Philofy is a digital quote association game designed to enhance a student’s knowledge of the ideologies of the greats throughout the ages. It is targeted at second year philosophy students who wish to both enhance and increase their knowledge of ideas central to the philosophers of the past (L02). It achieves this through a question-and-answer type system that presents a quote central to a philosopher’s ideology (L01, L02). Each quote gives you sixty seconds to answer and speaking about the quotes to fellow players is encouraged if possible. The timer can be disabled for those who want to answer at their leisure. There are four possible answers as to who it was who is behind the quote (L02). The game is competitive insofar as whoever answers the correct answer the fastest obtains the most points, however, it does not have to be played in that manner if you have a large group like the classroom (Shapiro, et al., 2014, p.8) surrounded by others who just want to have fun and learn. Without the timer, the game is competitive insofar as obtaining the most correct answers. Although the game is designed for second year philosophy students as its content stretches broadly, it will also assist with the learning of a student at Open Source University as many of the philosophers included are regularly referred to.
Philofy can be played here.
Philofy is a “quiz” style game. Quizzes have proven themselves to be an effective learning aid if the rewards for participation is impactful on the student (Elikai, et al., 1988, pp. 252-253). However, Philofy is not a typical quiz-styled game. Instead of asking a question, it presents a quote and the objective of the player is to identify the origin of the quote (L02). From here the player merely needs to develop strategies for finding and placing the information in the correct position (Liu, C., et al., 2011, p. 678). The reward system is not all focused around points and winning. In fact, players will be rewarded by learning who it was who stated what as they progress in the game. The quotes are very popular and even those without a philosophy background may have come upon some of them within their life adventures. The process of identifying who said what by eliminating the answers one knows to be incorrect is, in itself, rewarding and educational. Getting the answer correct by process of elimination provides significant mental rewards and a feeling of accomplishment and captures the player’s partial knowledge of the subjects (Wu, et al., 2019, para. 3).
Philofy is a game designed to increase knowledge of philosophical topics by presenting a quote and asking who said it. The game encourages players to quickly identify the thesis the author is attempting to convey in order to identify who said it (Holowchak, 2011, module 4, para. 6). The game is designed to test knowledge on subjects and who identified these thoughts. It is designed to present a philosophy and the player responding with who advocated for that philosophy. It is engineered to be able to obtain the answer through reducing the possibilities and then honing in on the correct answer (L01). The answers can be divided into three categories: ancient, modern, and post-modern. Depending on the era, one can identify the potential philosophers who spoke it based on the time when they were alive in order to eliminate those who were outside of that era (L01).
Philofy is not a game that encourages rote memory. In knowing who said what, one only needs to know what X person advocated. This game is focused on learning ideas behind thought and not necessarily the ideas themselves (L04). Although some quotes will be quite obvious to some people, the skill in this game lies in the possibilities of deduction and not directly remembering what another individual said or wrote. The game relies on the player’s prior knowledge of the subjects presented (Kalyuga & Plass, 2009, p. 720) (L03).
Kahoot! was used to develop this game. It consists of nearly one hundred quotes from great minds of the past. This platform was chosen as it provided the necessary functions to perform this quiz-style game, albeit it not exactly being a standard quiz. The game could have been developed on other platforms which would have allowed for wider distribution, although resources were limited. However, it is searchable for other Kahoot! users to find and play alone or in a group. It works on all devices, so it is easy to include students in a game.
Learning objectives:
L01: Evaluate popular quotes and apply logic to determine its source.
L02: Explore the quotes of the philosophers of our past.
L03: Utilise prior experiences (as a second-year philosophy student) to assess and identify content.
L04: Analyse sentences to comprehend their broader scope.
References
Elikai, Fara, and Jack Baker. (1988). Empirical Evidence on the Effectiveness of Quizzes as a Motivational Technique. Issues in Accounting Education, 3, 248.
Holowchak, M., et al. (2011). Critical reasoning & philosophy a concise guide to reading, evaluating, and writing philosophical works (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Kalyuga, S. & Plass, J. (2009). Evaluating and Managing Cognitive Load in Games. Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education. IGI Global. 719-737.
Liu, C.-C., Cheng, Y.-B., & Huang, C.-W. (2011). The effect of simulation games on the learning of computational problem solving. Computers & Education, 57(3), 1907–1918. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.04.002
Shapiro, J., SalenTekinbaş, K., Schwartz, K., & Darvasi, P. (2014). MindShift guide to digital games+ learning. Games and Learning Publishing Council.
Wu, Qian, Laet, T. & Janssen, R. (2019). Modeling Partial Knowledge on Multiple‐Choice Items Using Elimination Testing. Journal of Educational Measurement, 56(2) 391–414. doi:10.1111/jedm.12213
