Author: Dr. Federica Farolfi.
Students at postgraduate taught (PGT) level rarely have the chance to design an experiment independently and receive detailed, tailored feedback. While some, particularly those with a background in Psychology, may have had some experience conducting surveys, this is typically done under close supervision. As a result, the process of designing an experiment can initially seem overwhelming, given the number of decisions involved and the level of critical thinking required. One of the formative activities I have developed to help students prepare for creating their own experimental designs is the “Experimental Game.” (developed within my course in Experimental Design and Methods for Behavioural).
THE GAME
The Experimental Game lets students experience the creative process of developing an experimental design in a structured, engaging group setting. The activity draws on the logic of experiential and playful learning, in which students build understanding through concrete, active experience and low-stakes play rather than through instruction alone (Kolb, 1984; Whitton, 2018).
For the workshop where the Experimental Game takes place, students were given no prior information about the activity. At the start of the session, they are asked to form groups of four to five and to select a team leader. The workshop is usually held in a spacious room with large, well-separated tables (see Fig 1), so that each group has enough space and privacy to work independently without interference from others.
Each group is tasked with developing an experimental design around a set of mandatory elements drawn randomly through a card-based system (see Fig 2 for an overview of the deck). There are four categories of card – How, Who, What, How, and Random Element, shown in rows 1, 2,3, 4 respectively in Figure 2.
The How cards determine the methodological approach (e.g., laboratory, online, or field experiments). The Who cards define the target population (for example, restaurant owners, bus drivers, or elderly individuals). The What cards specify the main concept or behavioural phenomenon under investigation (for example, overconfidence, eco-anxiety, or egocentric bias). Finally, the Random Element card introduces an unexpected item (for example, an orange) that must be incorporated into the design, encouraging creative and flexible thinking. This deliberate use of constraint is not incidental: imposing a fixed, sometimes arbitrary element on an otherwise open task has been shown to prompt more creative solutions rather than fewer, precisely because it pushes students away from their obvious defaults (Haught-Tromp, 2017; Tromp and Baer 2017; Acar et al. 2019).
Team leaders randomly select one card from each category, resulting in a combination of four elements (setting, subject pool, target phenomenon, random element). After a draw, for instance, one group might have to design an experiment set in the lab, with a pool of bus drivers as a selected participants, testing eco-anxiety in relation with physical effort as part of the design. Groups are given 35 to 40 minutes to develop their design. Each team then presents its proposal to the rest of the class, and I provide immediate feedback on key aspects such as feasibility, reproducibility, overall quality, and level of sophistication. Once all groups have presented, I offer a ranking of the designs.
BENEFITS
This activity offers several pedagogical benefits:
i) it simulates the brainstorming process involved in developing an experimental design and provides practice for the individual assignment students complete later in the course;
ii) it reflects the collaborative nature of most experimental research, where effective communication and teamwork are essential;
iii) it mirrors, on a smaller scale, real research conditions, where research questions and objectives are often externally defined and may not fully align with individual interests, and where time constraints are a key factor;
iv) it exposes students to the ideas of other groups, giving them opportunities to ask questions and provide peer feedback.
These last two benefits draw on well-established advantages of cooperative learning and peer review, through which students often learn as much from evaluating and questioning others’ work as from the feedback they receive on their own (Johnson & Johnson, 2009; Nicol, Thomson & Breslin, 2014).
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the cohort (with students from backgrounds such as Physics, Finance, Psychology, and Neuroscience) the activity is particularly effective at fostering a rich and inclusive exchange of perspectives. It allows students to contribute diverse viewpoints, enriching both the design process and the resulting proposals, while the use of general, non-discipline-specific constraints ensures that everyone can engage on an equal footing. From an EDI perspective, this makes it a genuinely inclusive activity.
IMPACT ON SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT AND ILOS
The impact of this activity extends to the summative assessment, and the intended learning outcomes it is meant to evidence. Students are later asked to build their own experimental design from a shared research background (for example, the effect of flexible working arrangements on employees’ productivity and job satisfaction) and to write it up as a report, using a template that mimics a real pre-registration document that experimenters will typically face (see Open Science Framework, OSF). This task is designed as an authentic assessment (Villarroel et al., 2018; Gulikers et al., 2004). It also includes a dedicated reflective component in which students take on the role of the experimenter. In that role, they consider the ethical implications of their proposed study for participants’ well-being, and identify the remedies or safety measures the study would require.
The Experimental Game rehearses that developing task in miniature. Because students work through it as a live group in the classroom, the process of developing an ethically sound experimental design unfolds visibly: each team receives feedback on its own design while also hearing the other teams’ proposals and the responses they draw (Chi et al. 2008; Nicol 2021)
In terms of intended learning outcomes, several elements can be tied with and correlated to clear learning objectives such as turning ideas into research questions and hypotheses, or demonstrate the ability to consider ethical dimensions. Within the game, groups must turn their randomly selected card elements into a workable research question and a set of testable predictions. They must then specify their design in enough detail such as rationale, measures, planned analysis, to populate the sections of a pre-registration form.
Ethical considerations are also discussed openly during the presentation stage. Since each group works with a different population and setting, students are exposed to a range of defensible ethical cases across different contexts, building a broader sense of what good practice looks like before constructing their own for the summative assessment described above. Alongside this, the workshop develops teamwork, oral presentation of technical material to a mixed-discipline audience, and creative problem-solving under constraint – all of it collaborative, timed, and in play rather than under assessment.
LOWERING BARRIERS, IMPROVING AUTONOMY
Student feedback on the workshop has been extremely positive, both in person and through official course evaluation. For many, it was their first experience of developing an experimental design within predefined constraints, and the interactive format helped make the process both accessible and engaging. More broadly, the Experimental Game is one attempt to lower the barriers students face when taking on unfamiliar, high-autonomy research tasks, and it would lend itself well to more systematic evaluation as a SoTL output.
CITED WORKS
Acar, O. A., Tarakci, M., & van Knippenberg, D. (2019). Creativity and innovation under constraints: a cross-disciplinary integrative review. Journal of Management, 45(1), 96 – 121.
Chi, M. T. H., Roy, M., & Hausmann, R. G. M. (2008). Observing tutorial dialogues collaboratively: insights about human tutoring effectiveness from vicarious learning. Cognitive Science, 32(2), 301 – 341.
Gulikers, J. T. M., Bastiaens, T. J., & Kirschner, P. A. (2004). A five-dimensional framework for authentic assessment. Educational Technology Research and Development, 52(3), 67 – 86.
Haught-Tromp, C. (2017). The Green Eggs and Ham hypothesis: How constraints facilitate creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 11(1), 10 – 17.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 365 – 379.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Nicol, D., Thomson, A., & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(1), 102 – 122.
Nicol, D. (2021). The power of internal feedback: exploiting natural comparison processes. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(5), 756 – 778.
Tromp, C., & Baer, J. (2022). Creativity from constraints: theory and applications to education. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 46, 101184.
Villarroel, V., Bloxham, S., Bruna, D., Bruna, C., & Herrera-Seda, C. (2018). Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(5), 840 – 854.
Whitton, N. (2018). Playful learning: tools, techniques, and tactics. Research in Learning Technology, 26, 2035.