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November 13, 2026

Calculus Legacy

What if learning calculus felt like embarking on an adventure? Calculus Legacy is a cooperative, narrative-driven board game that transforms undergraduate calculus into an immersive, collaborative, and problem-based learning experience. Rooted in Game-Based Learning and Maastricht University's Problem-Based Learning (PBL) philosophy, it challenges students to solve mathematical problems, make meaningful decisions, and shape their own evolving story. Calculus Legacy is designed for first-year undergraduate students taking an introductory calculus course, particularly in STEM and engineering programs. It is intended for use in face-to-face, small-group teaching settings, such as tutorials or supervised work sessions, with groups of 4–7 students. The game complements traditional lectures by replacing conventional tutorial exercises and activities with a structured, game-based learning experience. It consists of seven interconnected sessions of approximately 90 minutes each, covering functions, limits, derivatives, applications of derivatives, integrals, applications of integrals, and differential equations. Students progressively develop their mathematical understanding, problem-solving abilities, and communication skills. Three core game mechanisms bring the experience to life: a role system, an event-deck system, and an evolving narrative. Through legacy mechanics, decisions and achievements in earlier sessions influence subsequent sessions, making every group's journey unique. The seven sessions are designed to be played sequentially as one continuous campaign, allowing students to build their mathematical knowledge, collaborate with peers, and create their own legacy. This resource is primarily intended for teachers and course coordinators and provides the complete set of game materials and instructional resources needed to implement Calculus Legacy in their own calculus courses. Calculus Legacy was developed with financial support from the NKO Comenius Teaching Fellow programme and the Maastricht University Library Npuls Open Up Grant. Wat als het leren van calculus zou aanvoelen als het beginnen aan een avontuur? Calculus Legacy is een coöperatief, narratief bordspel dat calculus op universitair bachelorniveau transformeert tot een meeslepende, samenwerkingsgerichte en probleemgestuurde leerervaring. Vanuit de principes van Game-Based Learning en de Problem-Based Learning (PBL)-filosofie van Maastricht University worden studenten uitgedaagd om wiskundige problemen op te lossen, betekenisvolle beslissingen te nemen en hun eigen, zich voortdurend ontwikkelende verhaal vorm te geven. Calculus Legacy is ontwikkeld voor eerstejaars bachelorstudenten die een inleidend calculusvak volgen, met name binnen STEM- en ingenieursopleidingen. Het spel is bedoeld voor gebruik tijdens contactonderwijs in kleine groepen, bijvoorbeeld in tutorgroepen of begeleide werksessies, met groepen van 4 tot 7 studenten. Het spel vormt een aanvulling op traditionele hoorcolleges en vervangt de gebruikelijke oefeningen en activiteiten tijdens werkcolleges door een gestructureerde, spelgebaseerde leerervaring. Het bestaat uit zeven onderling verbonden sessies van elk ongeveer 90 minuten. De onderwerpen die aan bod komen zijn functies, limieten, afgeleiden, toepassingen van afgeleiden, integralen, toepassingen van integralen en differentiaalvergelijkingen. Gedurende het spel ontwikkelen studenten stapsgewijs hun wiskundig inzicht, probleemoplossend vermogen en communicatieve vaardigheden. Drie centrale spelmechanismen brengen deze leerervaring tot leven: een rollensysteem, een systeem met gebeurteniskaarten en een zich ontwikkelend verhaal. Dankzij de legacy-mechanismen hebben beslissingen en behaalde resultaten in eerdere sessies invloed op de daaropvolgende sessies. Hierdoor wordt de reis van iedere groep uniek. De zeven sessies zijn ontworpen om achtereenvolgens te worden gespeeld als één doorlopend spelavontuur. Zo kunnen studenten hun wiskundige kennis verder opbouwen, samenwerken met medestudenten en hun eigen nalatenschap creëren. Dit leermateriaal is in de eerste plaats bedoeld voor docenten en vakcoördinatoren en bevat alle spelmaterialen en didactische hulpmiddelen die nodig zijn om Calculus Legacy binnen hun eigen calculusonderwijs te implementeren. Calculus Legacy is ontwikkeld met financiële ondersteuning van het NKO Comenius Teaching Fellow-programma en de Npuls Open Up Grant van de Universiteitsbibliotheek Maastricht.

