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 them – something that has the extra advantage of helping students carry-out evaluation without necessarily realising that’s what they’re doing.

And because it requires no pre-preparation it can be played anywhere – online or in the classroom – and at any time during a lesson (although you may find it works most effectively after you’ve introduced / explained two or more opposing ideas).

How To Play

The teacher poses a simple question that always has the format:

Would you rather be “X” or “Y” (or, if you want to make things a little more complicated and interesting, “Z”).

For example, if you’ve been teaching something like research methodology in sociology you could ask the question:

“Would you rather be a positivist or an interpretivist?”

If you have a small class you can give your students 5 – 10 minutes (or whatever suits your purpose best) to consider:

1. Which answer they want to choose.

2. Their reasons for choosing that answer: these can be positive (“I would rather be a positivist because…”) negative – “I would rather not be a positivist because…” – or a combination of the two.

At the end of the allotted time you then bring the class together to discuss “What they would rather be” and, most-importantly, “Why they would rather be it” (the very useful evaluative part of the equation).

If you have a large class there’s nothing to stop you running the game as above, but a variation here is to give your students a few minutes to think about which they would rather be (a positivist or an interpretivist) and then get them to form small groups based on their choice (for example, a group of “positivists” and a group of “interpretivists” or, if you have a really large class, 2 or 3 small groups of each).

At the end of the allotted time you can again bring the groups together for a class debrief.

As the teacher, whether playing online or offline, your role is one of offering encouragement and guidance to individuals and / or groups as and if necessary – to clarify or explain any points students might raise during the game, for example. At the end of the game, in the discussion phase, you would run it as you would run any class discussion – summarising different viewpoints, pushing for further elaboration / justification / explanation or whatever.

The beauty of this game, apart from its elegant simplicity, is that it encourages your students to not only assimilate the stuff you’ve taught (which is obviously important) but also to engage in some higher-order thinking:

They have to:

make decisions (“I would rather be…”)

evaluate their reasons for making those decisions (consider the pros and cons of their choices)

justify their decisions (“I would rather be…because…”).

draw conclusions based on the evidence that’s been presented (after the class has come together to discuss their arguments for and against).

Going a Step Further…

Although the above describes a relatively simple “Either / Or” session once students have got the hang of what you’re asking them to do you can, if necessary, develop the game to add a few further layers of complexity. This might, for example, involve:

1. Providing more than two options (such as Positivist / Interpretivst and Realist in the above example).

2. Providing a context to their decision. For example, if you were teaching research methods in sociology a “question with context” might involve asking:

“Would you rather use a questionnaire or participant observation to study criminal behaviour?”.

3. Asking more-general questions that aren’t necessarily focused tightly on a Specification but which may nevertheless contribute something towards the general understanding of a topic and, most importantly, encourage the generic development of evaluations skills…

And Finally…

Although the example I’ve used here is drawn from Sociology there’s absolutely nothing in the above that precludes Psychology teachers (or indeed teachers of any subject) using “Would You Rather?” in their classroom.

Or video monitor come to that.