Meeting Agenda 11/16 & 11/17

Tasks to be completed
Clemons, 5:30 pm
Shelby: pitch simplification idea
Decide on plan: incorporate or not?
Mary Ellen & Shelby: video
Use Undercover Detectives logo
Simplify language?
Finalize ALL revisions
Revisions planning doc
Boys and Girls Club feedback doc
Especially scoring
Distill Scoring Criteria doc into 3 simple questions that can be answered in less
than 30 seconds each
Class Meeting 11/17
Decide on time to meet over the weekend
Delegate revisions to be integrated into current game design
New folder on Drive? (with all of the final materials)
Revisions: done by S
aturday meeting 11/19
Update teacher guidebook: L
ee
Add/organize/finalize restrictions: Rachel/Celina
Distilled questions based on 3 criteria: M
ary Ellen - Done! See Distilled
Questions for Scoring document
Video Revisions: M
ary Ellen and Shelby
Summarize SOL alignment with 6th, 7th, 8th grade: Grace/Shelby
Outline final pitch ppt: Shelby
Master scorecard?
Final Presentation
What needs to be done? E
verything below delegated, completed, compiled by
Monday 11/28
Break slide deck into sections based on updated criteria from Jennie
Delegate sections and set deadline for completion
Set meeting times to revise/practice presentation
Final Physical Prototype
All language consistent
All revisions fully incorporated (no loose ends)
All docs printed and organized; look professional and game-like
Topics bank/weekly breakdown/organization of restrictions by level
Aesthetics
Everything purchased
Combined with printed docs
Video

Additional materials added to the end of the guidebook (like an appendix)

Customization points
Modifications for an inclusive classroom
others?

Final Portfolio
Due 12/8 (one week after presentation)
Format
Tumblr?
Whos making?
Upload and organize all media (docs, pics, videos, etc.) onto Tumblr with clear
progression and development (design process)
Make sure all loose ends are tied up

Am I missing anything?

Updated Rationale to be sent to Interviewees

To:
From:
Celina
Date:
Subject:

Lee Williams, Mary Ellen Potter, Grace Hwang, Shelby Ware, Rachel Han,
Abboud
November 6th 2016
Rationale for Undercover Detectives

What will my students learn through this game?

Students will
a) develop empathic and social skills by learning to see the world from another persons
perspective and to be able to articulate such a perspective in an accurate way.
b) build communication skills aligned with sixth grade Virginia SOL objectives. In addition,
build writing skills by increasing students abilities to connect ideas in an integrated,
sequential fashion to convey concrete information. Their grammar and sentence structure
will also be improved.
What is the game?
To begin a game of Undercover Detectives, the teacher will receive a script and read out the
premise to the students. You will then break up a group of players into randomly assigned pairs.
Each individual will receive a detective kit, complete with mission cards, detective apparel, and
writing prompts. The players will take turns interviewing each other with regard to a specific
dimension of their personality in a scaffolded discourse according to their detective assignments
described in their mission cards. The players will also have some restrictions: if they break those
restrictions during an interview they will have to be silent for 10 seconds, meaning they will not
have as much time to ask more questions.
Based on what a player learns about his/her partner in the interview, he/she will write a piece
about the topic of the interview from the
partners perspective. The partner will write one as
well, from his/her own perspective. The same will be done for the other partner such that each
player in a pair will have written two pieces: one from his/her own perspective, and one from the
perspective of his/her partner. Points will be allocated based upon a rating system in which of
the class pairs will be randomly chosen to be evaluated based on how similar both writing pieces
are to each other. There will be a panel of 5 judges, and the panel will also be chosen at random
or teacher discretion. The judges will be asked three questions when comparing both writings.
Their responses to these questions will determine how many points the undercover detectives
receive. The most points a detective can get would be ten points, the least is zero. The detectives
level up every time they earn ten points (i.e. new ranks occur at 10, 20, 30 and 40 points). The
better a player is at seeing the world from their partners eyes and communicating that
perspective, the more points they receive. The overall objective is for the player to work his/her
way up to the highest level of the game (progressing through different ranks of detective
mastery).
The target population for the game is lower-middle school aged students in 6th grade to be
played during class time. The game will be conducted weekly for an academic quarter,
approximately 9 weeks.

How does research support our game?

