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Re-vision, Re-tool, Re-spawn
Gameful Design for Whole-Person, 
Transformational Learning
Chris Rosser, Oklahoma Christian University
Grant Testut, Oklahoma Christian University

ABSTR ACT Gameful design challenges instructors to rethink 
course design for today’s tech-saturated, pandemic-sequestered 
situation now that virtual is a crucial mode. We share two recent 
examples of gamification—curricular and co-curricular—demon-
strating how gameful design yields whole-person, transformational 
learning. First, we describe our co-taught Bible and Classical Litera-
ture course, where hero-students journey into the dark, accomplish 
heroic tasks, earn badges, and engage desire-driven, side-quest 
learning. Second, we describe “Human Salvo: An Experiment with 
the Antidote to Zombification,” a virtual, COVID-inspired alternative 
to weekly in-person chapel offerings. Chapel-as-game responded 
to our shared experience of Fall 2020, fraught with four anxieties: 
pandemic/contagion, political tribes, economy, and racial (in)justice 
(the primary anxieties that characterize zombie genre as well). 
Examples offer assessable evidence of learning toward specified 
outcomes. Our aim is to spark creativity among librarians-as-teach-
ers for re-visioning, re-tooling, and (perhaps) re-spawning as game-
oriented instructors.  

INTRODUCTION

We begin with today’s point: Gamified design is not mere child’s play, 
but it is a return to the spirit of play that was present in the first seeds 
of liberal arts education. Gamification is an invitation to rethink 
instruction, especially in today’s tech-saturated, pandemic-seques-
tered situation now that virtual is a crucial mode. Indeed, this article 
itself is a game—you are the hero of this brief journey together—and 
we invite readers to play along. (For a richer experience, please find 
our “Library Hero Personalities and Problem Solving” game online 
at http://bit.ly/libraryhero.)

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://bit.ly/libraryhero&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1622040115276000&usg=AOvVaw3J-wKJchG6CBFSJwlmu9fl


334  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

Also, note that segments of this paper are also available online 
as video recordings, and readers will likely find it more instructive 
and engaging to watch these videos; those interested will find links 
in the headings below.  Between each segment, readers are asked 
to consider questions that will ultimately reveal your library-hero 
avatar. At journey’s end, revealed avatars will help facilitate a final 
heroic challenge. 

OK, ready to play? Here’s the first question: Someone just insisted 
that the library should “gamify” all library instruction. How might 
you respond? (Note that following the link above reveals options 
that characterize responses to this situation. Use the link to play, or 
simply imagine your own likely response.)

Gamification is the application of game-design principles to non-
game contexts; gameful design incorporates basic game architecture, 
story, and aesthetic as central to course design, infusing education 
with curiosity, imagination, and play. We want to share two new 
examples of gamification—curricular and co-curricular—demon-
strating how gameful design yields whole-person, transformational 
learning.

PROBLEMS WITH PLAY

God said, 
     “The world is a play, a children’s game,
and you are the children.”
          God speaks the truth.
If you haven’t left the child’s play,
how can you be an adult?
           Without purity of spirit,
if you’re still in the middle of lust and greed 
and other wantings, you’re like children
playing at sexual intercourse.
    They wrestle
and rub together, but it’s not sex!

The same with the fightings of mankind.
It’s a squabble with play-swords.
No purpose, totally futile (Rumi 2004, 4-5).



Listen and Learn Sessions  335

The startling thing about these words from the great Sufi mystic 
is that he levels them not at actual children playing games, but at 
adults who have convinced themselves they are done with playing 
games. Elsewhere in his writings, Rumi speaks of the sheikh who, in 
his wisdom, is to be found galloping on a stick-horse with children 
and not, as one would suppose, in a court of law or a teaching hall 
(Rumi 2004, 44ff). Thus we find in Rumi’s poetry a paradox: on the 
one hand, he persuades his audience to put off play and become 
adults; on the other, he entices them to find wisdom in the simplest 
of children’s games. It is hardly different when one comes at the 
matter through Christian scriptures. There we find Paul speaking of 
his maturity with the words “When I became a man, I parted with 
childish things.” Elsewhere, the same author who derides playing 
kids games invites his audience to think of exemplary Christian 
conduct like the frivolities of foot racing and boxing. And let us not 
forget that one of the most endearing rebukes that Jesus of Nazareth 
has for his contemporaries is that they refused to play the games that 
Jesus himself and John the Baptist were inviting them to.

