Winning Through Deception: A Pedagogical Case Study on Using Social Deception Games to Teach Small Group Communication Theory

Small Group Communication

According to Beebe and Masterson (2006), small group communication is any form of interaction that takes place between 3 and 20 people who are working together to achieve an interdependent goal. There are four primary small group styles based on their relationship between the members of the group and functions of the group. The first type of group is task oriented; it is focused on completing tasks first and socializing/relationship building second (i.e., most small groups created in the classroom setting are task oriented). The second type of group is relationship-oriented, which is focused on inclusion/affection issues first and task implementation second (e.g., fraternities and sororities). The third type was considered assigned, which are created by outside organizations with each member of the group given an assigned role (i.e., most small groups created in the workplace are assigned). The final type of small group is emergent, which is created by outside circumstances (i.e., most small groups created to deal with a crisis would be considered emergent; Pearson, Nelson, Titsworth, & Harter, 2013). The acknowledgment of the different types of small groups means that the members of the group must focus on the correct set of interactions that advances the primary purposes of the group while maintaining secondary, tertiary, or outside purposes based on their small group type (Fisher & Ellis, 1980).

Regardless of the type of small group, there are five phases that the groups go through. The first is forming, which identifies the members of the group (e.g., through skills sets, previous relationships, previous knowledge, connection with the larger whole). The second phase is storming, where conflicts arise that can challenge the cohesiveness of the group. The third stage is norming, which is the transition away from the conflicts of the group toward the orientation of the primary, secondary, tertiary, or outside purpose of the group. The performing of the purpose becomes the fourth phase of the group, followed by the dissolution of the group (Pearson et al., 2013). There is often a compression of the phases in the educational environment based on deadlines, outside affiliations, and the social construction of the classroom (e.g., formal versus informal interactions in the classroom (Unjore, 2015)). This process is known as the forming–storming–norming–performing model of group development (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). Three of the phases (forming, storming, and norming) will be discussed in more detail in the themes section of this article.

Small group communication is more than the formation and maintenance of relationships or the mission of the collective whole. Leadership within the small group will determine the success or failure of this cohort. Hogg, Hains, and Mason (1998) describe the concept of leadership as

more than being a prototypical group member; it involves the active exercise of influence. People occupying prototypical positions may acquire the power to influence in at least two ways: (a) They are socially attractive and because they are liked (as group members), fellow members are likely to comply with their suggestions, requests, and orders . . . or (b) they are seen to have charismatic–leadership personalities because of attribution processes that cause members to attribute the leader’s apparent influence to the person and to personality rather than to the prototypicality of the position they occupy. (p. 1248)

Power structures within small groups can be where one member of the group has some form of control over other members of the group (i.e., distributive power), the strength of a small subset of the group (i.e., integrative power), or where control is granted by source outside of the small group structure (i.e., designated power). The sources of power can be in the form of rewards, punishment, coercion, loyalty, knowledge, or a combination of the five (Beebe & Masterson, 2006).

The issues surrounding power and leadership within small groups are often amplified by the “task-based” communication patterns within those collectives.

“Task-Based” Communication Patterns

The primary focus for this research project is in the area of “task-based” communication patterns, which are created and maintained in task-oriented groups. The ability to complete tasks is first, whereas the group collectiveness is secondary to the process. This prioritization means that the interactions and rituals connected to the group are related to group problem-solving techniques. This focus is fundamentally different from the inclusion/affection techniques practiced by relationship-oriented groups. According to Bales and Strodtbeck (1951), the four main characteristics of ideal group problem-solving practices are

The structure of the task-based group is designed to create effective group problem-solving actions. The effective group problem-solving process is based on the asking and answering of questions related to the task(s) and creating actions based on how the questions are answered by the group. According to Long and Porter (1985), it is primarily the wording of the discussion question that affects the ability of the group to complete the assign task or tasks. The criteria for determining whether it is a good question are understanding

Frey (1994) breaks the task-based communication patterns even further by pointing to the five functions of task-based group interactions. The group must

Students are exposed to the nature of small group communication theory and the task-based communication patterns through the complex relationship between praxis in the real world and the nuance of communication education. Therefore, it is important to have a foundation in some of the pedagogical literature, especially the literature that helps frame this type of education using ludological teaching techniques and styles, to understand how instructors and professors apply this relationship in the classroom.

Higher Education Instruction via the Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive Framework

There are concerns among both education researchers and professionals over whether the educational experiences of students are too often reduced to a narrow set of interactions within the classroom and lab settings. Specifically, there are worries among educational professionals regarding the overuse of presentational software and lecture-based classroom experiences as a primary and sole means of interaction within the classroom, leading to a “Death by PowerPoint” condition for the course (Katt, Murdock, Butler, & Pryor, 2008). One of the forces fighting “Death by PowerPoint” within the classroom is the development of high-impact educational experiences. Some examples of high-impact educational experiences include first-year seminars, collaborative assignments, service learning, community-based learning, and experiential learning (Kuh & Schneider, 2008).

