Page 9 - Ideas
P. 9
No student fancies a difficult and dry class. For Professor
Gary Chan, he feels that it is his duty to engage his
students. “If they are bored and switched off, and if that
is reflected in their grades, that will be worse for me,” he
said. Hence, he felt that he had to do something to make
his law classes, such as the Law of Torts, more interesting
and inject some variety in his pedagogy.
His use of games to teach began in 2010 simply and
somewhat primitively, and was inspired by the classic
Snakes and Ladders board game. The first iteration
featured a cardboard playing surface and makeshift
pawns. Students played and learnt in groups; once a
group answered a question correctly, they could advance
the pawn forward. It was basic but functional. Little did
Gary realise how the game would evolve from such
humble beginnings into something that would eventually
go beyond the confines of his class to reach members of
Gary CHAN the legal fraternity in the Singapore Judicial College.
Professor of Law
A small step in a greater direction
School of Law
Singapore Management University After delivering a talk on teaching innovation, Gary was
approached by CTE to make an electronic game called
the Grade Inflation Game (GIGAME), that retained a
“Start by taking small steps. Do not worry that you will
have to spend a lot of time on it and as a result, decide number of key features from his initial Snakes and
Ladders game. In the electronic version, students are
not to even take the first step.”
now represented by avatars which progress along the
board when they answer a series of multiple-choice
questions related to tort law. The name of the game
