Episode 91 Ray Kimball 42 Ed Games & Military Background

Ray Kimball 42 Ed Games & Military Background

Episode Summary

In this episode of Experience Points by University XP, host Dave Eng interviews Dr. Ray Kimball, the founder of 42 Educational Games Coaching and Design. Kimball discusses his experience teaching at West Point and how he incorporated games into his curriculum. He also talks about his decision to retire from the army and start 42Ed Games to help higher education faculty integrate games into their teaching. Ray explains how he assesses classroom and institutional contexts to find the best game for a particular faculty member and how he helps faculty members design educational games. Kimball emphasizes the importance of understanding institutional context when selecting games for a faculty member and shares examples of how different institutions may require different types of games. Ray’s approach offers faculty members an easy way to integrate games into their teaching while ensuring that the games are a good fit for their institution.

**Dr. Raymond "Ray" Kimball**

he/him/his
Founder and CEO
42 Educational Games Coaching and Design
ray@42ed.games
(Twitter): https://twitter.com/42edgames
(LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/company/74895861/
(Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/42edgames
(Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/42edgames/
(Website): https://42ed.games

Ray is an education professional with years of experience in game-based learning and collaborative professional development that meets the needs of diverse teams. Ray founded 42 Education Games Coaching and Design in 2020 so he could continue his dream of serving higher education faculty by helping them harness the power of game-based pedagogy.

A 20+ year veteran of the United States Army, Ray taught history for ten years at the U.S. Military Academy* (USMA) at West Point and integrated game-based learning from the very beginning. He used games in every single course he taught to help students better grasp difficult concepts and develop a sense of historical empathy. He advocated for game-based learning and introduced the Reacting to the Past methodology there, where it is now used in the core freshman Western History course. While on faculty, he brought in multiple gaming experts to showcase the varied ways that game-based pedagogy can change students’ lives.

Ray’s expertise stretches beyond the classroom to develop like-minded leaders and educators to become the best professionals they can be. Ray spent fifteen years in the Army as a leader within the CompanyCommand.Army.Mil community of practice, the first online military forum serving junior officers. In that role, he helped develop a wide array of professional development techniques, including video-based vignette discussions and structured explorations of professional reading. At the personal request of West Point’s Dean of the Academic Board,* Ray set up the Office of Faculty Learning, Innovation, Collaboration, and Research, a cross-functional team dedicated to increasing opportunities for faculty development.

Ray has authored numerous educational games which serve different pedagogical styles and approaches. The Mongol Matrix Game, a tabletop simulation of the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus, challenges students to balance diplomatic, economic, military and informational power as one of five factions vying for supremacy. After Catherine: The Russian Imperial Court, 1797 and Cuius Regio: Reformation Politics in a German Principality both require students to assume real historical identities and role-play to convince powerful leaders to adopt their perspectives. Eyeball to Eyeball, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis (co-authored with Dr. Kimberly Redding) blends face-to-face role-playing with a unique online platform to recreate the fateful days of October 1962. His other academic publications include the edited volume Teaching and Learning the West Point Way; “The Blended History Classroom: Keeping the Student Central” in Teaching History (with Victoria Campbell); Transformation Under Fire; A Historical Case Study with Modern Parallels; The Guides to Army Mentoring series; and “Mentoring for a Military Professional Identity” in Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics.

Ray’s educational credentials include a Doctorate of Education in Learning Technologies from Pepperdine University; two Masters of Arts degrees in History and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University; and a Bachelors of Science degree in Russian and German from the United States Military Academy. He is a life member of Phi Kappa Phi and Phi Sigma Iota, and a proud member of the Military Writers Guild, the Reacting to the Past Consortium, and the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. He is an Eagle Scout and continues to volunteer in the Scouting program.

*Neither the U.S. Military Academy nor the U.S Army endorses 42EdGames. Dr. Kimball is no longer a government employee and this former affiliation is listed for informational purposes only.

Dave Eng:

Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host, Dave Eng, from Games-Based Learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com. On today's episode, we'll learn from Dr. Ray Kimball from 42Ed Games. Ray's an educator with over two decades of experience in games-based learning and collaborative professional development. As a former US Army history teacher at West Point, Ray integrated games-based learning into every course he taught. He founded 42 Educational Games Coaching and Design, 42Ed Games for short, in 2020 to serve higher education faculty and help them harness the power of games-based pedagogy. With a doctorate in education in learning technologies from Pepperdine University and multiple publications, Ray's a dedicated educator, committed to promoting innovation and development in the field. Ray, welcome to the show.

