Mini assignment 2 rubric
Assignment evaluation questions
In assessing submissions for mini assignment 2, the grader will ask themselves the following questions, answering each on the scale of:
0 = grossly incomplete/not addressed
1 = needs significant work
2 = minimally fulfills requirements
3 = good effort, but with room for improvement
4 = excellent and above expectations
A. Is the game thoughtfully designed?: The schelling game should be clearly distinct from any of the examples in class. The game should be designed with a particular group of participants in mind, such that those specific group/community members tested can identify an effective coordination key to solve the problem successfully. Note that excellently designed games will be set up such that those outside the target group/community cannot necessarily identify the intended key, or may perhaps be drawn instead to another key. Your schelling game session should end with you briefly asking your participants to describe how they each made their decision. You are expected to report on how you identified and recruited participants, the exact wording you use to set up the game, any stimuli that you provide the participants, and how you record and assess the results. Your report should also mention what you predicted you would find based on how you designed your game. Please be detailed in describing and justifying your choices in your game design.
B. Is the full data provided and then concisely summarized?: We would like to see the FULL dataset that you collected. Please consider a clear way to share this data in your mini assignment. It could be, e.g., reported within a table with one row per round of the game and columns to indicate the answers of different participants and their comments about the result, or instead as a textual description of each game that you ran, including block quotes. You are free to structure your data report as you like, but please just make sure that we know what the responses were, when and whether the participants achieved coordination, and what their comments about the game were, for every participant that you run. If you ask the same participants to do more than one game (e.g., with different partners, or with multiple trials), make sure to mention that in your data. Please then also provide a very short overview of the full results (e.g., success rates, coordination keys mentioned, etc.). You can do this in text, with a figure, or both. We do encourage use of figures as a way of thinking in a different modality.
C. Do the design and discussion engage directly with big ideas from the course?: Consider the concepts and theory surrounding communication and schelling games that we have covered in our course so far. Ensure that the design of your game and your discussion of results speaks to these concepts. Our advice is to start by picking out at least three relevant concepts relating to schelling games, common ground, and/or salience. When describing your game, make explicit how and why you are taking those specific concepts into account in your design. When describing your results, make explicit if/how the results speak to your predictions and to the foundational concepts upon which you designed your game.
D. Are limitations and future directions well described? Thoughtful discussions will go further than interpreting the findings in two ways: (1) identify at least two weaknesses or limitations in your game design or choices and discuss what implications that may have for the findings (i.e., if you did something different/improved, how would the outcome hypothetically change?); (2) identify at least one “future direction” for the game. For this second part, pretend that you will do a second version of this assignment with new participants. Describe one thing you can change to expand your knowledge further in your follow up version of the game. This isn’t necessarily to improve a weakness but rather to expand your knowledge or findings in some way.
Note that it is up to YOU how to divide your (max) 2500 words between these different goals.
Translation of questions to grades
Submissions that score “excellent and above expectations” across the board will receive a perfect grade (A; 100/100). Submissions that score “needs significant work” across the board will receive a (C-; 70/100). We expect most submissions to fall between these two results. This translation from evaluation questions to grades is done by the particular grader (Dr. Casillas, Jenny, or Ben) who is assigned to each individual paper. However, our team will calibrate our assessments by first reviewing a random sample of papers together.
Grossly incomplete submissions or submissions that do not sufficiently follow the outlined task will maximally receive a grade of C-; please contact your TA if completing the assignment becomes insurmountable for some reason. Grades of D and lower will be discussed and verified by the entire grading team.