Crime and Deviance Gamified: Episode 2

An immersive Sociology Sim in which students take-on the role of a sociological detective to explore aspects of the A-level Sociology curriculum.

Following slowly on the heels of Episode 1: Concepts of crime, deviance, social order and social control comes this new offering: “Episode 2: The Relativity of Crime and Deviance” and if you want to know something about the background and rationale of this series of PowerPoint adventures then you can get up to speed by reading about the first episode. Otherwise, Episode 2 is more of the same (consistency being very much key in this particular game) although it does, of course, cover different ground: a mix of the well-trodden and the paths less travelled.

In the first category the focus is on Interactionist ideas, particularly from writers like Becker although there are a couple of pathways that tough on Mead and Blumer. The latter are well-signposted so students can avoid them if they find the ideas too advanced for what they need. There’s also a section built around the work of Reiman and focused on a slightly-different interpretation of relativity, one based on the idea of differential law enforcement.

The paths less travelled generally contain information that it might be nice for your students to know, such as Durkheim’s ideas about the relativity of crime and deviance and their influence on early Interactionist theories. The other main pathway introduces Zemiology and its slightly different take on relativity.

In general the episode covers one essential area for students to cover (Interactionism), one area that offers up a slightly different interpretation of relativity (Reiman) and two others (Durkheimian Functionalism and Zemiology) that you and your students might find optional,

Playing the simulation is relatively straightforward. Students simply move from slide to slide through the story, making relevant branching choices at various points if they want to pursue one line of enquiry over another. Some slides also have on-page hyperlinks that allow them to pull-up further information about a concept, theory or piece of evidence.

How you use the Sim with your students is, of course, up to you but, for what it’s worth, I envisaged it mainly being used by students outside the classroom. I could be wrong and it would be nice to think some enterprising teachers will find ways to use it differently and perhaps more effectively. Who knows. Not me, that’s for sure.

While Episode 1 was available as both PowerPoint Show (.ppsx) and PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx) files, Episode 2 is only available as a PowerPoint Presentation. This avoids the oft-stated problem that modern browsers treat their users like particularly stupid children who can’t be trusted to know what they either want or what they’re doing.

Once downloaded, I suggest you load it into PowerPoint and save it as a ppsx file to give to your students since this format stops them being able to see the individual  slides outside of their intended place the simulation.

As a final note the Presentation has Top of Formbeen set to Kiosk mode which means right-clickwill neither bring-up a menu nor move the user to the previous slide. Students can only move through the file using the hyperlinks therein.