Ray Kimball:

Dave, thanks so much for having me. Super excited to talk to you today.

Dave Eng:

Great, Ray, thanks for being here. We appreciate it. I want to jump into the first question here, which I think is a very unique background, particularly in the games-based learning community. I'd like to talk a little bit more about your West Point history. Specifically, how did your experience teaching at West Point shape your views on games-based learning and how has this influenced your work with 42Ed Games?

Ray Kimball:

Dave, thanks. I love talking about my time at West Point because it is such an amazing institution and especially such a great place to teach. I was very fortunate that the entire time I was at West Point, I cycled through several different jobs, but the entire time I was able to teach in the Department of History there. And the history department has a long-running track record of being a place that really embraces innovation in teaching and really encourages their faculty at all levels to try new and different and innovative things and not be afraid of things failing and not be afraid of things not going exactly the way that they wanted. And that was reinforced to me from day one when I came there as a new faculty member. And it's really critical in that institution because there is such a large core curriculum there, something like 30 courses out of 40 that the average cadet takes are core curriculum.

And so that means that the cadet doesn't necessarily have a choice in what they're teaching there. So what does that translate to in a history classroom? Well, it means that of the 64 students that I was typically teaching in a semester, anywhere from 32 up to two thirds, 48, might not necessarily want to be there or might not necessarily really have the highest opinion of history. So it was really important that I approached that classroom in a way to make it as open and welcoming as possible and really get people engaged and moving. And so as I was thinking through how I wanted to do that and how I wanted to make my classroom a really active hub of experiential learning, one of our first lessons was on Greek philosophers and talking about Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and the stoics and some other different approaches and different viewpoints in Greece, in Ancient Greece.

And I hit upon this idea of doing it as a role-playing exercise where each I had my son at the time was four years old and was just going into school into pre-K at that point. And so my pitch to the class was, your job is to teach my son, and specifically I want you to make the pitch to me of how you're going to teach my son to be a good man and a good citizen based on your assigned area of Greek philosophy. So one group were Aristotelians and one group were Socratics and one group were Platonics and so on. And I thought it would be a fun little exercise for 10 or 15 minutes. It took over my entire class period. They were totally into it. They were engaged, they questioned each other and gave me great feedback and gave me great thoughts and wanted to keep rolling and rolling and rolling.

So at that point I said, "Oh, okay, I'm onto something here," right? This whole games-based learning thing, there's something to this and this is really powerful and really vital. And so from that point forward, I made it a point. I couldn't incorporate a game in every lesson. Not every lesson would lend it, but I made sure that we typically divided a course into three blocks, so typically a third of each semester had a different focus area, and I made sure that I had at least one classroom game in every block that I taught. And again, I saw the feedback from students. The classroom games were routinely the highest rated part of the course that I was teaching. Students really enjoyed it, and it wasn't just because it was, oh, this is fun and we can goof off and we can have a good time. I saw the impact on their learning as well.

And I even got to experiment with using a game for a final exam at one point, and I saw some of the best results that I'd ever seen on a final exam when I got to run it that way. So all of that really just combined to reinforce to me how incredibly powerful game-based learning is and how useful it is not only for teaching history, but across teaching multiple disciplines. And I was an advocate for game-based learning while I was at West Point, talked about it with the rest of the history department and talked about it with other departments, and knew that it was something that I wanted to continue doing once I retired from the Army in 2021.

Dave Eng:

I see. Wow. Great. That's an incredibly interesting story. I did not know that about you basically challenging your history students to teach your son, because when I think about it, particularly with games, we put a lot of the onus and the agency on the players and the learners, and that's essentially what you did with your students there the first time saying, "Hey, listen, my son's four years old. You are considered the experts right now on Greek history. How do you teach a four-year-old, who really doesn't have any concept of history to begin with, specifically Greek history?" And I really love that approach and putting that agency and really that call and that discipline on your students themselves.

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, and I can't emphasize enough, these were not upper-level experienced students. This was a freshman world history survey course. These were first-year students who had just come out of their summer training and were still trying to figure out what their new identity was. And so the fact that they just wholeheartedly embraced that and really woke up in a way that I hadn't seen in the previous lessons in that class was just really awe-inspiring for me.

Dave Eng:

Just as an aside, I know that at the Naval Academy they have Plebe Summer. Is there a West Point equivalent to that?

