Stuart Brown, Jane McGonigal, Jeff Mongil, and others tell us that play can give us empathy, signal powerlessness, and give us ways to trust. They learned these aspects of play through direct observation, watching their subjects play—and recording the minute effects of the play interactions.
In this assignment I ask you to do the same thing. You will observe a group of people (large or small) or an individual in play mode, and follow these steps to write an observational argument:
1. Watch the players’ expressions, signals of play, reactions to the activity, and their instances of meaningless bliss.
2. Record what you see, noting how their actions support our play experts’ assertions about how people react when at play.
3. Come to some sort of conclusion about your subject’s approach to play.
4. Write about how your observation and conclusion validates
one
of the experts we’ve investigated in relationship to this assignment.
Audience
Choose an audience who needs to make a decision about your topic.
Purpose
To aid your audience in making the decision about your topic.
Process
1. Choose the activity you will observe, and decide when you will make your observation, and enter onto Moodle the
subject and date
of your observation by
Thursday, September 21
2. Make your observation no later than
Tuesday, September 25.
(A raw draft is due on the 26th, so making the observation earlier would be better.)
3. As you observe, record what you see by using the form provided here and on Moodle. (Bring this completed form to class on Raw Draft workshop day. Your professor will look it over during the workshop.)
4. Thinking about how the researchers we have discussed came to conclusions from what they observed, form your own conclusion about your observation.
5. Use this conclusion as your basis for your assignment.
6. Relate your conclusion to one of the experts we have discussed in class. (You will need to give credit to the expert, but formal citation is not required on this assignment.)
Some Hints
This paper has multiple parts:
1. observation and recording
2. coming to a conclusion
3. relating your conclusion to one of our experts
Because of these multiple parts, you need to observe for as long as possible and record a lot more information than you think you will need. It is also very hard to write this paper (probably impossible) without making an observation, so do not attempt to make it up—you just will not have enough information.
I also encourage you to observe together, if you want to do so. However, do not write the same paper, and do not have the same conclusions. Your paper should be unique and based on your take on things.
Evaluation
Content: 1/3
Organization: 1/3
Style (correctness, clarity, embellishment, and appropriateness to audience): 1/3
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ObservationalArgumentWordDoc.docx
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