I have had three different experiences of Playdecide in Sweden. My first encounter was when I was involved with the Swedish National Resource Centre for School Biology and Biotechnology, and together with the National Agency for School Development and the Swedish Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences held an in service training for teachers in five different towns in Sweden. We introduced them to the concept and had them try it and hoped that they would bring it home and use it in their schools. My second experience was as a teacher using it in my class and the third was when we played it on a larger scale in the school I worked in with more than 200 students simultaneously playing.

If I were to summarize these events in one sentence it would be: tricky but very rewarding. With tricky I mean it was a bit cumbersome to get the involved to understand all the rules and instructions. It’s just a matter of the shear amounts of things you have to remember to play. But even when the participants did not understand everything in the beginning of playing the discussions were always very fruitful. The basic outline of the game is so good that it always helps to initiate rewarding discussions.

The strength of Playdecide is the training in structured discussions that it allows for. For many of the students that have been involved it was somewhat of a eureka-moment when they understood that discussions could be structured in a way that gives everybody a chance to develop, and state their opinions. This is a good training in the essence of democracy. That, combined with the learning of content that also is a part of the game, is the strength of it, and make playing it very rewarding in all kinds of settings!

Per Kornhal and Gianfilippo Parenti

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