I recently took part in an open course called Creativity for Learning in Higher Education, hosted by the CELT team at MMU.  One of the activities is a game designed to help teachers come up with innovative ideas to enhance a teaching and learning situation – it is called The Sell Your Bargains Game. It would be an excellent activity to use to support new or early career teachers.

What I like about it is that it is a game which takes places in virtual and physical spaces, bringing teams of players together to collaborate at different points. The ‘main event’ takes place once you have identified and diagnosed a ‘teaching problem’; your challenge then is to buy (yes, spend real money!) something to help you solve that problem. The aim is to spend as little money as possible, and you only have an hour to shop. You have to record this ‘one hour discovery journey’ using a mobile device, creating a set of digital artefacts which you later use to visualise and reflect on your thought processes. After the hour is up, you come together with the rest of the group and try to sell your bargains.

It’s pound shop pedagogy meets Bargain Hunt meets the Apprentice. And in case you were wondering if there is a serious side to all this, you’ll find some proper theoretical underpinnings embedded in the instructions.

Full details via this link: https://courses.p2pu.org/en/courses/2615/content/5637/

The sell your bargains game (created in 2010) by Chrissi Nerantzi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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