The World Communities Game was developed as a means of encouraging students to consider the relationships and interactions that take place between nations, whilst addressing a variety of both General Capabilities and subject-specific achievement standards.
The game divides students into nations and each student is assigned a role - Government/Dictator, Banker, Ambassador to the United Nations, National Media - which they keep for the duration of the game. The roles carry different responsibilities and students are required to carry out different tasks according to their role. Each country group inhabits a circle in the space, the size of which is dependent on their nation’s population density. Countries are then assigned tokens (both positive and negative) that correspond to that nation’s situation in the real world. This initial token distribution is paired with both information and discussion around the uneven distribution of resources such as food, water and advantageous commodities such as oil. Students are able to access the ‘Trading Floor’ at specific points during the game, each country attempting to rid themselves of their negative tokens, such as disease, whilst increasing their positive holdings. The development of trading partnerships and also with wider alliances between countries force students to develop negotiation skills extremely quickly! Some of these negotiations also take place via Twitter, which is the medium used by each country’s National Media - sometimes with some very entertaining results!
As well as the ongoing activities of trading, ‘Opportunity Cards,’ and ‘Situation Cards,’ - disasters befalling individual countries - the students all participate in a super-challenge each week. These large scale disasters both test and develop the students’ problem-solving abilities and offer the opportunities for connections to be made between the game and the content of specific subjects.
The Challenges:
Following initial set-up and token distribution in Week 1, each week has seen a new challenge confront the students.
Week 2: The Ebola Challenge.
Students were faced with an outbreak of the deadly virus in several nations, and were given a time frame in which they had to act to prevent the disease spreading. Every twenty minutes during game play, the virus would spread to three new nations. Ebola could also be contracted if someone traded with an infected nation - the disease being represented by pegs added to the player’s badges. This challenge provided an opportunity to not only reflect on the world’s response to a crisis, but also to link to the Religious Education syllabus’ focus on ‘belonging.’ It became clear very quickly that when the students had to choose between charitable treatment of an infected country versus protecting their own nation, that their loyalties were divided. Interestingly, this challenge saw the students make decisions that were in the greater interest of the world community, rather than those that would only benefit themselves. The students who form the United Nations used the International Monetary Fund to purchase vaccines for those nations who were most stricken, whilst other nations opted to ‘share’ any vaccines they managed to purchase. The sole exception to this display of generosity was the trading floor, where those students displaying an Ebola peg were assiduously avoided - truly the modern-day equivalent of the biblical leper!
Week 3: The Energy Crisis.
Week 3 focused on the cross-curricular priority of sustainability, which also links closely with both Religious Education and Science. Students were offered the opportunity to trade in their Oil tokens at inflated rates. Once many of them had taken advantage of this offer, they were informed that the world was running short of oil, and only countries with means of sustainable energy would survive. Countries had to maintain certain levels of Infrastructure and Sustainability tokens by specific points in the game, or face sanctions imposed on their other tokens. They were given the opportunity to earn these tokens by firstly coming up with alternative energy suggestions to present to the panel of ‘scientists’ or by managing to assign responsibility for global warming to another nation by means of a media campaign. Meanwhile, the United Nations were given the task of regulating the world’s oil supply. They were informed that each country had to meet a certain quota of Oil Tokens by the end of game play, and were faced with the task of redistributing the oil supplies. This required these students to weigh their options carefully and forced them to balance their loyalty to their individual nations with their task of catering for the greater good. The increasing threshold required for sustainability and infrastructure tokens created the game’s first refugee crisis. In order to remain a sovereign nation, each country must always hold a minimum of one food, one water, one healthcare and one infrastructure token. If they do not have these, then the country is disbanded and the players become refugees, dependent on the whims of foreign governments for their survival. Following the energy crisis, eight countries failed to meet the threshold, but were rescued by the goodwill of others in the world community, who donated tokens so that these countries could maintain their status as nations.
Week 4: Religious Division and the Threat of Terrorism.