Here we find ourselves stuck in an ages-old identity crisis, one 
that echoes through the religious, academic, workaday, and domestic 
spheres of our lives—What is to be done with play? A part of ourselves 
tells us that it is time to have done with anything suggestive of idle-
ness and lack of productivity. Another equally insistent corner of 
our being wonders whether we have had enough play to have made 
life worth the living. What we would like to share with you in this 
paper are some of our own jaunts into gamified learning, and what 
it has done to resurrect in a meaningful way the spirit of play in our 
students and in us as their teachers. We hope, by the end, that you 
will be able to see, first of all, that the daily routines we are accus-
tomed to follow—religious ritual, the academic dance, information 
brokering—are already games that we have been playing, and some-
times poor ones at that. Secondly, we hope you will see the merits of 
embracing new forms of play for academia, the teaching of informa-
tion literacy, and for religious dialogue.

Excursus: Question 2
Returning to our game, consider a second scenario: Your colleague 
suggests that “side quests” might be a beneficial way to develop infor-
mation skills in students both within and outside the classroom. How 
might you respond to your colleague’s suggestion?  



336  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

PROPOSED SOLUTION: GAMIFIED LEARNING

Gamified design is not mere child’s play, but it is a return to the spirit 
of play that was present in the first seeds of liberal arts education. In 
this paper, we illustrate our assertion in three ways: 

First, we describe our co-taught Bible and Classical Literature 
course, where hero-students journey into the dark, accomplish 
heroic tasks, earn badges, and engage in desire-driven, side-quest 
learning. Second, we describe “Human Salvo: An Experiment with 
the Antidote to Zombification,” a virtual, COVID-inspired alternative 
to weekly in-person chapel offerings. And third, through the game 
we’re playing together with you, reading a proceedings article as 
game. We hope this experience will be both informative and fun.

Excursus: Question 3
Let’s consider a third question in our library-hero game. Here’s the 
prompt: When talking about avatars in gaming, your colleague says, 

“Yeah, it’s weird but playing as a confident character in a game, I find 
I have more confidence in my real-life interactions.” How might you 
respond to your colleague’s observation? 

EXAMPLE 1: GAMEFUL DESIGN IN THE CLASSROOM (BLIT)

(Readers who prefer to engage the following as video will find it 
online at http://bit.ly/class-re-tooled.) Tertullian once quipped, “What 
indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there 
between the Academy and the Church?” With these lines the ancient 
theologian addresses his concern over the reading of the so-called 

“pagan” classics by Christians of the second to third centuries, in addi-
tion to the accepted biblical canon of the Church. His desired rhetori-
cal effect is immediately clear in the dismissiveness with which 
Tertullian asks his question: “What indeed has Athens to do with 
Jerusalem?” “Surely nothing!” has been the response that has prac-
tically echoed back among many Christian communities through-
out the centuries. Nevertheless, such an easy answer has not been 
satisfying to many Christians who—likewise throughout the centu-
ries—have found themselves drawn to and molded by the wisdom 
of great world literature, especially when read in conversation with 
their own sacred writ. And nowhere today is this matter more press-
ing than in faith-based institutions such as our own, where faculty 



Listen and Learn Sessions  337

and students alike take up the unenviable task of finding a “concord 
between the Academy and the Church.” 

One honors-level class recently presented the two of us with just 
such a challenge. Affectionately dubbed “BLit” by our students, The 
Bible and Classical Literature is a long-standing OC offering that 
has students reading foundational texts from both the Bible and the 
greater classical world. The majority of our students have grown 
up in faith-based communities in which the Bible is upheld as the 
standard of both ontological truth (“reality”) and societal truth (that 
with demands our “fidelity”). As helpful as these truth-claiming defi-
nitions may at first be, especially when seen in light of their service 
to the solidarity of the faith community, they can ultimately become 
a hindrance to doing what many Christian traditions pride them-
selves on doing: namely, reading the Bible. When the biblical texts 
are approached more like an instruction manual for life, this dimin-
ishes the cultural impact that they can have on humanity. They are 
stripped of their art and literary value, only to focus on their value 
as books of regulation and assertive postulates.

Along the same vein, many of our students were already 
acquainted with at least the SparkNotes version of such classics 
as those attributed to Homer and Virgil. But their all-too brief—
and never complete—reading of these masterpieces in high school 
exposes them only to the superficial details of their narratives, 
enough to know, say, that Greeks hated Trojans, that Odysseus got 
home, and that every single one of them believed in a laundry list of 
gods whom we all know now to be silly and antiquated (surely noth-
ing like any of our current belief systems).

Thus, a lofty task was laid before us that would require some 
degree of Herculean effort: to get these students to read both the 
Bible and classical texts as literature, and as literature in conversa-
tion, at that. To do this would require the heroic feat of ascending the 
Olympian heights in order to bring the most sacred and lofty Bible 
down from its pedestal—not to diminish it, of course, but to read 
it (since books on pedestals are not for reading). It would likewise 
require a Dantean journey into Hell in order to retrieve the pagan 
classics from its infernal fires, dust off the accumulation of sulphur, 
and make them more readable, because less quickly condemnable. 
Such a broad journey between Heaven and Hell would require more 
heroism from us than we alone could muster. We would have to 
stand on the shoulders of giants.



