The Luhmann Quiz
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Introduction
As all of us had to develop a game during our project phase, we had to ask ourselves: What would we like to do as a game? We immediately knew what we did not like: As neither of us is really into playing computer games, we knew that we would not do any kind of PC game. However, we all like playing with cards and, thus, we decided to do a card game. So, we knew the medium, but not the content or the exact way the card game was supposed to be played. However, Vera and I had been to the same school and we used to always play a quiz in our geography lessons, which the whole school loved. As our seminar is on media theory, we decided to change the geography quiz into a Luhmann quiz.
The Making of the Quiz
After we had decided that we wanted to do a Luhmann quiz, we had to make up questions with short answers. Therefore, we hat a look at the Luhmann text as well as Understanding Luhmann. Moreover, we looked at the Wiki-entries on Luhmann and on other Internet sources such as Wikipedia. We decided to make up 30 to 35 questions. However, as Luhmann's systems theory is very complex we had difficulties making up questions that others could answer easily and that would have different answers. When we had all of our questions together, we designed the cards. We wanted to have cards with the answers on one side and the answers on the other side. Moreover, we wanted to have a picture or a bodure on the cards to make them more appealing. However, we first tried to design the cards with photoshop, but we were facing major problems so that we, in the end, created the cards with Microsoft Word. The next difficulty we faced was what answer and what question were supposed to be on the same card. We had developed a sytem, but later Vera noticed that it did not work that way and, hence, we had to change the whole question-answer system again (I guess this will only make sense when you either have played the game or have read the 'How to Play the Game' part). In the end, we did not want the cards to suffer when playing the game as we had put so much work into the game. Therefore, we laminated the cards.
How to Play the Game
The Luhmann Quiz is a group game. Depending on the size of the group, there can be between two and ten groups. However, we usually played the game with around five grops. Each group gets the same amount of cards (or almost the same amount of cards if the former way is not possible). The sides displaying the answers have to be up so that the answers can easily be read. The team who has question 1 (However, question 1 is not on the back of the card with answer 1, and answer 1 is not the answer to question 1) reads out the first question, for example: "What is the name of Luhmann's famous theory?". Then each team has to look at their cards to see if they have the right answer to question 1. If a team decides that they have the correct answer, they raise their hands and say for example: "Answer 14: 'System Theory'". If the answer is correct, the team gets one point, if the answer is wrong, the team looses one point. If the team did not have any points before giving a wrong answer, it has one demerit now. If the team who has the right answer does not notice that they have it, they loose one point as well. How do you check which answer is right when you are not sure? The administrator of the game, who is also responsible for noting down the teams' points, has the so called control card or master card. To each question number, the right answer number is noted down. For example, next to question 1, it says answer 14. So if a player reads out answer number 14, the administrator knows that the answer is right. If a player would read out answer number 32, the administrator would know that the answer is not correct. After one team has read out the right answer, the team would turn around the card and would read out the question on the back of the card. Then, every group has to look out for the right answer to this second question. If the answer is found, the question on the back of the card is read out and so on.
End of the Game
The game can either and when one team has no cards anymore or when there are no cards left all in all; that is when we reach the answer on the card with question 1 on the back of the card. However, when playing the game in school, the game can also end after 45 minutes when the lesson is over. Yet, no matter what variation you want to play, you have to make sure you agree on one before you start the game. When the game is over, the team with the most points wins.
Advantages of the Game
One advantage of the game is that it is a group game and, thus, the interaction amongst the players is enhanced. Moreover, when you play this game in school, not only the good students are going to answer the questions, but also other students. The reason for this is that the good students who might know all the answers are not allowed to say the answers unless they have a card saying the right answer. As Vera and I have played this game in school before, we know that the good students will not say the right answers if they do not have the correct answer themselves as they do not want to help other teams gain points so that their team is going to win. Additionally, this game can be used in all kind of contexts. One can develop a game for sportsmen, biology, musicians, etc.
Disadvantages of the Game
When playing the game, one has to make sure that not all people who know a lot about the topic dealt with in the quiz are in the same group and all the people who do not know a lot on the given subject are in another group together. However, Vera and I never experienced any problems due to the strucutre of the teams. Moreover, we found out that it is difficult to have a highly complex topic such as Luhmann as a card game, because it was often hard to find the right answer. In other cases, an answer might have been correct for two different questions. Nonetheless, when you use this game for a less complex content such as the geography of Europe. The answers will be easier and unambigious.
Overall Conclusion
Although the teams had some difficulties playing the game due to the complexity of Luhmann's theories, the game itself worked. Moreover, we as a group can reccomend the game as we have never experienced any problems with the game when playing it with geographical, less complex topics. Moreover, we can recommend the game to all teachers, as all students liked playing the game and we alsways learned at least some new facts about Europe, Africa or whatever topic the game was on. However, you need to find the right mixture between known answers and unknown answers so that the students or players do not get frustrated, but still learns something new.
Authors
The Luhmann Quiz was developed by Luise, Vera and Nora
--Nora H. 16:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Feedback
I agree with you on the advantages of this game mechanic for a quiz-game, as an easily adaptable, group oriented game. Also on the disadvantages, that it mostly tests existing knowledge, and that it is unsuited to deal with complex areas of knowledge, or where answers/questions are negotiable, interpretable or ambigious in meaning.
I had similar problems when I tried to create three games to exemplify the spirit of the 'big three' learning paradigms of Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism. For a short overview consult e.g. this comparision chart [1] or Mergel's overview [2].
I came up with three games that dealt differently with the same knowledge - a true-false-distinction, a verbal description, and a creative construction of complex knowledge. Disadvantage, as with your quiz, is also the prerequisite of having players already experienced in the topic:
