Community of Practice: Playful Pedagogy – Reviving Teaching Through Play

Are you tired? Have you been feeling burned out and lacking motivation and creativity? Are you feeling stuck or limited in your existence as an academic? Do you wish your students were more engaged and invested in their learning? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, this community of practice is for you! Playful Mind, Playful Pedagogy: Reviving Teaching Through Play is a CETL Community of Practice (CoP) for anyone interested in revitalizing their career and becoming more dynamic and playful in their approach to teaching. Each session will be playfully interactive valuing engagement and personal reflection.

This community will explore why play is often devalued within higher education and how play can be an unexpected solution to many struggles that instructors face. While playful pedagogy is an uncommon and largely misunderstood approach to adult education, it holds considerable untapped power in the learning process. This community will seek to understand playful pedagogy by examining how play is powerful, play is freedom, play is creative, play is restorative, and play is productive. The community will identify and challenge common barriers prohibiting faculty from adopting a playful approach. Participants will learn how to incorporate a playful pedagogy into their teaching as an activity and as a foundational philosophy and mindset. The last CoP meeting in each semester will be a Faculty Playground Session where the community will become ‘professors at play.’ During playground sessions, participants will collaboratively brainstorm and playfully re-design an activity, discussion, assignment, or lecture from one of their courses. Participants might experience an awakened playful and creative brain leading to increased effectiveness and a sense of freedom and joy in teaching.

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