338  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

Who, then, could fill this role of teachers to the teachers? We 
would need to consult those who had some insights into both the 
habit-forming role of religious language and the culture-stretching 
role of literature. We finally decided upon everyone’s favorite diver-
gently thinking Christian scholar, C. S. Lewis, and on George Lucas’ 
own Jedi Master, the man behind the myth, Joseph Campbell. 

Many in Christian communities are familiar with the theological 
treatises of C. S. Lewis, looking upon him as an advocate for a type 
of Christianity that is critically engaged with the larger world. Even 
outside of Christian circles, it is hard to find anyone who has not 
heard of Lewis’s famous children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia. 
Fewer are familiar with those of his works that address the technical-
ities of his discipline of literary studies. In one such work, The Aboli-
tion of Man, Lewis forms the argument that good literature must be 
judged, in part, on the merits of its connection to an almost inexpress-
ible, invisible standard of what may be considered morally excellent 
and virtuous. Without being instructed in this, the student of litera-
ture will be trained to operate at the impulses of, alternatively, their 
stomachs—or baser instincts—and their brains, as informed by the 
academy. But they will not have been instructed in ways of the heart 
to judge what is deserving of our love and loyalty. They will be, to use 
Lewis’s phrase, “men without chests.” Lewis attempts to prove the 
strength of his argument by demonstrating its universal applicability. 
He cites examples of language and theme throughout world litera-
ture that demonstrate commonly held concepts of truth, honesty, 
justice, compassion, and the like virtues. Though these systems of 
ethic go by different names—“righteousness” in Judaeo-Christian 
circles, dharma in Hinduism, ma‘at in Ancient Egypt—Lewis elects 
to use the term “the Tao” to label this natural law implanted in the 
human conscience. Lewis perhaps chooses the Tao because it is so 
decidedly non-Christian. He so wishes to demonstrate his confidence 
in his conception of a universal, objective standard of what is morally 
excellent, that he purposefully chooses a name for it that comes from 
outside of his “tribal” camp. The two of us decided that exposing 
our students to The Abolition of Man, written by a household name 
in many Christian families, would endear to them the notion that 
truth—or, the Tao—can be met not only in the Bible, but in many 
non-Christian works of literature. (Interested readers should note 
that Barbara Brown Taylor’s recent Holy Envy: Finding God in the 
Faith of Others provides an alternative to Lewis.)



Listen and Learn Sessions  339

Joseph Campbell is a less well-known writer outside of the human-
ities, though any who have done enough digging into the inspirations 
from which George Lucas drew when creating the universe and plot 
of the modern epic Star Wars will know the great debt that is owed 
this scholar. Campbell’s seminal volume, The Hero with a Thousand 
Faces, establishes a template of elements commonly found in epic 
story across the globe. The equation for these common elements, 
and the order in which they are almost always found, is known 
as the “Monomyth” or the “Hero’s Journey.” The central piece of 
Campbell’s argument is that the most meaningful, epic stories met 
in cultures throughout the world retain these same elements of a 
hero’s progression that include: (1) leaving the familiar (or “Status 
Quo”); (2) departing into the unfamiliar; (3) going through various 
trials, and possibly even death; (4) coming away from said trials with 
a treasure (or “boon”); and (5) returning home to share the blessings 
of this boon with society. The model for this journey itself, Campbell 
suggests, is based on the steps followed in any number of coming-of-
age ceremonies: the initiate is first separated from the familiar and 
safe confines of home, is driven out into the unknown to meet with 
various trials (some of which are even connected with imagery of 
death), and then returns to society with the boon of sober reflections 
connected with adulthood. One way or another, the universal appeal 
of the hero’s journey—in all its shapes and sizes—has to do with the 
fact that the audience to these stories lives vicariously through the 
testing of its heroes. Each of us learns to navigate the difficulties of 
life and to mature through these experiences by the examples laid 
before us in literature.

With these two voices—Lewis and Campbell—we now had a 
vocabulary to give our students that would help them structure 
their approach to the ancient texts. Lewis’ Tao would open them to 
the possibilities of finding inspiration in both the Bible and classical 
texts, and Campbell’s Hero’s Journey would help them translate the 
gestures of the ancient Muses into something relatable to their own 
modern contexts. But having a vocabulary is not in itself a guarantee 
that our students would embrace this endeavor. The reading of the 
Bible in churches and synagogues, or of the Classics in the classroom 
and lecture hall, has not been enough to keep these lively pages from 
the deadening assault of stodgy formalism. One is reminded of the 
words of Jesus of Nazareth to those who did not appreciate the core 
of his message:



340  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

To what, then, shall I compare the people of this generation? To what 
are they comparable? They are like children who sit in the market-
place and call to other children and say, “We played the flute for 
you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge, but you did not weep”; 
for John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, 
and you say, “He has a demon!” The Son of Man came eating and 
drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax-
collectors and sinners.” But wisdom is justified by all her children.” 
(Luke 7:31-35)

And there it was, right in front of us the whole time: play! We 
needed to invite these students into a spirit of play, because play is 
what puts the mind in its most plastic and receptive state. We needed 
a gamified model of education to assist these students in their contem-
plation of foundational works of Western civilization, so that then they 
could understand the wisdom of these texts by playing along with them.

