Conspiracy Code

Discussion-based assessments, in which a teacher directly calls a student to review course material and assignments, occur at the end of every mission (essentially a chapter of a textbook). Culminating Mission Assessments also occur at the end of every mission and, while each is a unique assignment, generally take the form of essays, creative writing, and media presentations. Forum Assessments are activated at preset points over the course of the game, requiring players to respond to a prompt posted by an instructor as well as the replies of their fellow players.  Conspiracy Log Assessments are periodic journal checks of a player’s logbook entries – every clue in the game ends with a discussion prompt that players are encouraged to respond to, and these are reviewed in aggregate by their teachers. Two Semester Exams take place in the game as well, once at the halfway point, and a final exam at the end of the game. These exams contain multiple choice and short answer questions. Finally, the Data Map Assessment is a points-based informational meta-tagging assignment. A three-dimensional ‘mind map,’ each student’s Data Map is composed of the clues they collect. Players must tag each of these clues with descriptive labels which are then sent to their teachers for grading.  Accurate labels grant the player a point and create a floating tag attached to that clue in their Data Map. The reuse of a pre-existing tag will net the player an additional point and form a connection between any clues that already use this tag. Grading on this assessment is based on the number of clues each player has discovered.