When it comes to doing a research paper or project, students quiver at the very thought approaching the task with their own prejudices and assumptions. Doing any research does not have to be so painstaking and can easily be alleviated with a little guidance and focus. From our own experiences we came up with a spinoff from a friendly and enjoyable game to help students get through the research process. The idea is simple and follows loosely the game of Life. This board game was created by Milton Brothers to simulate going through real life with such things as a career path, retirement and various other elements that individuals would come across in their lives. The game could be used to help students working in a group of two or more in staying focused on whatever research project they are assigned. From the very beginning of the game there would be several broad topics to choose from that going through our game would ultimately help the students reach a research proposal and go through the steps of a research project. Just as in the game of Life, there is a short path and a career path, that depending which the players choose, will enable them a higher salary. The shorter path gives a fixed salary and is much lower than would be possible if you took the longer career path. In our version of the game, if you chose the short path you get one proposal in a topic, whereas if you take the longer “career path”, you are offered more proposals for a possible research topic. In the game of Life, a player passes things like payday and revenge, so in our version of the game there would be similar components to the game. The payday would be based on which path you took in the beginning of the game and anytime you passed or landed on that payday space, you would get paid in additional proposals for your chosen topic. The revenge space is meant to hinder the progress of your opponents and would do so with the options of either taking away a designated number of proposals that they may have collected towards their topic or sending them back ten spaces. Keeping in mind that the goal of the game is to reach your proposal through the proper steps and reach it first, there would also be several spaces designated outline in which you would collect and example of an outline in your specific topic. Getting several outlines would ultimately aid the student in creating a better outline or presenting them with ones that they could use as well. Obstacles that would be present in the game play and which students should avoid would include spaces called YouTube, Facebook, twitter, and instagram. These spaces would have different values but would cost the players proposals, outlines, and spaces that they would have already achieved. For example, Facebook being a major distraction, would cost the player two proposals, or five outlines, depending what they had, and would send them back five spaces or ten if they do not have any proposals or outlines accumulated yet. In the game of life payday is your reward and millionaire is your goal, but in our game outlines and proposals would be your currency in the game. To win in our game would mean that you accumulated all the necessary tools to come up with a good research paper proposal and getting there first meant you did so by avoiding the distractions that would otherwise hinder your research.
The reason why we think that this game could be helpful and useful is because while going through a research paper, one can easily come across many distractions. Something is a distraction because it is usually things that catch our eyes and we have an interest in. These things include social networks such as Facebook, twitter, istagram, MySpace, and so forth. Other potential distractions that are not necessarily social networks but rather are media include YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google. Our game would help students keep in mind that all these things should be avoided as they distract and at the same time would help outline the steps they should follow to arrive at a good research paper proposal under a specific topic.