As a demonstration of the game we played, consider the following 
excerpt from an introductory video we created for students begin-
ning the course: 

Heroes, prepare. This semester, we embark on a journey both 
perilous and transformational: perilous because you will find 
yourselves challenged, stretched, ground, and sharpened against 
the whetstone of ancient and biblical texts; transformational 
because, by the end of our journey, you will likely find yourselves 
changed. Welcome to Bible and Classical Literature. 

Think of Bible and Classical Literature as a game we’re playing all 
semester, perhaps unlike courses you’ve experienced before. But 
be forewarned: calling our class a game does not mean it should be 
taken less seriously; on the contrary, the texts we will be engaging—
timeless texts that make and keep us human—the texts, stories, 
characters, and truths you will encounter are deathly serious, texts 
like swords that divide bone and marrow, pricking hearts; texts like 
shields that protect, hardened by fire and emblazoned with markings 
of truth and struggle; texts like a healing balm, harbingering peace 
and quietness of soul. 

Gamifying our course is a means for imbuing learning with curiosity, 
imagination, and play, not least because we humans are, after all, 
players, creatures-at-play, and all human activity is (or at least 
should be) infused with play. This will become more apparent in our 
class discussions; so for now, here’s how the game works.  

While the course meets three times weekly and moves linearly 
from task to task, activities and the course itself are suffused by the 
overarching model of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” His book 
The Hero with a Thousand Faces establishes a template of elements 



Listen and Learn Sessions  341

commonly found in epic story. Campbell’s model describes a cycle 
that progresses through the following steps: leaving the familiar or 

“status quo”; departing into the unfamiliar; encountering various 
trials and possibly death; coming away from these trials with 
treasure or “boon”; and returning home to share to share that boon 
with the world.

The Hero’s Journey model helps us adapt to a cosmos that is more 
terrible and beautiful than our minds can grasp. As we return to 
the model again and again throughout the course, you’ll be asked 
to reflect on where you are and how you are feeling at various 
moments along our journey. These moments of reflection we’re 
calling Heroic Tasks, and Heroic Tasks correspond to various hours 
on the journey. 

Besides Heroic Tasks, before each class, you’ll engage assigned 
readings; from the readings, questions will rise, and you will compose 
and post in the appropriate discussion forum a single ambrosial 
offering—a question of your own design, reflective of your own 
insight, and evidential of thoughtful engagement. Each ambrosial 
offering is a personal contribution to “feed” class conversation 
(ambrosia is divine food, of course, and student offerings help 
us savor and nourish ourselves through deep engagement with 
timeless texts). 

Questions set the table for the feast of class meetings, fragrant 
ambrosial offerings that deeply satisfy, nourishing blood, bone, 
hearts, and minds, and with the catchword quest(ion)ing as driving 
force behind our hero’s journey, students and instructors alike 
will employ inquiry as the primary mode for engaging biblical and 
classical texts.  

So, recap: As a framework for conceptualizing our movement 
towards course completion, we are employing The Hero’s Journey 
as a map to guide our undertaking. Throughout our journey this 
semester, you’ll complete quest(ion)ing exercises and Heroic Tasks 
that serve to demonstrate comprehension of the texts we engage 
and competency with the thought-tools we’re working to sharpen. 
Our questioning is an act of faith seeking understanding, and 
quest(ion)ing becomes sustenance for our quest, enlarging souls 
as we satisfyingly engage texts that make and keep us human. 

But wait—oh, honored heroes, we know what you’re thinking: Just 
tell me how to get an “A,” that’s all I need to know. Well, this is what 
you need to know: badges are awarded along the way, honors 
corresponding to successful completion of each Heroic Task; these 
badges culminate in the Hero’s Badge, which signifies an “A” in the 
course. In other words, get the Hero’s Badge by completing our 
quest, and you’ll also get an A, your red badge of courage, perhaps. 
See our syllabus for details and further explanation.



342  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

And our students were brave. They answered the call, and their 
reflective writings and in-class discussions demonstrated their 
courage to challenge their own presuppositions, as well as a willing 
vulnerability to admit what was new and scary for them to consider. 
Many came back out of those dark and mysterious realms of heroic 
introspection with their own unique boon. For some, it was clearly 
the ability to entertain new cultural perspectives without being 
quick to condemn or categorically dismiss, to see the humanity in 
any piece of literature. For others it was the newfound inclination to 
entertain the many perspectives that may be brought to an issue. For 
so long they had conditioned themselves to “gaming” the system of 
education to get their “A,” that they had never entertained the idea 
of “playing” the game of learning. But these students demonstrated 
to us as their teachers not only that they had earned their respective 
grades, but that they had taken away something that can hardly be 
quantified. In the end, it was they who confirmed our beliefs that 
games are not just the stuff of children, but can be—as Huizinga put 
it so aptly decades ago in his work Homo Ludens—both “deadly seri-
ous” and “culture-forming.” And that is the very stuff of education.

