Making Curveball: Working with Students to Produce a Game that can ‘liven up’ Research Methods and Ethics Teaching in the Social Sciences

In this paper we explore our experiences of a staff-student collaborative project that sought to design games and learning resources that could be used to “liven-up” research methods and ethics teaching in the social sciences. The paper highlights the benefits of staff-student collaboration in the design and production of game resources, and in particular, the potential for harnessing students’ experiences of teaching and learning through feeding it into curriculum development. The paper also considers the value of the “game-show format” and non-traditional teaching and learning formats for increasing student engagement and performance. Finally, the paper demonstrates the benefits of gamification, through the positive student feedback and evaluation received by the developed games, and explores the wider applicability of games in research methods and ethics teaching across social sciences disciplines.