“What’s Next?”: Mentorship Through a Storytelling Card Game

Abstract

Background:

In light of ongoing challenges in belonging and pathways development for doctoral students, particularly those from minoritized communities, mentorship offers a way forward to help students navigate academic spaces. Existing scholarship speaks to a need for new forms of doctoral student mentorship that disinvest from extractive academic structures and invest in building relationality and trust; however, less attention has been paid to play- and game-based approaches. This study places the literature on critical mentorship, community cultural wealth, and game-based play in dialogue, which uncovers community-oriented and asset-based opportunities to design experiences for a novel audience and context: doctoral students and their mentors.

Purpose:

Our study argues for more playful forms of mentorship in the academy through the instantiation of a card-based learning game we designed and played. This study is guided by the following research question: How does the process of playing a card game designed to support critical mentorship influence the conditions needed for doctoral student mentorship to arise?

Research Design:

We designed the card game “What’s Next?” with the goal of creating structured opportunities for intentional relationship building and knowledge sharing among doctoral students, faculty, and staff. We recruited 11 doctoral students, 1 recent graduate working as staff, and 2 tenured faculty members (n = 14) to participate in a playtesting session and answer a postplay survey reflecting on sensitive dynamics during gameplay. Thematic analysis of our three playtesting sessions revealed how moments of invitation, vulnerability calibration, and community connection foster more expansive mentorship practices.

Conclusions:

Designing and playing the game elicited what we call connective moments, or interactions where players share themselves and create connections in ways that foster relationality. These connective moments allowed players to engage in vulnerability calibration, integrate aspects of their academic and personal selves, and build horizontal relations through structured interactions. Through this critical design and gameplay, we demonstrate how doctoral student mentorship can unsettle traditional hierarchical pathways, honor diverse forms of personhood, and amplify community cultural wealth. Ultimately, this study is our invitation to create more hospitable and equitable academic environments for doctoral students through acts of care and playful collaboration.