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Celina
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Jennie Chiu
Lee Williams, Mary Ellen Potter, Grace Hwang, Shelby Ware, Rachel Han,
Abboud
September 22, 2016
Decision Rationale for Undercover Detectives

Learning Goals
Players 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 writing skills by increasing their ability to connect ideas in an integrated, sequential
fashion to convey concrete information. Their grammar and sentence structure will also
be improved.
Key Game Components
To begin a game of Undercover Detectives, a group of players will break up into randomly
assigned pairs (sensitive to teacher discretion). Each individual will receive a detective kit,
complete with mission cards and detective apparel. 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. If players are struggling, there
will be Hint cards that may be distributed by the teacher to assist students in their information
collection.
Based on what a player learns about his/her partner in the interview, he/she will write a piece of
varying length and difficulty (according to his/her level in the game) 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. Anonymity will be preserved for each piece, and points will be allocated based upon a
rating system in which the entire class votes upon how well each piece represented one persons
particular perspective. The better a player is at seeing the world from her partners eyes and
communicating that perspective, the more points she receives.
When players obtain a predesignated number of points, they will move on to the next level. 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 upper-elementary aged students in grades 4 and 5 to be
played during class time. The game will most likely span several days or weeks and potentially
become a semester long game.
Rationale
Preliminary

The game was conceived to be a fun way for elementary aged students to further develop
empathy skills in young people. Traditionally, the capacity of viewing the world from another
persons viewpoint has not been explicitly taught in the school context. Three particular lines of
logic motivated our desire to design this game:
1. The status of perspective-taking in a game-based format as an alternative approach to
typical content pedagogy
2. The inherent motivation we believe to exist in learning about ones peers.
3. The motivation that arises from healthy competition among peers.
Our specific game components were chosen in part due to their alignment with the effective
learning principles found in quality game design, as outlined by James Paul Gee (2005).
Relevant learning principles include:
the Cycle of Expertise (Challenge and Consolidation)/Well-Ordered Problems (because
you must reach mastery of the empathy and writing skills required for each level before
you move on)
On-Demand Information (because hints will be given to students who need help) (Gee,
2005).
Premise (because the players will be engaging in the game as detectives who need to
uncover classified information about their partners) (Fullerton, 2008).
Performance Before Competence (because players have the ability to participate in the
game before they have mastered empathy and writing skills. Ideally, the game will help
them develop these skills) (Gee, 2005).
Skills as Strategies (Because it forces players to practice skills that they might not
normally practice/want to practice in order to have a chance to win the game (Gee, 2005).
Research-Based
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 criterion while still benefitting from the

effective mechanisms of empathic growth demonstrated by various studies and current game
designs (Schonert-Reichl et al, 2015; ).
Implementation Plan
Each student will receive a detective kit containing a case folder and notepad. The notepad will
serve as an outlet for the student to write down information she has discovered from her partners.
This information will help give the students background on what to write down on the profiles of
their partners. Each case folder will contain papers detailing the players respective challenges,
mission card/questions, and protocol. The mission inside the case folder will correspond with
each players level. Missions will include challenges (that progress in difficulty) such as word
restrictions/obligations. The case folder will also include all of the students past writings, so that
she may reflect and see her personal improvement in writing over time. Each level will provide a
reward in addition to a rank increase. For instance, the first level will start with a detective hat.
As the student progresses through the levels, she will receive more rewards, such as a badge and
magnifying glass, as a physical reminder of her objective to be the highest-ranked detective. This
game is very adaptable to any classroom environment as long as the teacher is in control and
aware of the atmosphere in which the students are working. The teacher will be provided with a
comprehensive rules sheet that will maintain a baseline for her to reference. The rules sheet will
contain the suggested point system rankings, the challenges, and contingency plans. Students
will be evenly distributed around the classroom in pairs so as to encourage privacy in their
discussions.
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