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Scholarship November 8, 2018

“What IF? Building Interactive Fiction for Teaching and Learning Religious Studies”

The Wabash Center

Author
Lester, G. Brooke
Publisher
Teaching Theology and Religion 21, no. 4 (2018): 260-273
Games offer unique possibilities for learning, and text‐based interactive fiction (“IF”) in particular lends itself as a low barrier to entry for instructors and students wishing to build interactive narrative games. Understanding by Design provides a framework by which to determine the best possible places for instructor‐ and learner‐built IF in any given course, whether face‐to‐face or online. A thick description of how an instructor conceived and developed two IF games follows, explicitly tied to course‐design considerations like learning goals and assessment performances. The value of IF as a student project is explored, and finally an appendix provides resources for instructors and students to begin building their own interactive fiction.