The Dangers Of Implicit Bias - Week 1 Of 2
- Alejandro L. Ruata
- Jan 29, 2018
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 17, 2020
Serious Game Project 1 - Ideas
Date: 01/29/18
For those who are not Becker students or staff and are unaware of what these ideas refer to, please read below...
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University X: Departments of Teacher Education and Psychology
A state funded University has an interdepartmental project grant for the use of creating a game which will replace or augment a current Teacher Training program on implicit bias. The teacher training is for undergraduate and graduate students in the education major who are going through the MA teacher certification program. Implicit bias is one module in the current training program which includes a series of lessons, an online test, and a final lesson which is a story module that emphasizes various forms of implicit bias.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
The goal is to replace the stories of the final lesson with a Serious Game.
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Idea 1
This game seeks to tackle the issue by showing how implicit bias leads to negative decisions from teacher to student through a short, story heavy game, with choices that hold different outcomes all showing the subtle and obvious ways implicit bias can harm potentially fruitful relationships.
This game is a story-heavy text-based adventure game with visual and role play elements. It will include dialogue choices from the perspective of the teacher towards their students. As the teacher, the main objective is to resolve the problems with the students through correct dialogue choices depending on their problems and the choices given to the player. The game (about 1 hour in length), plays out like any ‘Telltale Game’ you can think of [ ex. "The Walking Dead" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xMPTIo0Srs ] - though not as action heavy... obviously.
Examples(for mechanics and look)...
"The Walking Dead"
"Batman"
You will get dialogue choices as the teacher towards students. If you pick incorrectly (the choices that have bias instilled in it), the student will be further upset and the problem will fail to be solved. If you answer correctly though, with the right dialogue choice for the student, then they will resolve the student’s issues and become closer to that student, in essence being a better and more human teacher.
In choosing wrong, players will be punished for their implicit bias with the teacher clearly having soured the relationship with that particular student (and possibly the class, school, and surrounding community). This will discourage players against holding implicit bias’ against students for what they say (based upon religion, race, age, upbringing, etc.).
People are full of unconscious bias' toward the unfamiliar; their decision making abilities can be impacted as a result. This game will potentially help the player improve their social judgment by making situational decisions and seeing if their choices contain implicit bias, and the consequences of those bias' may or may not be.
The game will be fully 3D for the player to observe the character's interactions in a more stimulating and engaging environment than simply reading stories.
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Idea 2
The idea behind this game is to point out how a rush in judgement (implicit bias), in an attempt to gain control of the classroom quickly, can lead to punishment being handed out for no reason.
This is a 2D point and click game where you are playing in the perspective of a teacher teaching in front of a class.
[ex. These Kid Apps are the perfect foundation for something with a bit more meat in terms of content, objective/mechanics, and look - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtlFEz6TmE].
Periodically, whilst teaching, the player will be forced to turn away from the board and then turn back around, looking at the classroom again. Upon turning back around to address the students the first time, the game begins. Subtle changes will be put in at first, and after a short time the teacher turns around again. As it goes on the changes and disorder within the classroom will grow steadily worse.
As the teacher, it is the player’s job to punish any misdoings by students as soon as possible, so the player will be rewarded with more points/better student reviews for pointing out and kicking out the correct student sooner. But if the player gets it wrong, they get written up despite their incentive to kick out unruly students as quickly as possible.
This incentive to weed out unruly students and try to pick them out as soon as possible will lead to their bias’ being instilled in their actions in the game, leading to them being punished for it. Blaming a shifty African American student right off the bat with very little pinning that student as the actual troublemaker is the wrong way to play. Sacrificing a few points to turn around and allow more evidence to build against the real troublemaker is key. When the player chooses incorrectly, the wrong student would be sent to the office and the teacher is written up for their jumps in assumption (in game punishment is a complete loss or score - 0 points). This will showcase the negativity of implicit bias and how it can lead to students being punished unjustly - not to mention simulating teachers actively not following through on their jobs as fair and trusted educators.
The tension is great as points act as a timer of sorts (you start with 10000 lets say and it steadily drops over time). You are able to turn around early when facing the board, but it requires you to sacrifice points to do so.
The game idea combines elements of point and click, old spot the difference-type games as well as puzzle elements to identify trouble-making students.
Imagine the image above images animated, and on a timer, with menus on the children in your class detailing info like race, ethnicity, income, etc. to draw early conclusions on what they are capable of (despite the fact that real teachers don't actually get that info on file to view, we need to instill bias into the player somehow).
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Idea 3
The objective of this game is to show how implicit assumptions made about students solely based on their looks and initial attitude can lead to problems in actually resolving situations.
This is a Diner Dash-esque game (in terms of mechanics and look) where the player plays as a teacher, going around in a study hall solving problems using a set of possible solutions - solutions may include question, teach, accuse, and so on.
This game is all about strategy and time management. This style of gameplay, mixed with fast-paced decision-making is what will make this game unique - you'll be dealing with several students at once; the problems getting more and more vague and the solutions more difficult to decipher.
[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aPCrIJhpc0 ] - Diner Dash Example Footage
"Diner Dash"
Depending on the student types (black, white, rich, poor, sports buff, etc) certain problems will emerge, and the problems needing to be solved will progressively get harder and harder to discern from one another.
The player will have the teacher going to tables of students in study halls, trying to identify and solve problems between students. When they go, they have to make a choice to resolve the problem from a small list of possible solutions in order to satisfy the students at the study hall table. The students at the tables will be differentiated by gender, race, ethnicity, income, age, and so on. Beware, for some responses may contain bias', and if you pick those it will take longer to solve the issue, allowing chaos to erupt in the study hall and you losing the game.
The player's goal is to improve empathy and effective communication with every student despite their background in a timely manner.
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One of these ideas will be chosen, titled, and discussed in greater depth next week. I will be assigned a game design role and expand on one of these ideas in regards to my role, along with the following students...
Robbie: https://seriousgamesseriousproblems.wordpress.com/2018/01/29/serious-game-project-1-ideas-01-29-18/
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Citation of Referenced Article (never pulled from directly, however, many talking points come from here):
Four Ways Teachers Can Reduce Implicit Bias. (n.d.). Retrieved January 29, 2018, from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_teachers_can_reduce_implicit_bias
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