A Role-Playing Game for Teaching Science Process

1. Lecture notes and organizing material on web

2. Text: Hawking's Brief History of Time

3. Lectures on cosmology

4. Role-playing game on particle spectroscopy
   1. Disguised particle data.
   2. Lectures on methods
   3. Submission of papers by student groups over EMail system
   4. Refereeing by instructor
   5. Publication of "Reviews of PHYS 146"
   6. "Conferences."
   7. Editorials playing the role of review papers.

5. Group-learning aspects.
   1. Credit is given to all participating members of group.
   2. Groups work in and out of class.
   3. Help available for individual groups.
   4. Exam questions covering the game.

1. "One thing my group learned in this game was that reporting findings was just as or more important than discovering them."

2. "When asking members of other groups the ways in which they attempted to solve a particular problem, many of the ideas were almost always different from those of the group you were working with, and I felt that this had an enormous impact on the fast results...."

3. "Unfortunately we had much difficulty in determining how our work fit into the particle game. In retrospect, we should have submitted our preliminary results without worrying about their meaning. This would have allowed other groups to use our information in furthering their efforts." [a PHYS146 Prize winner]

4. "After working the entire previous class on what we felt was information suitable for publication, we handed it over to our one other partner to type up for publication. [It was] never typed.... Our findings were published, but not by our group."

As might be expected, there were a number of perceptive comments about competition:

1. "[I]f a group thought that they had a new idea which no one else had thought of, sometimes, they would slow down their pace of work. ...[M]ore times than not, other groups would be able to think of the idea themselves and hand in a paper on the idea. This brought a strong competition to the Particle Game."

2. "[T]he groups were hesitant to share information with other groups because the students took the game as not only an educational experience but also as a competition."

3. "While I struggled to come up with new evidence worthy of publication, some groups were excelling and publishing paper on top of paper. As I read these publications I was left to wonder what they were getting that I was missing."

4. "There were, however, some problems with the Game. For one, many of the participants were either above or below the 'average' scientific knowledge or ability of the class. As such, some of the groups moved much farther ahead much faster than some of the other groups. This led to some of the publications being rather impenetrable to some of the class."

Not everyone made the proper connections between the game and the "real world":

"I think that our class did not resemble a true scientific community because members of a scientific community obviously understand what they are going to be investigating."

Some of the students seemed to really understand what is interesting about being a scientist. The two quotes below came from nonscience majors:

1. "It was interesting to just fool around with the tables of particles to see what we could discover. I guess in a way this was the point of the particle game."

2. "[I]t was hard to believe that something so 'pretty' as the subgroup [of] spin 3/2 baryons could have been extracted from such a previously random data table." [a PHYS146 Prize winner]

Finally, one student had an interesting summary of the overall effect of the process:

"With so many groups working on the same thing or different things or even individuals in groups working independently, a slightly controlled chaos was the preferred scientific process of discovery."

1. Many possible subjects would work.

2. Library research could be used.

3. Instructor must have good general background in subject matter.

4. At least nine independent groups are needed.

5. Subject must have some productive but routine tasks so all students can do something.

6. There must be enough ideas to be discovered to allow publishing several issues of the journal.

7. It must be possible to make significant progress in the time allotted.

8. Some groups need substantive and emotional support to deal with the frustration inherent in any research project.

9. There is a high grading burden.

10. It must be possible for each group of students to meet with the instructor or an assistant sometime during each classroom session [HLS].