I’ve been thinking about how to up my class game. After making the decision to use Classcraft as the only LMS and gamification engine this coming school year, I’ve been thinking about what to do to make Science more immersive and game-like. Classcraft adds a flavor of fantasy and with daily random events, adds excitement to our class, but I’ve been using Star Trek as the class theme because science fiction fits a Science class rather well. Before, I was able to attach Starfleet ranks in Rezzly so when students leveled up, they increased their rank. I used that to assign team captains for group work and projects, those with the highest rank in each team were in charge. So I’ve been thinking, how will I do that with Classcraft since I don’t have control over the leveling like I did with Rezzly?
The first idea I had was to add a Star Trek layer over the existing Classcraft layer like this:
Students can “play” Classcraft as Warriors (I put the word play in quotation marks because students spend most of every class period “playing” Classcraft by doing their classwork, working well their teammates, and behaving well!). Warriors main collaborative power is to protect the other players in their team. A bad random event or misbehaving in class will cause students to lose health, Warriors can protect their teammates because they take less damage due to having the best armor and being the fighters in a group. A good match to Star Trek roles, is the Command and/or Operations Officer, the yellow shirts in the original series.
Mages are another Classcraft role that students can “play.” Mages provide their teammates with the energy needed to use their powers. So if, for example, a Warrior needs more energy to protect a teammate, their Mage can give them more (everyone also gets a little energy regenerated every night). In Star Trek, Engineering Officers fit this role the best. Engineering Officers wore the same red shirts as the Security Officers who would so frequently die on the original series so I will focus on the Engineering role!
Students can also “play” Classcraft as Healers (minus my head on their characters!). Healers heal by giving health points to teammates who take damage (or Warriors to took the damage by protecting others). Healers are a close match to the Science and Medical Officers in Star Trek who wear the blue shirts.
With that as a start I wondered how else to bring that feeling of really being a Starship crew working together to get out of a sticky situation. I need more than just telling students they are Starfleet Officers aboard the science starship Equinox. Just telling them they are aboard a starship loses its novelty when day after day we do real-life school tasks. One thing I did was go through the Classcraft random events and changed a bunch of them from fantasy-based to Star Trek-based so at least on some days students would get a trek-like feel. Bringing the story back as often as I can might help the more imaginative students but the rest of the class, or the gamers, will need something more like a game.
So I looked to Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for inspiration. I purchased an inexpensive starter story to see if I could adapt it. I couldn’t get past the fantasy roles and struggled to adapt the story to the topics I teach. I wanted to purchase the more expensive but complete guide to running a D&D campaign when it occurred to me to check and see if someone developed a role-playing game for Star Trek. I should have known, of course one exists! Modiphius Entertainment has a Star Trek role-playing game! Buying the core rule book from the site is pretty pricey but I found it for cheaper on Amazon.
You can download pdfs from the Modiphius Entertainment website with free missions, starship sheets, character sheets, and a quick start guide so while I wait for my book to arrive I’ll see how it works and see if I get ideas for some quick role-playing missions to make our daily routines more fun from time to time! I was thinking that maybe in the middle of a robotics challenge or during different phases of projects I can add an emergency such a core breach or something where a roll of the dice (20-sided and 6-sided dice needed) plus a bit of knowledge of what we’re learning will get us out of the jam.
I’m excited to embed the Star Trek theme more firmly into the class while giving kids a chance to really role play the different types of jobs aboard a Starship!
