I grew up in a household that loved to play board games and card games together. My favorite games as a young child were Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Old Maid, and Operation. As I grew older, my family continued to play games together. Our go-to favorites evolved to include Monopoly, the Game of Life, Scrabble, and more, and we used that time to kick-back, laugh, humanize, and, sometimes, blow off steam.  

When I started teaching in K-12 settings, I realized the power of the board game to motivate and engage with students in a playful way. As a high school photography teacher, I once drew an entire photography-themed Monopoly board on the chalkboard in my room. I created a contemporary photography Memory game that was a hit during review periods ahead of key assessments. In both cases, students lit up during the engagement, and I saw the child within come out. 

According to this Educause article engaging students in games can: 

• Draw learners in actively and meaningfully 

• Pique motivation with a sense of competition 
• Help learners feel like they are positively progressing 
• Reinforce that failure is not a setback but an opportunity to learn 
• Help learners practice tactics and strategy 
• Reinforce procedures while also identifying alternative pathways 
• Build confidence and independent thinking 

I find that incorporating games is not only an opportunity to shape content in a new fashion for students but also encourages faculty to sharpen their engagement skills when designing game experiences. 

For these reasons, as well as a deeply rooted love for games, I continue to explore games as an engagement and informal assessment tool in the university setting. Most recently, I adapted a popular guessing game for an Honors Colloquium course. 

Preparing for Fun

I decided to create a guessing game called “Who’s That?” for students using Canvas, Ball State’s learning management software. Unlike photography Monopoly, which I created for my high school students on the chalkboard eons ago, I wanted to create a more sustainable option.  

I created a page in Canvas and started mapping out directions. I used flash cards to make the page dynamic and interactive for students. Flash cards are a design element available to Ball State faculty members in the Beautiful Canvas Pages Made Easy Canvas resource.  I also looked to Canva to bring playful flair to the Canvas page and created additional graphics for my Canvas page. Following are the general directions for the game. 

Step One: Learners select their characters 

Each player chooses a mystery character from a set of face cards. This is the character they are embodying for the round.  

Step Two: Take turns asking questions 

Players take turns asking each other yes or no questions about their opponent’s character. For example, “Does your character have glasses?” or “Does your character have a beard?” Opponents must answer truthfully.  

Step Three: Eliminate characters 

After each question, players turn over the cards that have been eliminated by the answer. For example, if an opponent answers “yes” to “Does your character have glasses?” players turn over all the cards of characters who don’t wear glasses.  

Step Four: Make a guess 

When a player thinks they know who their opponent’s character is, they can make a guess. If the guess is correct, the player wins. If the guess is wrong, it’s the opponent’s turn.  

Here’s how the Canvas page turned out. 

Game On! 

The first time I introduced the “Who’s That?” game to students was at the start of the semester teaching in-person synchronously. I used the game as a fun icebreaker, and an opportunity for students to get to know one another a little more. I asked students for pictures of themselves ahead of time, which I copied and pasted onto flip cards on the Canvas page. 

The morning we were slated to play the game, I reminded students to bring their personal devices to class. Students were already used to bringing their laptops, tablets or smart phones, so no one had an issue pulling up the Canvas page. Just in case, I had my teacher computer and smart phone ready and logged in as well to serve as additional stations for students. 

Just before we began the game, I published the page in my Canvas course. I wanted to keep the page hidden until just before, to raise some suspense. Students were guided to the page and prompted to flip over one of the cards in step one, which would serve as their character during the round. They would then scroll down a bit more on the page to access the cards they would flip as they asked their opponent strategic questions in hopes of eliminating as many characters as possible and then make a guess. 

The Canvas page worked perfectly, and students had a great time playing! The physical classroom was a buzz with engagement and laughter. Along the way, we kept track of the winners. I drew a score card on the wipe board in the room. Round winners continued to play one another until we had two finalists and then a grand prize winner. The prize, in this case, was bragging rights for the rest of the semester. 

Additional Implications 

As I sat there in my Honors Colloquium watching students play “Who’s That?” I quickly started to imagine how the game could be used in a variety of other ways throughout the semester. Midpoint through the term I will replace my students’ photographs with photographs created by famous artists we are studying in the class. At the end of the semester, I plan on replacing the images yet again with works by my actual students, using it as a playful way to reflect and critique one another’s work.  

Why All the Effort? 

So why all of this effort? Well, it’s fun of course! But games also have a powerful impact on student engagement and learning. This Chronicle of Higher Education article reminds us that games allow learners to: 

• Explore content from new points of view (i.e. acting as a famous photographer in the case of my course) 
• Learn through teaching and simulation, particularly in instances where they may be asked to design a game of their own for the course 
• Reinforce teamwork, collegiality, and collaboration 

How might this engagement strategy work for you, in your classroom?  The Teaching Innovation Team has added a copy of this “Who’s That?” page template to Canvas Commons for Ball State University community members. While logged into your Ball State Canvas account, do the following: 

• Click the Commons link in the global Canvas sidebar on the far-left side

• In the search box, type “Who’s That?”

• Click the name of the template (“Who’s That?”)  
• Click Import/Download. 
• Check the box for the Canvas course where you want to import the template. 
• Click Import into Course. 

Note that if you preview the resource in Commons directly, it won’t have all of the design assets from Beautiful Canvas Pages Made Easy Canvas. When you load it into an existing Ball State Canvas course or development shell, those design elements will appear. 

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Let us know how you use this template with your students. And remember to have fun!