The Worldbuilding Workshop

Teaching Critical Thinking Through World Modeling, Simulations, and Play

A new book authored by Trent Hergenrader and Steve Slota and published by MIT Press coming in late 2023 or early 2024

The Worldbuilding Workshop: Teaching Critical Thinking through World Modeling, Simulation, and Play is for educators across a range of disciplines who are interested in using worldbuilding exercises as a form of collaborative knowledge construction in university or advanced secondary classrooms. This approaches bridges critical thinking with creative production with an emphasis on viewing the world through multiple perspectives. Topics will include: worldbuilding and learning theories such as constructionism, situated cognition, and games and game-based learning; capturing accurate representations of worlds of a specific space, place, and time; the geographies and demographies of worlds; creating ethical character sketches of historical figures and accounting for types of diversity within populations; and interacting with the constructed world in the classroom through simulations and role-play scenarios.

We are currently inviting educators interested in conducting a worldbuilding project during the 2022-2023 academic year. If you're interested in learning more, click here.

In the meantime, you might check out Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers or trenthergenrader.net while you wait.