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Martijn Boussé, Katharina Schneider

November 26, 2020

The Ethics Game

The idea of this game is that, in a relatively short time, you will discuss a range of ethical problem cases, and review different types of ethical argument: consequence-based, duty/rights-based and character-based. Students play this game in groups of approximately 4 around the ‘board’ below.

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Marcel Verweij, Roel Veraart

August 19, 2026

Game Development with Students

The project Game Development with Students introduces interested educators to an innovative teaching tool with practical insights from the international relations classroom. Game development with students is a specialized form of game-based and project-based learning. It incentivizes both student creativity and in-class student-teacher co-creation and enables a particularly participative and result-oriented approach to the subject matter. The method is thematically flexible enough to travel across different fields of study and is adaptable to different levels of complexity. To enable other educators to implement this innovative teaching tool, we develop instructional materials (an educators handbook as well as educational videos), providing both general information on the experiential, game-based learning theory undergirding the method as well as practical, hands-on tips and trick on how to implement it in different educational settings. In doing so, we address the important, interconnected educational challenges of the transferability and sustainability of teacher developed tools.

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Saskia Ruth-Lovell, Bertjan Verbeek, Jorn Weessies

September 25, 2021

Act to Adapt

A giant board game during which the 'community team' has to prioritise vulnerable community resources and take collective or individual actions to protect them from the 'hazard team'. Made by PLAN International, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, the Engagement Lab at Emerson College, the Philippines Red Cross, and PLAN Philippines.

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Red Cross Red Crescent Societies

June 17, 2026

AgriLemma 2.0: A serious game for exploring dilemmas in agriculture

In AgriLemma, you are a farmer in Europe managing your own farm across 8 seasons. You grow six types of crops — potatoes, sugar beets, rapeseed, corn, wheat, and chickpeas — each requiring resources such as seeds, water, nutrients, and workers. Players must run, invest in, and improve their farm with sustainable technologies while balancing competing priorities and navigating uncertainties like weather events and pest attacks. The objective is to maximize overall farm health, which is determined by three dimensions: environmental health (positive ecological impact), social health (worker satisfaction), and financial health (farm profitability). Players must strategize across all three dimensions simultaneously — decisions that boost profit may come at an environmental cost, and vice versa. The game makes these trade-offs tangible, encouraging reflection on what sustainable farming really requires. ------------------------------ Learning objectives: · Experiment with different strategies — to operationalize and adapt an approach under pressure, and to reflect on how well it held up. · Expose students to issues of risk management — to plan, control, and explain the reasoning behind in-game choices relating to sustainability, soil conservation practices, integrated crop management, weeding, and pest management, and to learn how to respond when conditions change. · Experience the complexity of decision-making — to take into account weather and policy uncertainties, sustainability pressures, economic realities, and the broader context in which farm decisions are made. --------------------------------Practical information: · Format: Board game (physical/ print-and-play) · Players: 2-4 players (extendable to 8 by playing in teams of 2) · Duration: 3 hours, including onboarding and debrief · Level: Higher education / Stakeholder engagement · Language: English --------------------------------Credits: AgriLemma was originally designed as part of the WATERAGRI project. The second version, including a full redesign of the graphics, was developed with funding support from the TU Delft Open Science Programme course "Civic Engagement in Action: Empowering Researchers and Educators to Make an Impact". Game design: Dr. ir. Aashna Mittal - TU Delft, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management Graphic design and illustration: Gracia Bovenberg-Murris and Michelle de Smit – TU Delft GameLab Note on image generation: The images in the tech cards and the border of the main game board were created using AI-generated imagery. The constructed wetlands card image is also AI-generated. All other cards and box art are hand-drawn or created in Adobe Illustrator. Note on usability: The print-and-play version of the game has been optimized for office printing.