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, there is. It's called Cadet Basic Training, and it's the first summer, so it typically starts right at the end of June or beginning of July. And really, it's six weeks of basic training that's designed, one, to acclimate new cadets as they're called at the time, acclimate them to military service and give them a sense of what it means to be a soldier. But also, we do all of our pre pre-semester assessment, so they take exams about are they going to test into an advanced history course and an advanced math course, and are they going to test into a particular language? So it's this really neat hybrid of the basic training stuff that you see in the movies of, yes, they do an obstacle course, and yes, they learn how to shoot guns, and yes, they do all of the military stuff that you would expect to see, but they're also getting themselves ready to be scholars during the academic year. And so it's just this really fascinating blend that you get to watch cadet identity evolve over the course of that summer until they roll into your classroom in the fall.

Dave Eng:

Great. Thank you, Ray. I appreciate it. I know that you set up the example in that past question about how you first got introduced into games-based learning, but now I want to talk more about 42 Education Games. So what inspired you to start 42Ed Games, and how do you see your work impacting higher education faculty and students?

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, so as I said, I made the decision that I was going to retire from the Army in 2021 after 26 years in uniform. I had a great time in service, got to do a lot of different jobs, but you reach a point where you say to yourself, okay, it's time to move on. And so when I thought about what do I want to do next? What does the next phase of my life look like? There were a bunch of different options. I had previously been a strategist. I could have gone and done a government service job as a strategist in a command somewhere. I could have gone and taught either there at the academy as a civilian professor or elsewhere at a civilian institution of higher learning. And I really had to sit down and say to myself, what do I enjoy the most? What really gets me going? What makes me happy when I get up in the morning?

And what I finally figured out after taking some time and thinking through, it and frankly having some really great scaffolded reflection opportunities that are built into the military transition process, what I really ultimately settled on was that the two things that made me happiest were games-based learning, as I mentioned before, and getting to see students do that, but then also working with faculty in general to help them realize their dreams. So my last couple years at West Point, I served as what's called the Chief of Faculty Development, which basically meant that I oversaw all the various faculty development opportunities that we offered for our military and civilian faculty. And I really enjoyed helping faculty in that way and seeing them get engaged.

And so it dawned on me that, hey, maybe there's room to combine the two here. Maybe there's a way to help faculty use game-based learning. Because one of the things that I saw routinely when I would try to help out faculty is they would be like, "Hey, this looks fascinating, but boy, I don't feel like I have the time to integrate that." And so 42 Educational Games Coaching and Design was born out of that. And really, the key idea there is that what I can do is I can connect with higher ed faculty, assess not only their classroom context, but their institutional context to get a sense of what kinds of games might be best for them, go find that existing game, and then bring it back to them and shape it in a way that they can take it and immediately put it to work in their classroom without any further headache and without any further problems.

And then I can do all of that for basically the cost of what they would pay to attend a professional development conference, so that service can stay within the budget that most departments allocate in terms of faculty development. So that's the primary way that the work impacts higher education faculty. The other piece that I do, the and design piece, is that I do a lot of work as what's called a development editor with faculty who are working on educational games of their own, but maybe just need some help getting that game to its next stage. So maybe they just need help with a particular house style and formatting their game for a particular house style for publication, or maybe they need some assistance with research or maybe they need just a fresh set of eyes to think about game design or game mechanics for their game, whatever the case may be.

I've genuinely enjoyed that development editor work as well, and really helping faculty build new games that they can then continue to drive on with and that they can really see succeed in their own context, and eventually even advance to the point where they can get it published.

Dave Eng:

Well, that's incredibly interesting, Ray, because I feel that, it's particularly with games-based learning and when I've talked to faculty members, you've done in the past, the big onus and the big challenge seems to be, "Where do I start? I teach this class. I teach X, Y, and Z. Do I create a game? Do I just take a game and adapt it?" And there's so many questions that begin in a faculty member's mind where it can feel overwhelming. And I feel like you bring a lot of value basically to that challenge by saying, "Listen, you tell me exactly what your learning outcomes are, what your learning objectives are, what the objectives of the curriculum is. I will find the game, I will help you adapt the game, and I will help you use this game as another resource for teaching your students." That's incredible.

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, Dave, that's exactly right. And that's exactly the vision. And one thing that I'll add on that in addition to learning about their own learning outcomes, the other piece that I really have to take into account is their institutional context. It doesn't do a faculty member any good if I recommend a game to them that is just not a good fit for their institution. And just to give some examples of what I mean by that, there are some institutions that are fine with the idea of let's say a tabletop game and love the idea of, hey, yeah, let's bring a board game into the class, no problem. But a role-playing game maybe is not a good fit for that institution because they're risk-averse and they're worried about showing up on TikTok or YouTube. And there are some institutions out there that are fine with the idea of role playing games, but maybe can't really support a digital game-based learning approach because they don't have the infrastructure and there's no common platform for their students to use.

