Cindy Wolfer, Rochester Institute of Technology
I live on Park Place.
What does knowing my street name have to do with advising?
Give me some latitude, please. We will get there.
Gamification is the application of game play elements to other activities; for example, sharing that I live on Park Place and connecting it to academic advising. If you have not heard of the board game Monopoly®, the object of the game is to own as much property as possible and to be the wealthiest player. The game board has forty spaces including Go to Jail and Jail. Along the sides of the board are properties—streets and businesses—for sale. And yes, there is a space on the board titled Park Place, which is considered one of the most valuable properties on the board. The game involves rolling the dice to move around the board to buy property, pay bills, and to avoid going to Jail.
In this analogy, the object of the degree-seeking game is to have each student acquire as much knowledge, skill, personal growth, and awareness as possible. These gains become their property, their wealth. Celebrating milestones, like acquiring the equivalent of Park Place in knowledge and growth, is just as important as celebrating degree attainment. For the investment of time and real money, the sooner advisees discover they have more control over the dice roll than most believe, the better. Although there is value in luck and good fortune, keeping control of the toss in the player’s hands is of greater value. Empowering advisees to take control of their game play so they spend more time acquiring wealth and less time stuck in Jail is a powerful influence we can have on their success trajectory. Teaching a Get out of Jail Free Card mindset and a Park Place focus can lead to multiple wins for our advisees.
The Get Out of Jail Free Card Mindset
There are moments that advisees find themselves at a standstill ranging from an imperceptible pause with scant self-reflection to a debilitating halt in their thoughts and actions. Advisors can equate this stop in forward motion to landing on the Go to Jail or Jail spaces on the Monopoly® board. Jail is a place the player can observe others making forward progress, and they stay marginally in play while hoping the roll of the dice will release them from the dreaded space. Typically, nothing other than luck lands a player’s game piece in Jail, and nothing but luck or paying a fine will get it out.
However, in the game and in this growth mindset, advisors can teach a positive reframe of what it means to be in Jail so that it is viewed as a pause for reflection and a time to take stock of one’s progress. One way to reframe and keep moving forward comes from using a Get Out of Jail Free Card. If advisors encourage and teach this self-freeing mindset, advisees can carry with them the knowledge, tools, and confidence to spring themselves from times they feel jailed and help them counteract the inertia in their personal and academic growth. As an approach that places ownership into the hands of the game player, it should not be misconstrued as an entitlement mindset. The role of advisors is to guide students to understand how to free themselves when stuck, seek appropriate resources when needed, and to accept support when their own thoughts and actions are not enough to free them.
How Do We Help Promote This Self-Freeing Response?
Students seek their academic wealth potential through their academic decisions to build skills, just as someone decides what to do to build wealth in Monopoly®. In what ways can advisors provide guideposts so that their advisees build the academic wealth they desire? In the framework of the Monopoly® analogy, advisors should encourage their advisees to recognize what they have at their disposal when experiencing times in which their forward motion is paused. How can advisors support a growth mindset to sustain their movement? Advisors must first guide their advisees to recognize the Jail space as they approach it, what missteps and thinking led to it, and which resources they ignored or did not work for them to avoid the stoppage in their progress. Once in a standstill, advisees may need to be reminded they have access to a self-freeing response if they acknowledge those internal and external guideposts and catalysts.
Using open-ended questions to help establish those path guideposts and strategic thinking patterns may lead advisees to rarely ever land on the Go to Jail or Jail spaces:
How Can Advisors Guide Advisees to Control the Dice Roll?
Advisors can start by focusing on advising strategies to avoid those Go to Jail and Jail spaces. Encouraging advisees to begin the game with a Get out of Jail Free Card mindset may diminish the times they find themselves too long stuck in academic, personal, or professional circumstances for which they have the capacity to move through and beyond. Establishing their educational journey on a foundation of ownership, openness, and a constant curiosity and plan for growth can stabilize their reaction to an unexpected roll of the die.
Rules of Play
Advisors might consider sharing the following rules of play with their advisees to help them connect game play with their educational journey.
Learn the rules and norms: if you decide to join in on a game or you are forced to play, it is wise to familiarize yourself with how to play the game, the rules of engagement, milestones, the goal of the game, and how a winner is defined. Just because you have played similar games in the past does not mean you know the rules and expectations of this game. You likely excelled in former educational settings, but that does not mean you are prepared yet to be autonomous in a new setting or in the pursuit of new knowledge.
Get the lay of the land (board): there are rules of the game which are different from the strategies for navigating successful play. Some rules are up for interpretation; some rules are not. Until you figure out the game board, you cannot expect to have the knowledge, experience, and ability to engage in strategic, efficient, and thoughtful ways. Once you have figured out how to proceed, do not believe you can stop being vigilant with your observations to make necessary adjustments. The game board may appear to be a flat plane, but it is truly multi-dimensional. Advising can provide guidance to help you through the administrative and developmental aspects of earning a degree. Use your critical thinking skills for more than just your classroom learning.