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Aashna Mittal, Gracia Bovenberg-Murris, Michelle de Smit

March 12, 2024

Infovaders: A game for teaching information literacy skills in the age of AI and information overload

Earth as you know it is no more. You inhabit a new planet and are tasked with designing its information landscape. What values do you deem important? And can you make wise choices in an age of information overflow and artificial intelligence, when truth gets more and more confused with fiction? What will academia look like and will access still be open? The rise of the applications of AI, Open Science and an increase in the amount of information we receive and how we receive it ask powerful critical thinking skills of today's students. This educational board game, challenges players to critically think about what an ideal information landscape would look like. In this session, we will discuss how this game can be implemented in teaching. If you survive... The information landscape is continuously changing. Infovaders is a dilemma game to make University Students aware of how certain changes in this information landscape (how information is found, searched, evaluated and published) impact society and academic research.

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Anja Bastenhof, Ruud Dielen, Marie-Louise Goudeau, Ingrid van der Heijde

April 5, 2021

The Rest Is History | 40. History as Entertainment

From re-enactment to reinforcing capitalism through the board game Monopoly. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland examine the history of games and the portrayal of history in games.

Audio

Tom Holland, Dominic Sandbrook

July 16, 2021

How bilingual children’s languages influence each other [Season 1, Episode 10]

“You’re wobbling the whole time the table! This is what my bilingual son said to his sister when they were playing a board game sat together at a small table and big sister was apparently also playing with the table leg. His message was clear. Big sister stopped and the game continued. What struck me most about this conversation was the way in which my son had chosen to phrase his message: his sentence was perfectly ok English, and his sister clearly understoond him, but I am certain that his English-speaking cousins in England would have said it differently. They would have switched the words around and said “You’re wobbling the table the whole time” instead. This is a wonderful example of what we call cross-linguistic influence. The way in which my son put together his sentence was clearly influenced by the fact that he speaks Dutch as well as English, because in Dutch, “de hele tijd” (the Dutch for “the whole time”) comes before “de tafel” (the Dutch for “the table”) and not after it. Bilingual children sometimes sound different to children who only speak one language. They sometimes say things in a slightly different way, and this is often related to how their other language works. Why do bilingual children do this? What does this tell us about their language development? Why do some bilingual children do it more often than others? Is cross-linguistic influence something to worry about or is it part and parcel of being bilingual? These are all questions that we answer in this episode of Kletsheads, the last episode of season 1, together with fellow researcher Chantal van Dijk. We learn that cross-linguistic influence is part and parcel of being bilingual. This is because the two languages of a multilingual are connected to each other. Some researchers even claim that certain grammatical rules are shared between languages, for example if they are the same in the two languages. We also hear that language dominance can have an effect on when one language influences the other: if bilingual children are much stronger in one of their languages, their stronger language usually influences the weaker language, although cross-linguistic influence in the other direction – that is, from the weaker language to the stronger language – is still possible. In Let’s Klets (starts at 14:30) we talk to Martha, a mum here in the Netherlands who grew up herself as a bilingual child. She talks about deciding which of her two languages (English and Dutch) she should speak to her son, and about the challenges her family faced during the lockdown and once her son went back to school. And we hear from trilingual 12-year-old Nicole (starts at 37:08). She’s growing with with Dutch, English and Italian. She tells us about why she thinks it’s important for her to speak Italian (to speak to her grandparents) and how some words can be a bit confusing because they sound the same but mean something different. Chantal van Dijk is a postdoctoral researcher at the Radboud University in Nijmegen where she is conducting research within the 2in1 project on the language development of bilingual children and in particular cross-linguistic influence. In September 2021 she will defend her thesis with four different studies on this topic. In the podcast, she talked about a large study that we carried out together, a “meta-analysis” where we pooled together data from over 700 bilingual children, 700 monolingual children, and 17 unique language combinations, to find out which factors predict whenand how much cross-linguistic influence takes place. The article is published in the Journal of Child Language and you can access it here. As I said in the podcast, it’s written for an academic audience so it does contain quite a lot of jargon.

Audio

Sharon Unsworth