Investigation is the game

Realistic scenarios are a powerful way of teaching practice-based subjects, such as education, health care, social care, and business management. The difficulty with embodying them in teaching materials is how to provide feedback to the learner. You want them to make their own interpretations of rich and complex practice information and possibly come up with reasoned conclusions about possible courses of action; but how do you make sure that their thinking is along the right lines?

The simplest way of enabling learners to check their own thinking is a multiple-choice quiz, where you get learners to make a decision, selecting from a list of options, and then give them some kind of feedback on their answer. The problem with the multiple-choice format is that you have to include the right or optimal answer in the option list. Doesn't this make things too easy for the learner, by removing the need for them to think up the answer for themselves?

I've already commented on a multiple-choice scenario on OpenLearn, based on Richard Feynman's investigation of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. In this scenario, none of the choices are absolutely wrong and none are indisputably right; the learning comes from the carefully-written feedback which discusses the pros and cons of each. But sometimes there are particular answers you want learners to give, or particular things you want to make sure they've grasped before they move on. How do you test learners' understanding and interpretive powers in such a scenario?

I've recently played two adventure games which deal with this problem directly. Both are detective stories, so just as in a professional practice scenario your basic activities are those of gathering information, making inferences, coming to conclusions and justifying them by evidence.

The first game is Detective Grimoire, which despite its cartoon graphics and comedy setting actually supports some quite sophisticated reasoning. At various points in the investigation, you need to advance the story by following through the Detective's train of thought. For example, near the start of the game, just after meeting a mysterious little girl, he reflects that Boggy's Bog, the tourist attraction where the murder took place, seems to be in the middle of nowhere: to reach it, his sidekick Officer James has had to take him on a long boat journey through a swamp. Where does this thought lead? To answer, you need to drag-and-drop four multiple-choice elements to form a sentence.

Slot 1 options: That little girl / Boggy’s Bog the tourist attraction / The murder / The swamp / Officer James / My beard / My hat / Our boat

Slot 2 options: is too stupid for / is far too remote for / isn't warm enough for / is way too big for

Slot 3 options: (as Slot 1)

Slot 4 options: to have happened / to make any money / to be so smart / to murder someone

In keeping with the cartoon setting, most of the possible combinations are ridiculous (for example: "My beard it too stupid for the murder to have happened", and Detective Grimoire will tell you so if you select them. If you select the right combination ("The swamp is far too remote for Boggy's Bog the tourist attraction to make any money"), the story can move on. You could find the right combination by trial and error, but the number of possible combinations is so large you'd do better to try to work it out. (If you get three out of four of the options right, Detective Grimoire gives you an encouraging response.)

The second game is Cognition, which has a very different feel. You play Erica Reed, an FBI agent with psychic powers, who in the first episode is investigating a hanging murder which leads to the trail of a serial killer. Near the beginning, Erica investigates the crime scene, using her special powers as well as talking to the other specialists, before being summoned by her boss Davies to give a report. After each of Davies's questions, you get a series of options for Erica's reply. There's nothing difficult about giving the right answers; the purpose of this interaction within the game is to make sure that you've understood the situation before you're allowed to move on.

Davies: Now what have you found? How did the victim die? 

(1) Broken neck;
(2) Shot in the head;
(3) Suffocation.(Correct answer: 3.)

Davies: Who is our John Doe?

(1) Can’t identify, victim fingerprints have been skinned;
(2) Cannot identify, no fingerprints in the database;
(3) Al Williams.
(Correct answer: 2.)

Davies: Any leads on the killer?

(1) Terence has a lead based on DNA;
(2) The killer was smaller than the victim, the killer struggled with the hanging of the victim;
(3) There were fingerprints all over the place, we’ll be able to identify the killer soon.
(Correct answer: 2.)

In this first test, at the start of the game, there's no penalty for giving incorrect answers - except that Davies will giving Erica a telling off ("Just from standing here, I can see what a load of crap you told me!"). Towards the end of the game, however, there's another test in which correct answers are required. At this stage, Erica has assembled all the information she needs to crack the case. A photograph found at the crime scene leads her to re-open a previous case, the hanging of a women named Sarah Goodman, which was judged a suicide at the time, despite the protestations of her husband Robert who maintained that she was murdered. When she tracks him down, Robert recognises the new hanging victim, and with some help from Erica's psychic powers is able to recall his name: Antony Longmire, a worker on the Boston public transport system. Searching Longmire's apartment with her colleague Sully, Erica discovers a safe containing a collection of documents and photographs on a number of women: apart from Sarah, there are two others in Boston, three in New York, and three in Tennessee, all except one having died from hanging, with all but one case being judged to be suicide. By talking to Sully, Erica now has the opportunity to state her conclusion, and Sully will press her for details. If Erica gives a wrong answer at any point, Sully will say that he doesn't buy her explanation, and you have to start from the beginning again.

(1) Why did the killer change his pattern and kill a man?
(2) Sully, Antony Longmore was a killer!
(3) Sully, it’s Robert!

Erica: Sully, Antony Longmire was a killer!

Sully: You think? What’s our evidence?

(1) He worked at the train station;
(2) He was a lonely man;
(3) Those women from the safe are his victims.

Erica: Those women from the safe are his victims. He took those photographs, and he’s been doing it for years until someone stopped him last night. He was in Tennessee first, and then in New York. He killed these women, and he had a pattern.


(1) He kills in groups of two;
(2) He kills in groups of three;
(3) He kills in groups of four.

Erica: He kills in groups of three.

Sully: How do you know?

Erica: Two reasons.

(1) He was staying here;
(2) He was moving out soon.

Erica: He was moving out soon. And...

(1) He’s killed three victims in every state;
(2) He killed three victims in every state except New York.

Erica: He’s killed three victims in every state except for New York. Look at the boxes, You mentioned the landlord said he was moving out. He was done here, ready to go on to the next city. He killed in threes all the time.

Sully: But what happen in New York? Why is Nadia Schwartz still alive?

(1) Because of Emelie Karlsson;
(2) Nadia Schwartz was his accomplice;
(3) He was fired from the Transit Department.

Erica: Because of Emelie Karlsson’s case. They almost caught him. He fled New York before his work was done there, and he could never get to Nadia Schwartz. It’s clear even in the way he met his victims.

Sully: How?

(1) He was a photographer;
(2) He cleaned their lawns;
(3) He met them through public transportation.

Erica: He met them through public transportation. He worked there. That’s where he targeted his victims.

Sully: Yeah, yeah. You’re right! But if this piece of shit was done last night, killed in the same way he killed his victims, who killed him?

While each question on its own could easily be answered by guesswork or eliminating the distractor options, the requirement to get all the answers right in sequence poses a significant challenge. Even if players only discover the correct answers from seeing them in the list of options, rather than working them out for themselves, still the question-and-answer format forces them to work through the detail of the story. In this way, the designers ensure that players understand what's going on before they proceed to the game's shocking denouement. Like the multiple choice sentence building in Detective Grimoire, this is a question-and answer structure which can easily be implemented in an online scenario, as a way of enabling learners to test their thinking and encouraging them into active learning rather than just reading their way through the materials.