Excursus: Question 4
Before discussing gamified design in co-curricular spaces, let’s 
consider the next question in our game. Your colleague suggests that 
information-seeking behavior should be guided by intrinsic rather 
than extrinsic motivations, and locating useful information is itself 
a kind of reward. How might you respond? 

EXAMPLE 2: GAMIFIED DESIGN IN CO-CURRICULAR 
DEVELOPMENT

(Readers who prefer video will find the next segment online at http://
bit.ly/convergence-part1.) Here, we want to illustrate an approach 
to gamification—or what others call gameful design—by describing 
how we’ve employed this approach in both curricular and co-curric-
ular learning spaces. We’ll describe Beam Chapel, a weekly, co-curric-
ular, spiritually formative event facilitated by Beam Library, and 
then show how COVID initiated an unanticipated convergence of 
co-curricular and curricular gamified learning. 

At Oklahoma Christian University, students are required to partic-
ipate in spiritually formative learning experiences, broadly defined, 



Listen and Learn Sessions  343

within our ETHOS program, a system developed by our Office of 
Spiritual Life for promoting, tracking, and assessing student spiri-
tual development. One option for students is attending the various 
chapels facilitated by different departments or instructors, each with 
its own special focus to generate student interest. 

By their participation in designated events or experiences like 
chapel, students earn Kudos, which are essentially points or tokens 
that signify attendance. So, you may be able to hear that this Kudos 
method is game-design-adjacent: earn a sufficient number of Kudos 
and satisfy Spiritual Life requirements, not least because of penalties 
visited upon those who neglect their Kudos. At the end of a semes-
ter no student wants the Eye of Sauron enthroned atop our Office 
of Spiritual Life to turn in their direction. But Kudos as tokens are 
indeed a gamified element of spiritually formative experience on 
our campus, and students keep track of earned Kudos on a special 
app accessed through their phones or computers.  

Now, for seventeen semesters, Beam Chapel has intentionally 
offered a dynamic space for engaging gritty questions that impact 
faith and the culture(s) we inhabit, questions arising from the dark 
of film, literature, and television. Through chapel, librarians foster 
meaningful conversations and contribute to the University’s spiri-
tual mission of transforming lives for Christian faith and service. 
Semester themes are always second-commandment-driven: Beam 
Chapel exists at intersections of faith and popular culture as a reflec-
tive and questioning space where participants discern together how 
to enact the commandment to “Love the neighbor as the self.” Beam 
Chapel is one option for interested students to earn required Kudos. 

As you are very aware, in Spring 2020 everything seemed to fall 
apart as COVID closed campuses and disrupted our normed and 
conditioned modes of teaching and learning. By herculean effort 
in many cases, professors shifted course offerings online; likewise, 
libraries adapted and found new ways to virtually support learn-
ing and information access. But at Oklahoma Christian, our Kudos 
system collapsed! The semester was considered a wash; earned 
Kudos were suddenly devalued as the bottom fell out from our 
marketplace of spiritual formation. Students were left to their own 
devices, to be formed without Kudos, somehow, by whatever spiri-
tual formation their own devices might afford. 

These were desperate days. Yet out of the ashes Beam Chapel arose, 
a winged phoenix, clawed talons gripping fresh Kudos, co-curricular 



344  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

formation reborn! We determined to turn chapel into a game and 
offer virtual spiritual formation.

So, in Fall 2020, as contagion concerns canceled chapel-as-we-
know-it, Beam Chapel’s survival required a creative, new approach, 
incorporating robust virtual encounters that meaningfully formed 
and informed students toward better love of neighbor. We gamified 
chapel and launched our semester theme, Human Salvo: An experi-
ment with the antidote to zombification. 

As you remember, the moment we inhabited last fall was fraught 
with four primary anxieties: pandemic/contagion, political tribes, 
economy, and racial (in)justice. Fascinatingly, these are precisely the 
primary anxieties that characterize the zombie genre as well. So, we 
led with our semester’s charge: In a moment suffused by zombifica-
tion—dead(ly) force that turns people into things—our empathy is 
the true antidote, making zombies human. Our overarching ethic 
was empathy, and through chapel we intended to speak messages 
of loving neighbor as self into our present moment. Here’s how it 
worked: 

Our own approach to gameful design incorporates four elements: 
story, architecture (or structure), aesthetic, and elements. To gamify 
chapel, we created a storied world for students to inhabit: In Fall 
2020, all our aims have been interrupted by an unforeseen global 
threat—you know, zombies! People becoming the walking dead, 
humans devouring humans. Society is a mess! E pluribus unum has 
rotted as everyone looks to their own tribe for protection. Needed 
goods are scarce—shopping malls have become haunts for dead-eyed 
eaters. The contagion is everywhere, and it’s spreading; the prudent 
lock themselves in at home, venturing out only when there’s no other 
choice. There’s more to the story we were telling, but you can hear it 
resonating with students’ real-life experiences. 