In week 4, the students explored the different religions of their countries and how these can cause both unity and division. Initially, the students were limited to trading with other countries who had the same dominant religion as them, which proved difficult for those with less common religious preferences as they were left with no opportunities to trade. The countries could re-establish trading partnerships by purchasing ‘Acts of Charity,’ which could be given to a country with a different religion, along with positive tokens. Conversely, they could contribute to a divided world community by purchasing an ‘Act of Terror,’ which would land their chosen nation with a high proportion of negative tokens, and would not create a trading friendship. The United Nations met for their challenge, where they were informed that an unknown terrorist group had placed a bomb in The Dome of the Rock, and was demanding a ransom of 70% of the world’s wealth to defuse it. This caused intense debate, with the result being that the United Nations would not negotiate with terrorists. Rather than paying the ransom, they assembled a large proportion of the world’s military tokens, and used these to overcome the terrorists - an outcome that had not been thought of in planning the challenge, but which developed as a result of the student’s discussions and cooperation.
Week 5: Age of Empires.
Week 5 saw the introduction of imperialism to the World Communities Game. Sixteen new, unpopulated nations were added to the game, and existing countries were given the chance to colonise these in the hopes of collecting the new nation’s resources and eventually building their own empire. In order to colonise, existing nations had to purchase ships to take them to their colony, settlements to establish their presence and had to build a city in their new land, before they were able to collect the resource tokens outlined in the country’s ‘Profile Card.’ Any country that colonised more than three new nations would claim an Empire Card - something that would prove to be advantageous in weeks to come. At the same time, the United Nations were given the task of creating their own Declaration of Human Rights. After exploring the real version, the students became focused on exploring the meaning of the idea of equality, and the first draft of their declaration focused heavily on the idea that individuals deserve equal treatment in spite of their different circumstanced. Several members of the United Nations wanted to take this further, and establish a more extreme economic equality by redistributing tokens fairly, but faced with an explanation of communism, this faction was defeated. The colonisation challenge is an ongoing challenge, with countries able to continue to build their empires throughout the remainder of the game.
Upcoming Challenges:
With three weeks of game play left, the students will first face the division of Palestine, which will see the establishment of Israel as a country with it’s own identity. Following this, Week 7 will offer the opportunity for nuclear armament before the game ends in Week 8 with a spectacular apocalypse scenario.
The Task:
The World Communities Game is very much a hands-on experience, which we have found to contribute to a high level of engagement. In order to assess students’ understanding of the concepts covered, each group is required to create a weekly vlog (not a spelling error) responding to a series of prompts corresponding with each week’s challenge. The prompts include practical questions about the game itself, but also require students to consider the real world situation that relates to that particular challenge. The students will be marked on three of their vlog submissions, with the marks for the task feeding into Religious Education, Geography and English. This project offers opportunities to address numerous General Capabilities under the headings of Personal and Social Capabilities, Intercultural Understanding, ICT Capabilities and Critical and Creative Thinking. Numeracy is also addressed, with students required to make purchases, trades and account for token levels on a continuous basis.
This is the second year that the World Communities Game has been played, and it is a project that generates a great deal of excitement for both students and staff. The opportunity to bring elements of play into the experience is one that has visible benefits. The majority of students are highly invested in their country’s success, and look forward to hearing their new challenge each week. The students who comprise the United Nations enjoy the chance to debate each other’s views on topics that are not usually discussed with students their age. They also respond to the fact that staff are acting as facilitators and that they are largely responsible for determining the outcome of the game. To that end, conflicts between group members are their responsibility. Staff run the game and ‘fine’ students who break either game rules or school rules, however the outcome of the game and the success or failure of challenges lies with the students.
It has been a wonderful beginning to the term in Year 8 Big Ideas, and the staff are looking forward to watching the students face the challenges that we have in store for them over the coming weeks.
Miss Emilie Reynolds
Year 8 Innovator
Assessment Rubric Example
