As part of the JSPS-funded research project “Transcultural Learning through Simulated Co-Presence: How to Realize Other Cultures and Life-Worlds,” Prof. Dr. Björn-Ole Kamm developed and now released the debriefing and visualization tool “reLarp.”
Educational and political larps (live-action role-plays) usually incorporate a reflection phase, often called a debriefing. A formal debriefing will incorporate spontaneous, immediate statements about the larp experience and more structured forms of group discussions and assistance with individual sense-making.
The now-developed tool “reLarp” can be used for the reflection phase after a larp as a visualization and evaluation procedure (re-view, re-flection > reLarp). This mixed-method evaluation strategy was inspired by Personal Attitude Construct (PAC) Analysis originally developed by NAITŌ Testuo (in Japanese). “Used in various fields in Japan today, ranging from psychology, sociology, language education, to counselling, PAC analysis combines in-depth interviews with statistical clustering and visualisations to communicate individual experiences. Visualisation here refers to tree diagrams representing the connections between keywords the interviewees chose to describe their experiences. The visuality of the approach translates into its main advantage for learning purposes because it delivers a basis for the participant’s reflection and makes their reflection also communicable to others” (Kamm 2019).
As a highly structured debriefing strategy, we use a PAC analysis variant adjusted for larp experiences to assist with evaluating a larp’s design and, more importantly, as a method to assist participants in the process of making sense of their experience and visualize their learning.
This shiny app now streamlines the process: Participants can individually input their impressions and are guided through the whole process. In the end, they can send all generated output (dendrograms, matrices) to the facilitator.
Code on GitHub 
A usable test version is available on shinyapps.io.
If you use the test version on shinyapps.io, please read and acknowledge the data and privacy disclaimer.