The Worldbuilding Workshop

A research-based instructional approach that cultivates critical thinking, empathy, and inquiry through collaborative environmental and societal modeling.

In The Worldbuilding Workshop, Trent Hergenrader and Stephen Slota explore collaborative worldbuilding as an educational tool for deconstructing and analyzing the planet’s most urgent, relevant, and mind-boggling questions.

Their process unfolds across six stages configured to promote learner reflection on governmental, economic, social, and cultural forces. They look at how different people experience these forces under different socioeconomic and sociocultural conditions and what each of us can do to effectuate change in our shared reality.

The book details the relationship between worldbuilding and contemporary learning theories; methods by which instructors and learners can co-develop accurate representations of various worlds; and how simulation and role-play activities can be applied to support learner discovery and creativity.Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part I: Foundation
1. Around the World in 300 Pages
A Simple Cup of Coffee
Complexity, Generalizations, and Stereotypes
Critical Thinking and Empathy
What is Worldbuilding (and What Can We Do With It)?
2. Road to Contemporary Learning Theory
Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go?
One Fateful Day
Roots of Educational Psychology
The Learning Theorists
The Information Age and BeyondS
ituating Cognition
What About Worldbuilding?
Onward and Upward
3. Theory to Practice
Targeting Transfer
Welcome to Pripyat
Philosophy and Psychology
Introducing ADDIE
Designing Instruction
A Theory of Worldbuilding
Pulling It All Together
What’s Next?
4. Collaboration and Community
Identity, Positioning, and Social Constructivism
Of Termites and Men
Communities of Practice
CoPs for the Classroom
From Here to There
5. Assessment
Alphanumeric Grading
Standards-Based Assessment
Ungrading
Feedback
Scaling Assessment
On the Horizon
Part II: Concepts
6. Worlds in Space and Time
Scope: Worlds in Space
Sequence: Worlds in Time
Macro and Micro
7. Structures and Substructures
Governance
Economics
Social Relations
Cultural Influences
Synthesis
Social Forces
In Closing
8. Examining Life-Worlds Through Demographics
Nominal and Quantitative Descriptions
Narrative and Qualitative Descriptions
Essentialisms, Stereotypes, and Drawing Wrong Conclusions
Using Demographics to Explore Lived Experiences
Someone Else’s Shoes
9. Class Preparations
Developing Your Project Overview
Stage One: Project Purpose and Length
Stage Two: Scheduling
Primary and Secondary Sources
Unlearn What You Have Learned
Wikipedia as a Source of Information
Stage Three: Introducing the Project
Preparations Complete
10. Wikipedia as a Model for Worldbuilding
Getting Started
Organizing Entries
Wiki Management
Part III: World Modeling
11. Constructing the World Narrative
Charting Complexity
Quantitative Approaches to Modeling Worlds
Qualitative Approaches to Modeling Worlds
Drafting the World Metanarrative
12. Cataloging People, Places, and Things
How Many Entries?
Entries for People
Entries for Places
Entries for Things
Groups, Events, and Other Types of Entries
You've Got a World... Now What?
13. Simulations
The Sims
Simulations for Worldbuilding
Social and Environmental Changes on a Timeline
Black Swan Events
Wicked Problems
Simulations in the Classroom
14. Role-Play
A Cautionary Tale
Role-Playing Perspectives
The Worlds of El Cid
Consequences for Actions
Successes and Failures
Using Role-Play to Virtually Experience Worlds
15 Wrap-Up and Critical Reflection
Large-Group Debriefing
Self-Accounting
Peer Evaluation
Big, Messy Affairs
Epilogue: Notes from the End of the World
Part IV: Case Studies
Case Study IHistory - Eric Morgan
Case Study IIBritish Literature - Luke Strohm
Case Study IIIPhilosophy - Rebecca Scott
Case Study IVPhysics - Tori Wagner
Case Study VHonors - Wendi Sierra
Case Study VILabor Stories - Ching-In Chen
Notes
IndexENDORSEMENTS

“The Worldbuilding Workshop shows how to center imagination—our mind’s world-building, time-traveling power—at the heart of education in a world that urgently needs it.”
—James Paul Gee, Regents Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University; author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

“A genuinely new, practical, and much-needed pedagogy for playful and connected learning. Where everything zigs to numbers and algorithms, The Worldbuilding Workshop zags to role-play and narrative to nurture humanistic inquiry of our complex worlds.”
—Sebastian Deterding, Chair of Design Engineering, Imperial College London; coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game StudiesTrent Hergenrader is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Center for Worldbuilding and Storytelling at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. He is best known for Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers.

Stephen Slota is a leading educational technologist, learning theorist, and interactive storyteller. They have directed numerous digital education and instructional design projects on behalf of CVS Health, Arizona State University, the University of Connecticut, Intel Corporation, and Pfizer.