So in my work, just as important as understanding that classroom context for the instructor, those learning outcomes you mentioned, the student population, just as important is really understanding the institutional context so that when I deliver a game to that faculty member, they can be confident not only in using the game in their own space, but in sharing it more broadly in their institution and saying, "Hey, look at this cool thing that I'm doing. Anybody else want to jump in on it?"

Dave Eng:

Exactly. I'm so glad that you brought that up because I know that another example, I guess, of a restriction in terms of institution is I believe some institutions are also averse to anything that could be considered or interpreted as gambling. So if there's any sort of randomization, usually through dice, but there's lots of other ways you can randomize things in games like with cards and other things. And I think that making sure that you're really tailoring your approach, your adaptation for the game, for not only the faculty, not only the learning outcomes, but also the specific philosophy of that institution is also key, so I'm glad you brought that up.

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, again, it's all about you've got to understand the institution and the faculty needs and find something that works well for both.

Dave Eng:

Right. Now, Ray, I looked at your resume and it is quite storied, but there's one game in particular that stood out, and I was hoping you could share a little bit more about it. I'm talking about the Mongol Matrix Game. So can you share more about your Mongol Matrix Game? I know that you created it as a tabletop simulation, the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly.

Ray Kimball:

Yep.

Dave Eng:

Can you provide a specific background on the learning outcomes of that game and its overall structure and your takeaways from using it in the classroom?

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, absolutely. So a very brief background, because as much as I would love to believe that all of your audience are ancient Russian historians and know what Kievan Rus is, let me just explain that real quick. Kievan Rus is really the proto Russian state, right? It's the original Russian state, if you will, that is centered around the city of Kiev and grows in power over the course of several centuries until it is ultimately destroyed by the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. And so, in the course that I was teaching, the Russian history survey course, we deal with Kievan Rus in our first couple of lessons, and then we have a brief lesson on the Mongol invasion. And as I mentioned, one of the things that I tried to do with game-based learning was I tried to make sure that I had a game for every block that could feel fun and engaging.

And in my Russian history course, I had a game for the middle block that was a simulation of the Russian Imperial Court. And then I had a game for my last block, which was a Cuban Missile Crisis simulation. But I didn't really have anything that I liked. I tried a couple of things and they just didn't really work out. I didn't have anything that I liked for that first block. And I was very fortunate about that time that I did a two-year course at the US Army War College, which has an amazing war gaming cell there. Just really, really incredible folks there. And they introduced me to this idea of a matrix game. And really, the idea of a matrix game is it's that individuals play particular roles in a given scenario. They lay out what they want to do in a particular scenario during a particular turn, and they explain why they think it will work.

And then you go around the table to the other players and they either agree with that player and say, "Yes, I agree that would work because..." Or they can disagree and say, "No, I don't think that would work because of Y." And once the game master takes into account everybody's sense of things, they say, "Okay. So for something that's probably easily going to happen, that everybody agrees is likely, hey, with two dice, you need to roll a three or better in order to make that happen." But something that's harder, you might have to say, "Hey, you have to roll a 10 or better in order to get that." So matrix games have been used for complex simulations. The one that we were doing in work college was specifically talking about a defense of the Baltics, which, again, this was five years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It looks amazingly prescient now.

And so as I was seeing this matrix game, I said, "Hey, I think there's something there that I can translate into my course," and so the Matrix game that I built has five different factions that players are part of. They can be the Mongols, they can be the Orthodox Church. And again, this is the Eastern Orthodox Church at the time. The Russian Orthodox Church does not yet exist as a separate entity because Constantinople still exists as part of the Byzantine Empire. And then there are folks representing the princes of the city of Kiev, the city of Novgorod, and the city of Moscow. And what the Mongol Matrix Game does is it pits these players against each other. Now, you would think, hey, this would be very simple. All the cities just have to come together and band against the Mongols, and they'll be fine.

Well, there's a prisoner's dilemma element that comes in there, which is, well, what if we band together, but one city drops out and cuts a separate deal, and am I going to get sacrifices because of that? So there's a fascinating interplay that goes on in the game where students are having to think about what are the actual tools of national power, diplomatic, informational, military, economic, that I can bring to bear? I ran it four times a total of four times over four years, and what I found with cadets was that it really helped them envision the very complex social and economic and political environment that existed at the time, and ultimately why the Mongols were so successful in their invasion.

