STATESBORO — History can be a boring subject to some, and many professors struggle to keep their students’ attention.

With 20 years of experience, Jason Slone PhD. understands this issue as a history and religion professor at Georgia Southern. In an effort to combat this lack of interest, Slone has his students play a semester long game to create an exciting learning environment that extends beyond the classroom.

The games put the students into the history lesson. In Slone’s fall 2019 class, the students were assigned roles in the government that they were studying.

“It gets students engaged in learning and helps them to develop the ‘soft skills’ that employers seek,” Stone said.

These skills were listed out by Slone: critical thinking, problem-solving ability and creativity, oral and written communication, information literacy, teamwork and collaboration.

Many students from past semesters wanted the game to continue after the final exam, and Slone was delighted to hear that the game was fun for the students.

The games often resulted in heated debates and strong arguments between the characters. In last semester’s game, a student threw down a collection of papers written by a fellow classmate in protest to their ideas.

Slone is teaching World Religions and Religion and Sports this semester. Slone graduated with his bachelors degree from College of Wooster, a masters degree at The Ohio State University and earned his PhD. from Western Michigan University.

Sarah Smith, The George-Anne Managing News Editor, gaeditor@georgiasouthern.edu