A student perspective from Etta Greathouse

"How do I make this explode?" asked a student during an interactive chemistry exam review session. Rather than reflecting distraction, it was an indicator of engagement, as the student was trying to reach that outcome through the application of theory. Doing so required them to activate core knowledge from across the semester, including chemical reactions, material properties, constraints, and cause-and-effect relationships. In other words, they were using the abstract principles of chemistry instead of just trying to memorize them.

That moment is part of what Etta Greathouse describes when she talks about Chemistry & Chaos (often referred to as Chemistry Chaos), a Dungeons & Dragons-style collaborative review game developed with IU Columbus Chemistry Professor J.D. Mendez. Greathouse joined the project through an Office of Student Research (OSR) opportunity and helped playtest and refine early versions before taking on a major role in improving and updating the game through her own research project, "Chemistry and Chaos Expansion and Reconstruction."

From memorization to meaning

Exam review sessions in STEM often default to running through slides on the topics, a few practice questions, a reminder of what to memorize, and a vague hope that anxiety will transform into understanding overnight. Greathouse describes Chemistry & Chaos as a deliberate break from that model. Instead of re-covering content as a checklist, learners apply course topics to solve problems within a fantasy narrative. The review shifts from "Can you remember this?" to "Can you use this?" That switch, she said, is where she saw the "aha" moments—where her peers suddenly recognized how separate ideas in chemistry connect, and why fundamentals matter in the first place.

To someone outside the classroom, "fantasy chemistry role-play" might sound like an add-on novelty layer on top of real content. Greathouse's argument is that the fantasy element is what forces meaning. While the narrative creates wild cause-and-effect situations, the game also functions as a safe space for consequence-based thinking. In real labs, experiments can fail for a variety of reasons, including human error, imperfect technique, and environmental factors. In the game, students can explore "what would happen if…" and learn reaction consequences even when their real-world lab conditions didn't cooperate. And because it's fantasy, the scenario space becomes much larger, where students can tinker with imagined dangerous chemicals or extreme outcomes that would never be accessible (or appropriate) in an undergraduate lab.

Greathouse's interest in chemistry as exploration has roots in growing up in a Waldorf educational system, and in a home where her parents kept a cabinet of STEAM kits and encouraged hands-on experimentation. They did not hand her the answers; instead they let her experience and observe outcomes directly in a variety of subjects like science, music, and art (as long as she was being safe). That upbringing shows up in how she talks about learning design, where she insists that you cannot talk someone into understanding. You build the conditions for discovery. Chemistry & Chaos gave her a place to do that kind of building, not as a passive assistant, but as a co-designer and researcher.

Redesigning for every learner

For Greathouse, the biggest challenge wasn't chemistry; it was onboarding the game, which is usually the case with game-based learning. One of her clearest takeaways from early playtests was that D&D culture can be a barrier to learning. Language like "roll a d20" or "perform a charisma check" felt natural to people who play tabletop games, but it is completely alien to many people. When students spend their attention decoding jargon or navigating complex rules, they lose out on the learning experience.

So, Greathouse focused on guidance and customization for the next iteration of the game, especially on making it easier for non-gamers to enter. That meant translating or removing jargon, while adding clearer explanations of what character attributes mean and what dice rolls are related to. One of the biggest changes, reworking the character sheet itself, became central to the update. Students can now choose their own future profession, for greater autonomy within and ownership of the experience. Greathouse wanted learners to feel personally invested so they would care about what happens next. Her solution was to move away from pre-made character sheets toward learner avatars, with students building a future version of themselves. This way, the learners can level up throughout the semester, using pre-exam Chemistry & Chaos sessions as recurring checkpoints, a structure that echoes how games build mastery over time.

Greathouse's advice for instructors who are unsure where to start is quite straightforward: Start by identifying a pain point in your coursework. Try to find something that learners consistently struggle with that traditional lectures do not address well. Then borrow shamelessly (and ethically) from games you've experienced, noting the mechanics that kept you engaged and considering how those mechanics might become a learning intervention. Next, bounce your ideas off family, friends, colleagues, the more the better. Greathouse frames this as a creative multiplier because other people's reactions generate more design possibilities than you'd come up with alone. And then prototype and iterate. Expect several versions before it feels right. Her practical design tip is to focus on making the experience easy to enter, so students can focus on learning content rather than learning how to play.