The Battle of Mons Graupius

The Kansas State University Game Lab presents a small-scale  Battle of Mons Graupius demonstrating use of wargaming as a learning tool for future educators.  

The Kansas State University Game Lab

 I had the good fortune of having a gentleman simply lurk off to the side of my Friday Gnome Wars game at Historicon this past July.  Despite repeated offerings to grab him a unit, he simply enjoyed watching the chaos.  

That gentleman was  Brad Burenheide, Associate Professor at Kansas State University and the co-creator of the  K-State Game Lab.   The Game Lab is a creation out of the College of Education, a research and play organization that allows students, faculty, staff and members of the community to play a variety of games to look at their potential impact in learning and education.  A variety of card, board, role-playing, and miniature games are played with the purpose using them in ways to augment teaching, and learning in general.

It also helps that they can have a blast in doing so... which really is the underlying reason for the project in general.  

The actual website for the Game Lab can be found here.

Leveraging Commercial Games in Military Education

Part of me wanted to write this whole opening paragraph about how the first sign of a society returning back to normal from some disaster is how the arts and general intelligentsia return, but that's a lie.  Since day one, numerous groups and organizations have actively provided concerts, virtual museum tours, and other events online for the betterment of the community, as well as self-preservation.

That all being said, I had my heart grow three sizes when someone posted about Georgetown University Wargaming Society  (GUWS) sponsoring an online lecture via Zoom.

Leveraging Commercial Games in Military Education was a two-hour lecture conducted by Mr James Sterrett, Chief of the Simulation Education Division in the Directorate of Simulation Education of U.S. Army University/Command & General Staff College.

First off, outside of the tedium of getting things set-up, it was a first Zoom meeting and as an audience member, it went perfectly.  Outside of the seamless mobile application, this is all technology I've seen and occasionally used for at least the last 15+ years.  Guess the push to online participation is like the first Model T to make it to Dogpatch.  Hopefully future uses will continue to work as smoothly as this one.

The one issue I've learned to expect/appreciate from the HMGS War College is that experts are not always great speakers and some of our hobby historians are short on material, but great on presentation.  I was absolutely delighted that neither situation came up here.  Mr Sterrett is accustomed to lecturing to, and working with mid-level Commissioned Officers from the United States Army, its sister branches, as well as international officers, so he could easily keep the attention of a mixed audience of military and civilians while going over the plethora of information provided.

I don't plan on teaching military history, strategy, and tactics in a military setting, commissioned or enlisted, but as I assist with the HMGS Teacher's Program, this was an abundance of tips and tricks, pitfalls to avoid, and engaging anecdotes of using various games, analog and computer, over the years.

Apparently GUWS does this weekly, and the topics are pretty awesome.  I heartily recommend checking out future events.

EDIT: The lecture has been posted to Youtube!