July 15, 2004
Are Classroom Games Experiments?
I’ve been spending the afternoon alternating between writing a syllabus for a decision theory course and websurfing. So naturally I’ve been drawn to web sites about decision theory and game theory. And I was struck by this question David Shoemaker raises - are games played in the classroom covered by rules on human experimentation?
As David notes, some of the games that are most useful for teaching purposes require that we mislead the students, or at least that we don’t get their permission before starting the game. And we, as professors, do learn something from how they respond. Fortunately we’re careful as philosophers to avoid things like experimental design, so we don’t get much useful information from the game, but it can look a little like an unlicenced human experiment.
I hope not because the game David describes looks fun to me. Except I don’t think he should back down from having it count for grades. It’s only 10% after all - I think having 10% of the grade ride on how well you can do at a simple game is perfectly reasonable. It’s just a kind of in-class test I think. Maybe given how simple the game is it should only be 5%, but I don’t think it’s wrong to have it count.
Posted by Brian Weatherson at July 15, 2004 04:15 PM | TrackBackEvery quiz is a kind of experiment, in some sense, although certainly a kind of experiment that 45 CFR §46 regards as “exempt” (e.g. per §46.101(b)(1)). Technically, the policy is that only an IRB can decide whether an activity is exempt. On the other hand, no one ever asks their IRB to declare routine exams and quizzes exempt, as far as I know. And in my experience, the same thing applies to classroom experiments in e.g. psychophysics, which students run on themselves or each other.
You might find it an interesting experience to try to get an exemption, and blog what happens. It’s quite possible that your IRB would tell you not to waste its time. Then again, you might have a wild ride through cross-cultural communication, which might be amusing, given that nothing very important to you depends on it, and that you could write about it.
Posted by: Mark Liberman at July 19, 2004 05:25 PM
