Toben Racicot, English PhD student and GI Podcast co-host, has been awarded the TA Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Department of English Language and Literature. "Toben's work in English 109 and English 294 was exemplary. Student assessment and feedback was excellent, especially in the areas of TA engagement and communication," notes the Adjudicator.
"From the deeply-developed teaching portfolio submitted, it was also clear that Toben engaged in a series of truly innovative teaching techniques from role-playing assignments to deeply reflective assessments. Toben also engaged with a series of professional development activities, and extended teaching outside of the classroom to represent the department glowingly in interviews, lectures, and talks."
A few of those innovative teaching techniques involved engaging the students in Dungeons and Dragons one-shots, for which Toben invited Games Institute members into his classroom to be game masters. Toben's innovative approaches to teaching are powerful examples of how games can be used for educational purposes, even when the games were not designed for that purpose, thus extending the possibilites even further for experiential teaching.