Social-emotional development, specifically empathy, is a focal point of many educational
curriculum trends and youth initiatives. Additionally, empathy building through the mode of
games and interactive activities is increasingly prevalent in schools and in the workplace. The
demand for effective empathy building initiatives informs our teams decision to create a game
which accomplishes just that. Our game provides a unique approach to cultivating empathy, as
compared to current popular digital games. The majority of top games in teaching empathy,
according to education websites, frame empathic growth as a preventative intervention to
bullying and gossip or as a tool to expose students to sensitive topics (e.g. there are multiple
games focused on Middle Eastern-global conflict) (Commonsense.org). Empathy development
as an end goal in and of itself sets us apart from a significant portion of the market. The games
that focus solely on empathy and perspective-taking are practically all digitally based. Those that
required physical interaction, for example the Knowsy Board Game (Thegamecrafter.com), do
not incorporate nor are they informed by such educational objectives as ours. As a result, they do
not appeal to classroom adoption or deployment within the school context. Although relatively
unique in our key components, there is demand for practical school-based empathy building
games (Cotton). Undercover Detectives satisfies these criteria while still benefitting from the
effective mechanisms of empathic growth demonstrated by various studies and current game
designs (Schonert-Reichl et al, 2015; ).
References
https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/knowsy http://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/developing-empathy-in-children-and-you
th.pdf
Cotton, K. School Improvement Research Series. Developing Empathy in Children and
Youth.
http://educationnorthwest.org/sites/default/files/developing-empathy-in-children-and-you
th.pdf
Fullerton, T., Swain, C., & Hoffman, S. (2008). Game design workshop: A playcentric
approach to creating innovative games. Amsterdam: Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann.
Gee, J. P. (2005). Learning by Design: Good video games and Good Learning.
https://www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/top-games-that-teach-empathy

Potential Restrictions

Charades- no talking allowed

Word restrictions
Starting questions with the word how or why
Notes taken away
Note section- must have web or mapping
Pictionary- opponent must answer in pictures
Starting off with less time
Hot potato- questioner and questionee toss around a hot potato and whoever ends up
with it by time is over, must cross off one sentence in undercover work sheet
5 seconds to ask each question
Must sing questions in tune of a song
In between questions related to the prompt, must also ask favorites questions
Ask with tongue sticking out
Ask without teeth showing

Side note- consider groups of three? One person to keep both people accountable
Level 1: 0-5 points: Choose between: Ask with tongue sticking out OR ask without teeth
showing OR singing the questions (just the words on the mission)
Level 2: 6-11 points: word restrictions (4)
Level 3: 12-17 points: word restrictions (4) AND only ask how or why questions
Level 4: 18-23 points: word restrictions (4) AND cannot take notes while interviewing
Level 5: 24+: Ask all your questions in pictures (but your partner can answer vocally)
Guidelines for Celina:
- For every level EXCEPT level 1 and 5 there will be word restrictions
- So, for level 2 only word restrictions, 3-4 include word restrictions and the other
set restriction for that level
- Customization for level 1, where the player can pick which restriction they want to do

Adaptations for Inclusive Classrooms

Accommodations for students with learning disabilities:
- Make sure that their partner is always encouraging and edifying to increase confidence
within students
- Make sure to promote a safe and comfortable environment where the students are
vulnerable to share their own opinions
ADD/ADHD:
- Encourage students that it is okay to ask for their target to repeat
- Restrictions could deal with body movements
- Restrictions:
- Words they HAVE to say while interviewing to keep them on task
- You have to repeat the answer that your target said to ensure that the detective
was actually listening
- You are allowed to only ask specific questions:
- Yes or No questions
- Only asking why questions
- Only asking what questions
- Only asking how questions
Writing Difficulties:
- Create a template for these students to fill out
- Fill in the blank
- Create suggestive questions they could ask their target
- WHY, HOW, WHAT questions
- Restrictions:
- Charades-- no talking facial recognition empathy
Listening comprehension Difficulties:
- Restrictions:
- You can only ask a question once your target has answered your previous
question
- You can only speak after your target is finished talking
- You can only have one free pass to ask your partner to repeat an answer
- You can only ask one question at a time
- You have to repeat what your target said to ensure that the detective was
actually listening
Possibly adding a reflection time to discuss and talk about their answers would help enforce
empathy upon each other.
Source:
https://www.understood.org/en
http://performancecritical.com/interactive-listening-the-key-to-effective-communication-part-1/

Project Pitch Version 1 11/8

Scoring Criteria 11/17

Topic of
Evaluation

Content Similarity
Empathy Skills:
understanding
different points
of views
Vocabulary
Similarity

Writing Skills

Complete
sentences/thoughts

Yes
(4 points)

Kind Of
(2 points)

No
(0 points)

Both pieces
have similar
answers to the
question at
hand.

There are some

places of
agreement but
also places
where the
contents dont
match

There is barely any

similarity between
the two pieces of
writing.

The words
match up to
each other
almost
perfectly.

Some of the
vocab is the
same and some
is different.

One piece of
writing is clearly
the work of a
different person.
The detective did
not sound similar
to the subject.

All of the
sentences are
complete, and
they go
together.
Effective
communication;
grammatically
correct English.

There are mostly

complete
sentences,
and/or some of
the sentences
seem out of
place.

There are more

incomplete
sentences than
complete ones,
and the paragraph
doesnt make
sense.

Topic of Evaluation

Yes

Content Similarity
Vocabulary Similarity
Complete
sentences/thoughts
Total:
Yes = 4 points, Kind of = 2 points, No= 0 points

Kind of

No