And one extra thing that I'll say about the Mongol Matrix Game is I have the materials. I'm happy to make the materials available to anyone. It's a little bit stalled out right now in that it relies on a map and some primary sources from a textbook that is no longer in print, so I will put an exclusive offer out there to listeners of your podcast, Dave. If there is somebody out there, either a Mongol or a Russian historian, who is interested in taking over this game and bringing a new map into it and bringing some primary sources in to support it, I am happy to turn all the materials over to you and have you run with it, because that was really the core idea of this from the start was for this to be a great, easy, one-off classroom game that folks can use.

Dave Eng:

Wow. Thank you, Ray, for sharing. That's incredibly generous of you. And to be honest, prior to you talking about this, I had never heard of what a "matrix game" was. But the one thing I think is particularly fascinating is the premise, where students would propose a course of action, but others can determine whether or not that course of action is valid and if it would work, and then the probability of whether it would work. And it reminds me with a lot of tabletop role playing games where essentially at this point, everyone's like the referee, the dungeon master for everyone else, and trying to determine, yes, that would work. Is it possible? Yes. Is it feasible? Probably not, so you're probably going to have to roll a very high number in order for that to work.

And I just think that is such an accessible choice structure and the way that you've formed it so that students actually need to think critically about, okay, well, this player wants to do this. Would that actually have worked during that time? And if it would work, why would it work? And if not, I have to make the case why it wouldn't. That's brilliant. Thank you, Ray for sharing.

Ray Kimball:

Yeah. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, and that was one of the things that really attracted me to the matrix game style is one of the core things that we try to do throughout the history program, but especially in the first year history courses, is get cadets accustomed to the idea of making a historical argument. And how do you do that? Well, you put forth a thesis and then you put forth evidence to defend that thesis. Well, that's exactly what you do in a matrix game. I'm going to do this move and it will work because X. So it not only is it just fun and engaging, but it's also a great way to teach historical method.

Dave Eng:

Wow. Thank you, Ray, again. I appreciate it. So Ray, thanks for joining us today. This has been incredibly fascinating and enlightening. Where can people go to find out more about you?

Ray Kimball:

Yeah, so the easiest place to find out more about me is my website. So it is 42ed, so the number four and two, ed.games. Not .com, not .org, .games. That is not a typo, I promise you. You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, all as @42EdGames. And if you're an email kind of person, and trust me, I get it. While you might be an email kind of person and not a social media kind of person, you can always email me at ray, R-A-Y, @42ed.games.

Dave Eng:

Great. Thank you, Ray. And also, for all of our listeners, those links and Ray's email address will also be included in the show notes, so make sure you check it out there. So I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more than a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification You can also get a full transcript of this episode, including links to references, in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining us.

Again, I'm your host, Dave Eng, from Games-Based Learning by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. If you like this episode, please consider commenting, sharing, and subscribing. Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you. I'd also love you if you took some time to rate the show. I love to lift others with learning, so if you find this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit. Also, make sure to visit University XP online at universityxp.com. University XP is also on Twitter, @university_xp, and on Facebook and LinkedIn as University XP. Also, feel free to email me anytime. My email address is dave@universityxp.com. Game On!

Cite this Episode

Eng, D. (Host). (2023, August 6). Ray Kimball 42 Ed Games & Military Background. (No. 91) [Video]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/video/91

Internal Ref: UXPUHV301NS9

References

Chen, C. C., & Tu, H. Y. (2021). The effect of digital game-based learning on learning motivation and performance under social cognitive theory and entrepreneurial thinking. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 750711. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.750711/fullg.2021.750711/full

Curry, J., Engle, C., & Perla, P. P. (2018). The Matrix Games Handbook. Professional applications from education to analysis and wargaming.[Bristol]: The History of Wargaming Project. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339390566_The_Matrix_Game_Handbook_Professional_Applications_from_Education_to_Analysis_and_Wargaming

Center for Teaching Innovation. (n.d.). Setting Learning Outcomes. Retrieved from https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/designing-your-course/setting-learning-outcomes

42EdGames. (n.d.). Mongol Matrix Game. Retrieved from https://42ed.games/mongol-matrix-game/

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Eng, D. (2020, April 09). What is a learning game? Retrieved May 11, 2023, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/4/9/what-is-a-learning-game

Eng, D. (2020, August 20). What is Player Agency? Retrieved May 11, 2023, from http://www.universityxp.com/blog/2020/8/20/what-is-player-agency

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games-based learning, ray kimball, matrix gamesDave EngAugust 6, 2023ray kimball, 42ed games, games-based learning, matrix game, table-top game, higher education, west pointComment