Collections 3 | Simulations
All of the Sims on the site handily gathered together in one place.
The Sociological Detectives: Trial: And Error
The latest addition to the burgeoning Sociological Detectives™ Universe is a role-playing simulation of the Research Process – and Popper’s Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Research in particular – that uses the analogy of a criminal investigation to help students understand and experience how and why the research process is structured. The simulation takes the students […]
Essay Planning: Killing The Question
This is an idea that I found on an old Rachel Whitfield blog page that I’ve pimped-up a bit but which is essentially her’s – although part of the attraction, for me, was that it fitted quite neatly into my own ideas about Sociology students taking on the role of Sociological Detectives. In this particular […]
Using Analogies: How Inequalities Create Inequality
This Lesson Outline is designed (yes, really) as a kind of skeleton structure you can flesh-out with ideas and information as and how you see fit. In other words, while it provides a basic structure for a lesson it doesn’t necessarily tell you what to teach, which means it’s not something you can just take […]
Would You Rather?
“Would You Rather?” is a simple word game that involves students making a choice between two (or more) opposed choices that’s not only simple to describe, construct and run but also has the really big plus, as far as teachers are concerned, of encouraging students to think about ideas and information and make choices about […]
Gamified Homework: Climbing Homework Mountain
This gamified homework variation, although having a superficial similarity to its Climb Every Mountain counterpart, combines the idea of giving students a “free choice” of homework with clearly-structured limits as a way of achieving an ultimate homework goal (reaching the top of the aforesaid mountain). The basic idea here, therefore, is that students start at […]
Gamified Homework: Climb Every Mountain
This second example of gamification takes a slightly different and less organisationally-complex approach to setting homework than its Earn-to-Learn predecessor. It does this by adopting the mechanics of a game board: all students start at the same point and work their way to the top (or end-point) by traversing different levels. In this particular example […]
Gamified Homework: Earn to Learn
Although the basic idea behind Takeaway Homework is perfectly serviceable, teachers at Community College and A-level are more-likely to want to use homework as a way of getting students to practice exam-style questions. It is, of course, possible to tweak the Takeaway system to, say, require students to complete a single homework task each week, […]
Sociological Sims from Cengage
I’ve continually argued that games and simulations have an important part to play in the sociology classroom – I’ve found, created and posted a fair number – partly because they can be counter-intuitive in a way that forces students to confront and reassess their taken-for-granted ideas about social behaviour – from education to inequality – […]
Sociology Through Video Games
Although I’ve long been a big fan of video games (mainly, it must be said, those that involve shooting a lot of things in what passes for their face), until recently very few games seemed to have much relevance or application to A-level Sociology per se. Unless you count a predilection for pretend shooting as […]