So that’s story; then we think about structure or architecture. 
We developed two videos each week. The first was a message from 
various faculty or staff who wanted to participate, who recorded 
a video message in-line with our story that communicated some-
thing about empathy. All videos were housed at a Google Slides we 
created for chapel, and each was accompanied by a brief prompt 
asking students to reflect and respond in 150 to 300 words. Students 
emailed their responses to an address we created for the chapel—
empathytheantidote@gmail.com—and responses earned the student 
a Kudo for chapel participation. Then, each week, just for fun, a 



Listen and Learn Sessions  345

second video was deployed, a video that continued or deepened 
the story, but that also offered opportunity to play chapel-as-game: 
these videos offered codes to break, or hinted at the location of secret 
objects hidden on campus—optional opportunities for students to 
enjoy escape into the storied world of zombification. 

And this helps clarify the final two elements of gameful design 
we mentioned—aesthetics and elements. The aesthetic for our semes-
ter borrowed from familiar pop-culture zombie imagery (like our 
chapel poster) as well as plague-doctor imagery, which students 
encountered throughout, even in one professor who used a plague 
mask in her video on Toxic Positivity. Game elements involve the 
Kudo received for responses to weekly videos, and the side-quest 
nature of the non-required “game” aspects of chapel, like using a 
map to hunt around campus for artifacts infused with the energies 
of zombification. 

So, you’re wondering: How’d it go? Did the students love it? Did 
they enjoy this new mode for earning Kudos, this new vehicle for deliv-
ering virtually formative chapel? Well, it didn’t go great, at least in 
terms of participation. We received only 60 responses for the entire 
semester to our weekly videos, and no student participated in any 
of the optional game elements, not even once. However, in terms of 
proof of concept, gamified chapel delivered, because we now had 
60 learning artifacts related to co-curricular spiritual formation, 
students’ own reflections on what they were hearing in the videos, 
how messages were shaping their thinking. 

So now, let us describe how we approached Spring 2021 with a 
next-step idea to converge gamified co-curricular and curricular 
spaces, which dramatically increased participations and the number 
of assessable artifacts that we were able to collect.

(Readers who prefer video will find the following segment online 
at http://bit.ly/convergence-part2.) We introduce our next-step idea 
for gamified chapel by offering the opening bit of our introductory 
video: 

Last Fall, Beam Chapel piloted virtual chapel as a precaution 
necessitated by COVID, grimly grappling the unproven, uncertain 
question Can virtual chapel be formative? So we launched Human 
Salvo: An Experiment with the Antidote to Zombification and 
achieved proof of concept: yes, virtual chapel can also be virtually 
formative, which we demonstrate with dozens of thoughtful 
responses to prompts from presentations throughout the semester 
submitted by students just like you. 



346  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

And you know how virtual chapel works: each week, a brief video 
message is dispatched, along with a prompt for reflection. Reply to 
the prompt and you get a Kudo for chapel, friend! 

But is this tit-for-tat exchange of thoughtful reflection for a Kudo 
simply a banal tokenization of spiritual formation? Watch a five-
minute video, respond to the prompt in 150 words or so, and 
collect your heart piece? Well, I hope not; and much of that answer 
depends on you, dear student, and your willingness to engage 
the assortment of provocative video fare we assemble, all for your 
benefit. Oh, how I wish we were home, back together crowded in 
the dim space on the third floor of the Library where buzzy Beam 
Chapel once gathered, flesh and blood and bone squished in a 
sacred space for sitting thigh to thigh, unalarmed by quiet coughing 
in the back, mildly appreciative of showers of spittle raining out 
from an overly dynamic presenter, high-fives and laughter and a 
beeping scanner awarding Kudos—those were the days, my friends, 
and how I wish we were home once again, home like before!     

Ah, nostalgia. Spring 2021, yet in the throes of COVID, Beam Chapel 
launches our second offering of fully virtual, virtually formative 
chapel. Our theme is Nostalgia: We Wanna Go Home. Nostalgia 
combines two Greek ideas, nostos (homecoming) and algos (pain); 
the loveliness of nostalgia masks the pain it bears, literally a pain 
felt for home. 

