Hosting a matrix wargame in a slack workspace

Abstract

This article is a work in progress description of competence-based learning approaches at the Command and Staff College of the German Armed Forces (CSC) (specifically at the Faculty of Politics, Strategy and Social Science) and contains a best practice example for the successful implementation of a web 2.0 collaboration tool (slack) into a pen-and-paper tabletop exercise using a matrix wargame approach. It describes the terminological understanding of keywords like “Wargaming”, “Serious Gaming” and “Gamification” at the CSC and their relation to “Matrix Wargaming”. It shows how to use a free version of slack to create a holistic learning ecosystem that fosters self-driven learning, that is not restricted in time and space and enables global, synchronous and asynchronous contributions from students and subject matter experts (SMEs).