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BU Who Knew? board game educates freshmen

In order to teach freshmen students in EHS 120 about Bradley’s history in a new, exciting and fun way, Julie Holmes of the Student and Young Alumni Programs created a trivia game for students to play with alumni.
“BU Who Knew? is a game about Bradley history,” Holmes said. “The main focus of the trivia questions comes from the biography of Lydia Moss Bradley called ‘Forgotten Angel.’ The object of the game is to get to Lydia by answering questions along the road through Founder’s Circle.”
The game is played with a large foam die and a large magnetic board created to look like Founder’s Circle so an entire class is able to see it, Holmes said.
The color of each space determines what category and type of question the player will receive. The categories are Lydia, Bradley Family, Bradley Beginnings and Bradley Networks.
Before playing the game, students must first divide into four different teams. Each team picks a token to represent their team, and they are all set on the start space, which is blue.
The blue space represents a question about Lydia, so the first team to go will start with a question from that category. If they answer correctly, they roll the die and move forward that many spaces.
If they answer incorrectly or time runs out, the other three teams are able to answer, and if they have the correct answer, they roll the die and move ahead instead.
Each team has two alumni lifeline bribes. If they use a lifeline, they can ask the alumni host for a hint about one of their questions. The hints, however, cannot be used on the final question. If a team answers the final question incorrectly, they must wait for their next turn for another question. Even if they answer incorrectly, another team cannot steal the question.
The first team to reach Lydia and answer their final question correctly wins.
“I came up with this game because it was a fun way to teach freshmen in the EHS 120 classes about BU history,” Holmes said. “Last year, we had alumni visit the classrooms to discuss BU history and the book about Lydia, but students were not very excited to have yet another speaker talk to them. With a game, an alum could visit the class and host instead of be a speaker.”
Holmes said the change in the class has proved to be a positive one for both alumni and students so far, as 31 alumni visited 38 sessions of EHS 120 to host the game over the past two weeks in conjunction with Homecoming.
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