The Worldbuilding Workshop is a forthcoming text from MIT Press targeted toward educators who seek to adopt collaborative worldbuilding as a form of knowledge construction in college-level or advanced high school classrooms. Co-authors Trent Hergenrader and Stephen Slota discuss and demonstrate how worldbuilding can bridge critical thinking, creative production, and the lived experiences and perspectives of educators and learners. Featured topics include: how and why worldbuilding is supported by contemporary theories of human thinking and learning (e.g., constructionism, situated cognition); interrelationships between constructivist teaching and playful learning; how instructors and learners can develop accurate representations of worlds set in specific spaces, places, and times; geographies and demographies of worlds; creation of ethical character sketches that capture broad characteristics of diverse populations; and how instructors and learners can interact with their co-constructed worlds through simulation and roleplay.

The book expands on ideas presented in Hergenrader’s (2018) Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers as well as case-based applications of the Collaborative Worldbuilding Card Deck.