This time, the overarching story is not nearly as developed or as 
immersive as the previous fall, when we inhabited a zombified dysto-
pia. The theme, however, is rich and provocative, opening up lots of 
possibilities for presenters to offer their own ideas about or expe-
riences of nostalgia. And we had numerous presenters sign up and 
create brief videos for student benefit and formation. As in the fall, 
videos were accompanied by a prompt for reflection, and students 
submitted responses for a Kudo. Aesthetic was communicated by 
our poster, imagery that suffused videos week to week. And game 
elements were similar—except for the side quest. That’s where we 
discovered a change that made all the difference.  

Spring 2021, Chris also taught a section of Acts of the Apostles for 
the first time; all new prep, which meant an interesting opportunity 
to think about gameful design. So he gamified the course by employ-
ing a non-linear path to course completion via modules “mapped” to 
the geography of Paul’s missionary journeys, the geography of Acts. 
In other words, students were free to complete learning exercises in 
any order they liked; complete each region of the map or jump from 



Listen and Learn Sessions  347

here to there—students as traveler-heroes could follow their heart, 
as long as they completed one exercise each week.

But more significantly, Chris created a side-quest space for desire-
driven learning, where participation leads to reward! The Nostos 
Algos forum is a virtual space where he posted non-required discus-
sion threads, optional opportunities to stretch, challenge, and train 
beyond classroom conversations and out-of-class work.

Now, threads in the Nostos Algos were non-required in the 
sense that students could choose what they wanted to do or not do; 
but some participation in this forum was required. Per the sylla-
bus, desire-driven learning was worth 10% of a student’s grade. 
To get full marks for this aspect of grading, they needed 20 Nostal-
gia Points. Participation in this forum earns Nostalgia Points, and 
Chris tried to make the threads interesting. For example, there was a 
thread called “Our Journey’s Playlist” for posting favorite songs that 
students found resonant with our travels through Acts. 

And there was a thread that invited participation in virtual Beam 
Chapel, so that while earning Nostalgia Points students could also 
earn Kudos to fulfil Spiritual Life requirements. 

Beyond a grade, participation in the Nostos Algos forum was 
incentivized by this move: earn 35 Nostalgia Points and you don’t 
have to take the Final exam. Students were ready for the challenge, 
and many students earned 40, 50, even up to 60 Nostalgia Points 
for desire-driven learning. The trick Chris discovered was to keep 
offered threads relevant and interesting, connecting classroom 
learning about Acts to our own here-and-now experiences. And as 
mentioned, virtual Beam Chapel was one option for desire-driven 
learning. 

By semester’s end, Chris had received about 60 responses—60 
chapel participations—from students outside of his Acts class, which 
is similar to participation during the Fall semester. However, in 
total by the end of semester, there were 224 total participations in 
virtual chapel, which means that there are 224 submitted reflections 
to weekly prompts, each between 150 and 300 words—qualitative, 
assessable data for showing the formative value of virtual chapel. 
We were very surprised not only by the level of participation, but 
especially by the quality of reflections submitted. Nostalgia as a 
theme stirred something powerful in these students, who shared 
insights and memories and the pain of their own experiences of 
home. Students were making the ethical connections we had hoped 



348  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

for, and responses were infused with empathy and electrified by love 
for neighbor as the self. So kudos to these students—yes, the token 
Kudo for participation in chapel, but also kudos to these students for 
showing and sharing what’s inside of them, exemplifying through 
reflection how virtual chapel can nevertheless be virtually (if not 
actually) spiritually and ethically formative.

Excursus: Question 5 and reveal 
Here at the end we return to our game. Here’s the next prompt: Your 
colleague suggests that attendance is a means for tracking participa-
tion, but attendance itself tells us nothing about learning or forma-
tion. How do you respond?

We’ve illustrated gamified learning in both curricular and 
co-curricular spaces—precisely the spaces librarians inhabit, at the 
intersection of in-class and out-of-class experiences that character-
ize the role of the library on our campuses. So, library hero, what 
personality are you? For this game, we created five library-hero 
avatar types—which hero are you? Are you: 

THE RESEARCHER, a collector and protector of information. If 
so, this may indicate that you are quintessentially a librarian, 
library-hero! 

THE ADVOCATE, a library-hero who’s always ready to throw 
down when student safety or emotional wellbeing is at stake—a 
truly heroic type! 

THE RULE BREAKER who doesn’t just move to the beat of your 
own drum—no way, you brought a gong! You’re a rule breaker, 
library hero! 

THE SCHRUTE, which, yes, is unapologetically a reference to The 
Office, and Dwight Schrute brings the most out-of-the-box think-
ing to bear (get it? to bear…?). Crazy. But ya know what? It’s so 
crazy, it just might work… That’s the Schrute! 

Or are you THE MASHUP because your responses map to several 
different “types” of library-hero! Nobody’s gonna pin you down 
or put you in a box! 



Listen and Learn Sessions  349

Your avatar is a reflection of you, only intensified—taken to the 
furthest heroic degree! We’re going to describe a situation and oppor-
tunity for more heroic questing. Consider how you might respond 
to each of the following scenarios as we enter the dungeon, library 
heroes!

