Review with games

Does revision always have to be in monastic silence with oneself and in absolute seriousness? While this may be one method, many prefer more active and engaging approaches. Lecturer Magalie Fournier-Plouffe from Collège André-Grasset in Quebec told an AQPC (Association québécoise de pédagogie collégiale) webinar how she used various playful strategies to revise material in her compulsory history course in a humanities program. All the more so, as she put it, as the course had the misfortune of being scheduled on a Friday evening. All of which meant she quickly lost students along the way.

However, she was able to keep her students motivated by using a variety of games to review the material they had learned in class. Here, she explains how she has used games in her class:

• Review bingo
• Crossword puzzles
• The "Who am I" game: guess the personality on a piece of paper stuck to your forehead, by asking questions of other students.
• Timeline game: students had to use cards of events they had received to place them correctly on a timeline.
• Jeopardy: based on the American quiz game, with categories and more or less difficult questions depending on the number of points awarded.
• An escape game

Many of these activities cost next to nothing, and were great ways of looking back at the different things we'd learned over the course of the session. The students were all very positive about these playful uses, which created surprise and a desire to persevere with the course. These are initiatives that the young woman would like to see taken up by other colleagues to improve student motivation and knowledge retention.

Running time: 58min43