In eXPlore Like a Pirate, Michael wrote at length about the problem of what he likes to call “The Jeopardy Effect.” Chances are if you’ve ever run a traditional game-like review activity (like Jeopardy! or Kahoot), you’ve probably seen it play out a hundred times in your classroom as well. The “Jeopardy effect” happens when players realize there is no way their team can win, so they stop playing effectively. Once a team runs the numbers and figures out that they’ve been mathematically eliminated, your game is totally sunk.
The Mystery Box pedagogy fixes the problems that the traditional review games so often create. Because rather than selecting questions based on their point value (or earning the same number of points for every single question on the board), a Mystery Box game hides each question’s value until AFTER that question has been correctly answered. Kinda’ like Minesweeper — but tailor made for your course content! And the best part about it? Unlike Jeopardy, Kahoot or so many other platforms where teachers spend hours inputting dozens of individual questions to a PowerPoint slideshow or editable web-based game template — you literally don’t have to write out A. SINGLE. QUESTION. before firing this activity up for your classes to play!
Mystery Box is a blank canvas for you to retheme as you wish for your classroom. We’ve got step-by-step game instructions with a dozen or so variants of the activity that are ready to go here on the site for our EMC² Engagement Engineers — and we’ve even offered up a DIY version where you can pop and swap in your own images, sound effects, and background photos to whip up a totally custom game board in less than the amount of time it takes you to walk down to the teacher’s lounge and back to your classroom.
Seriously, it’s that simple.
Fully editable for any course or content area and ready for plug-and-play use with ZERO fancy software to install, this one blows old school Jeopardy right out of the water and leaves students begging for another round of play. We’re thrilled to share it with you and we can’t wait to see what you’ll do once you get your hands on this infinitely customizable resource.
We hope you’ll consider joining us as a member of our EMC² Engagement Engineer community to access this resource and countless others. Give a click to this link for details and we’ll see you inside!