University Administration has asked the library to find a means 
for better assessing information literacy, since info and media 
literacy skills are important for the kind of graduates we want our 
students to become. You realize there are only two viable options 
before you: You might set up a meeting with a couple of administra-
tors to hear what they have in mind; or, you could consult the mystic 
Oracle who lives in the fountain outside the library. Researcher 
Avatars, respond: What should you do? 

You wait for moonlight since the Oracle is more willing to appear 
in the shadows of night. But instead of the Oracle, an arm slowly 
emerges from the water, and in its dripping hand, a sword! Wait, 
the moonlight confused you—it’s not a sword, the hand is holding a 
number-two pencil, as if to suggest that assessment of library skills 
is best accomplished by Scantron-like multiple-choice tests! Library-
hero Advocates, what do you do? Do you accept the soggy-handed 
pencil and reduce skills assessment to standardized testing? 

You take the pencil, snap it in half, and throw the pieces in the 
water; the hand makes a rude gesture and resubmerges into shad-
owy murk. But your spirit is light and your mind is on fire, certain 
that library skills are better developed and assessed through desire-
driven learning. But an important key is missing—how can both 
students and librarians know and show the skills they are develop-
ing? Wait, on your right, something glinting on the ground—it’s a key, 
a key to the restricted section of the library! Who could have dropped 
it here? Rule-breaker heroes—do you use the key? 

The door to the restricted section groans on its hinges as you 
brush aside dangling cobwebs and enter. No one here so late at night 
to catch you in this indiscretion—you pull a worn tome simply titled 
Secrets from the dusty shelf and like a chiropractor crack its spine. 
The book opens to an illustrated page, a drawing of a student—a 
weeping student—and intuitively you know she weeps because she 
can neither know nor show all the skills for info literacy she’s been 
acquiring. You turn the page—behold, the same student, only now 
she beams! Across her chest she wears a sash, a sash that proudly 
bears insignias denoting various skills—a researcher badge, a media 



350  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

literacy badge, a shining Plagiarism Expert badge! Schrute-heroes, 
you’re suddenly struck with an idea for how to assess information 
literacy, how to empower students and librarians to know and to 
show skills and competencies—what is this grand idea you’ve had? 
Is there room in our libraries for badging as a gamified means of info 
literacy skills assessment? 

A light flickers on in a distant hallway—footsteps swiftly approach: 
clompy, clompy, clomp clomp clomp (no one should be here at this 
hour!). Panic surges: what if someone finds you in the restricted 
section? Wait, you know those footsteps—the hollow thuds of your 
Director. Mashup-heroes: What do you do? Do you tell your Direc-
tor your idea for assessing information literacy, or do you hide and 
wait for daylight? 

Your Director is excited to hear your idea. As a Researcher-hero-
type, your Director would like to know if there is any empirical 
evidence about the efficacy of badging and gamification in libraries. 
Hero, you know what to do next… 

Heroic reader, thanks for playing. Gamification is the application 
of game-design principles to non-game contexts; gameful design 
incorporates basic game architecture, story, and aesthetic as central 
to course design, infusing education with curiosity, imagination, and 
play. The examples of gamification we’ve shared—a convergence of 
curricular and co-curricular experiences—demonstrate how game-
ful design yields whole-person, transformational, and enjoyable 
learning.

SELECT RESOURCES

Bell, Kevin. 2018. “Gameful Design: A Potential Game Changer.” 
Educause Review (May/June): 41-48.

Campbell, Joseph. 2008. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Novato, CA: 
New World Library.

Cohen, Aaron M. 2011. “The Gamification of Education.” Futurist, 
45(5), 16.

Crockett, Zachary, and Javier Zarracina. 2016. “How the Zombie 
Represents America’s Deepest Fears: A Sociopolitical History of 
Zombies, from Haiti to The Walking Dead.” Vox, October 31, 2016. 
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/31/13440402/
zombie-political-history.



Listen and Learn Sessions  351

Huizinga, Johan. 2014. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-element in 
Culture. Boston: Beacon.

Kapp, Karl M. 2012. The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: 
Game-Based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education. 
San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Lameras, Petros, Sylvester Arnab, Ian Dunwell, Craig Stewart, 
Samantha Clarke, and Panagiotis Petridis. 2017. “Essential 
Features of Serious Games Design in Higher Education: Link-
ing Learning Attributes to Game Mechanics.” British Journal of 
Educational Technology 48 (4): 972–94.

Lewis, Clive Staples. 2009. The Abolition of Man. New York: Harper-
Collins.

McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better 
and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Press.

Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn. 2004. The Essential Rumi. Translated by Coleman 
Barks. New York: HarperCollins. 

Taylor, Barbara Brown. 2020. Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of 
Others. San Francisco: HarperOne.


