation as a dialogic pedagogical tool for embedding sustainability in accounting education.

Davies, M., Stancheva-Todorova, E., Sparkes, D., Weaver, L. and Rose, J. (2023) Embedding sustainability in an undergraduate financial accounting module using a business simulation: a case study

LEGO® Serious Play®

Jenni is a trained LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator, trained by Lucy Hawthorne through Climate Play's Play it Forward programme. She uses the method in meetings, to focus a team on why it is doing something and what needs to happen, with first-year students to build study skills, and with MBA students to think about the audience they are writing for. In one session a student built a bridge between a calculator and a tree to show the future accountant as someone who connects financial rigour with environmental responsibility. That is the kind of thinking you cannot get from a textbook.

"It's absolutely amazing how, when facilitated effectively, participants can uncover deep thoughts and develop intellectually through building and describing their models, which are so hard to articulate in other ways. Plus it's so joyful!"
Jenni Rose

Workshops

Jenni runs LEGO® Serious Play® workshops for teaching teams, leadership groups and students. They can help a team clarify its purpose and priorities, help students articulate their thinking about their discipline and their future, or show educators how to bring the method into their own teaching.

Get in touch to discuss a workshop

Learning from the playful learning community

Our work draws on the research of Nicola Whitton, Professor of Digital Learning and Play at Northumbria University. Nicola founded the Playful Learning Network and co-created the Playful Learning Conference, and her book Play and Learning in Adulthood makes the case for reimagining higher education pedagogy around play. Her recent work explores escape room design for learning.

Whitton, N. (2022) Play and Learning in Adulthood. Palgrave Macmillan