Innovating Civil Discourse: An Instructional Design Hackathon

The hackathon invites undergraduates, graduate students and young scholars from Boston area colleges and universities to design a lesson plan or game that helps students engage with difficult, contested, or uncomfortable conversations. Lesson plans should be ready to be run by an instructor in an undergraduate level course without special preparation or technology. Games should be usable for people who can pick them up and play. 

Each team selects one of two tracks, choosing the problem area their activity is designed to address. In addition, teams choose a medium — either a lesson plan or a game. The combination of challenge and medium create the design space. There is no prescribed solution.

Projects will be judged by:

• Marta McAlister, Director of Gemini for Education
• Jake Fay, Director of Education at the Constructive Dialogue Institute
• Eric Beerbohm, Faculty Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics

Tracks

Track 1: Civil Discourse

What does it look like to have a meaningful conversation on a hard topic? One where people actually engage with views that aren't their own, and the conversation doesn't fall apart?

Your aim is to design something that helps people build their capacity for civil discourse. It can be a game or a lesson plan. What matters is that someone walks away able to do something they couldn't do before.

Track 2: Ethics in Context

How should we decide what to do when confronted by a moral dilemma? Design something that helps people work through touch choices  in a specific context.

Mediums 

Medium 1: Lesson Plan

Design a lesson plan from the perspective of an instructor. Your lesson plan should lay out your learning goals, timeline of activities, needed worksheets or resources, and guidance for the instructor. The lesson needs to include an activity that gets every student engaged. You will run a teaser lesson during the showcase. 

Medium 2: Tabletop Game

Design a game that’s actually fun to play, but also reaches the purpose of your track. Your game should have a clear structure: rules people can pick up quickly, a way to get everyone playing at the same time, and a natural arc that moves the group through a given topic. Each group working on a game will receive a collection of game components to work with including a deck of cards, meeples (small humanoid tokens) in various colors and dice. 

Two factors for judging are applied  across all cells:

1. Active learning: “Learn by Doing” — participants must be consistently doing something that leads to the achievement of learning outcomes; passive instruction is not allowed.
2. Universal engagement: Everyone is participating and doing something most of the time, so active learning isn’t done in turns, but collectively achieved  across the duration of the activity. 

Schedule

9:00am Kickoff + framing (30 min)

10:00am Design sprint begins

12:30pm Lunch (provided)

1:00pm Final polish

3:00pm Pitches + judging 

5:00pm Break while judges deliberate 

5:30pm Awards + social

6:00pm Event ends