Identify skilled players/role models: knowing the identify of such people is wise for personal safety and growth. If possible, stand on the sidelines before jumping in so you have an unobstructed view of how others are moving along the spaces. To whom do they turn to for support? Where and how long do they stop to ask questions, directions, or clarification? Are the others playing the game considered competitors, companions, or a bit of both? In what ways can you identify support, and in what ways can you be identified as a source of support for your peers? Oh, so you do not believe you will need help, or you have been raised to believe seeking help equates to deficiency? A simple and yet challenging reminder—this is a new game board, with new rules, new definitions of success and growth to learn, and therefore novel resources, strategies, and habits to practice. Before you get lost, learn to identify the skilled players and helpers, and be willing to seek them out. When that “new school, new rules” situation calls for adjustments in your approach, be sure to use what you have learned and observed to make your way more gracefully in the direction of your goals.
Start with and maintain your student-themed game piece: the game board, players, and game itself are full of complexity. The uncertainty you experience should be acknowledged as the fuel that drives your game piece around the board, in and out of tricky pitfalls and successes. You are a student moving along the gameboard in search of knowledge and understanding; have you reviewed the definition of student lately?
How Else Can Advisees Be Empowered?
Another way advisors can support advisees in maintaining a self-freeing mindset is reminding them of our physiology as humans. Humans are wired to pay attention to their environment for any potential threats to their safety and well-being. Any perceived threats to our survival get our attention, whether we realize it or not. In most instances, the triggers in a student’s environment that cause them to anticipate danger have become less about physical survival threats, and more about emotional, financial, and psychological stressors bombarding their sense of well-being. The physiological reaction to being stalked by a predator and to preparing for a comprehensive exam may manifest in similar manners. The body sends out distress signals and a rush of adrenaline, while the brain determines if flight, fight, or freeze is the wisest reaction to the perceived threat.
Moving along the degree-seeking game board, students will encounter numerous stressors and threats. Some will be similar to past threats, some will be ongoing, some will be new. What all these stressors have in common is the response of either flight, fight, or freeze that the person perceiving the stressor will choose. Use messaging and resource referrals that encourage agency to help advisees flip the perceived stressor so that it is viewed as a positive experience. Students can learn to change distress signals into catalysts for growth and learning. Advisors can remind them of the skills they have already developed that got them to this challenging gameboard and instill in them additional academic success strategies beneficial in their new environment. The goal is to teach them to use a stop in play to reframe their approach, to treat the threat as a pressure disruptor so they can more clearly choose a different direction in which to focus their energy.
Empowering advisees with an understanding of how to use fear, vision, and change to maintain momentum if an unfortunate roll of the die occurs helps them to pivot and progress.
Fear: Teach students to acknowledge fear as a natural response to the unknown and use it as a catalyst for growth. Instead of letting fear paralyze progress, recognize it as an indicator of areas to anticipate and address. Break down fears into manageable components, analyze their root causes, and develop strategies to mitigate them. Embrace fear as a signal for expanding comfort zones into opportunities for learning and development.
Vision: Help students to establish a sharp vision of their educational goals and aspirations. Provide support as they define what success looks like in the new educational environment. Teach them to visualize their desired outcomes and the steps required to achieve them. Having a compelling vision provides direction and motivation, helping students to remain focused and resilient amidst challenges. Regular revisiting and refining of one’s vision to ensure alignment with evolving aspirations and circumstances is essential. Be sure to celebrate milestones along the way.
Change: Show students how to embrace change as an integral part of the educational journey so they recognize every new experience brings opportunities for growth and adaptation. Embrace change with an open mindset, viewing it as a chance to expand one’s knowledge, skills, and perspectives. Be initiative-taking in seeking out new experiences, challenges, and opportunities for learning. Cultivate resilience by embracing change as a natural and inevitable aspect of personal and academic development.
How About a Park Place Focus?
Park Place has been heralded as one of the most valuable properties on the Monopoly® board. It is a milestone destination: a property symbolizing wealth, status, and accomplishment. In an advising analogy, it represents everything from retention to graduation, and all the pivotal experiences in between. Clearly, advisors encourage all to aim for the win. However, teaching advisees to establish meaningful milestone destinations, such as Park Place, along the way to sustain their interest and create awareness of their progress is a more rewarding way to play the game. To help advisees navigate educational experiences in the most valuable manner, advisors can encourage advisees to utilize their curiosity and critical thinking skills and their interest in growth and change as essential navigational tools while keeping their sights on their version of Park Place.
So, before advising begins to seem more like work than play, step onto the sidelines to get a renewed view through the Academic Advising—Monopoly® Style lens. Your advisees will become empowered to navigate challenges with confidence, clarity, and resilience, ultimately maximizing their growth and success. Park Place here we come!