The factors that allow high-impact educational experiences to be successful are related to the ability of the instructor to maintain an active learning environment and focus the attention of the students toward the learning objectives of a particular topic and the course learning objectives as a whole (Olney, Risko, D’Mello, & Graesser, 2015). There are real pedagogical concerns when working to create an active learning environment. Some of these concerns relate to the idea that the course materials must not only engage with the literature and the learning objectives of the course but also create meaningful learning experiences for the students in the course. Many of these concerns can be framed as a lack of practical examples that help instructors create active learning opportunities and a lack of guidelines and criteria toward effective active learning practices (Chi & Wylie, 2014). One of the theoretical frameworks that can help in the development of active learning experiences is the interactive, constructive, active, and passive (ICAP) framework.

There are three important concepts to this framework that are related to the pedagogical impact of ludological teaching styles. The first concept is that the framework attempts to create a level of cognitive engagement with the students as they are in the classroom environment learning the elements related to the various course learning objectives and class teaching plans. Cognitive engagement is built on the foundation of creating actions and behaviors that can be observed by teaching professionals (Olney et al., 2015). The second concept is built on creating a useful operational definition for the term “learning activities.” Fredericks, Blumenfeld, and Paris’s (2004) definition, which states that learning activities are a large collection of instructional or learning tasks from which teachers or educational designers can choose that traditionally have some relationship to the course or class objectives, is best suited for this article. The final concept addressed by the framework is the acknowledgment that those learning activities can cause one of four different types of engaging behaviors in the students: interactive, constructive, active, and passive.

Passive modes of engagement would be considered the basic receiving of information in a classroom setting without applying that information to the act of learning. An example of this type of engagement would be watching a video without writing notes or processing the information in the video. Active modes of engagement would involve the manipulation of information received in a classroom setting. An example of this type of engagement would be taking verbatim notes during a video. Constructive modes of engagement would be the generation of knowledge based on information received during a classroom experience. An example of this type of engagement would be a student watching a video and attempting to explain the general concepts from the video in his or her own words. Finally, interactive modes of engagement would be the generation of new knowledge from a dialogue of two or more students after a shared classroom experience. An example of this type of engagement would be watching a video and having a debate regarding the merits of the concepts discussed in the video (Chi & Wylie, 2014).

It would seem that game-based learning would have the potential to be considered a high-impact experiential learning session that could create constructive or interactive modes of engagement. The previous research and actions denoted in this section have had a direct impact on improving the learning outcomes within the classroom for students as these type of pedagogical practices manage a student’s focus and attention in a way that other teaching methods fail to address (Vlachopoulos & Makri, 2017). It is fair to examine how ludological techniques would affect this realm of high-impact learning.

The Pedagogical Impact of Ludological Teaching Styles

The concept of applying game-based learning techniques in higher education is not new nor novel. Schreiber attempted to expand the pedagogy of management in 1958 with a mode of simulation in the classroom setting designed to help with a range of issues that managers could face in a variety of organizations and situations. The elements that instructors and professors find useful in game-based learning are intertwined with the standards of classroom management and pedagogy.

The primary literature related to understanding the pedagogical impact of adding games into the classroom describes the ability of games to simulate real-world interactions and general theoretical constructions. McManus and Feinstein (2014) discussed the relationship between pedagogy and ludology by studying the interactions between members within a given gaming environment. McManus and Feinstein argued that “at the core of simulation is a model that represents some part of reality. Other than this, however, its characteristics are mutable at best” (p. 364).

The discussion of simulations is important when discussing ludological teaching styles as the definitions surrounding simulations are relatively consistent when compared with defining the concept of a game (Verzat et al., 2009). One of the better definitions of games in the classroom setting came from Abt (1965), which states that a game is “any contest (play) among adversaries (players) operating under constraints (rules) for an objective (winning, victory, or pay-off)” (p. 5). This definition tends to account for the variance of definitions in ludology (Eskelinen, 2001). The nature of pedagogical simulations tends to

An extension of the pedagogical simulation is the idea that games create a platform for role-playing to better understand key concepts of a given lesson by engaging with the abstract through the concrete actions of role-play (Ellington, Fowlie, & Gordon, 2013). These types of pedagogical interactions allow for a dramaturgic perspective of a given problem. Vangsnes (2009) argues

classroom drama differs from traditional theatre because nobody is exclusively an audience, everybody joins the creative process, and this process is often of more value than the product itself. The game master (the teacher) is most often on the outside of the activity as a facilitator and organizer, but when it comes to the drama-in-education method teacher-in-role, the game-master (teacher) takes part by playing his/her own role. (p. 23)

The teacher’s role, in this case, is to balance maintaining the gaming environment through the implementation of rules and assessing whether the students are learning a given objective through the gaming elements within the classroom setting (Tilton, 2005).

Lesson Plan Objectives

There are three different lesson plan objectives developed for the learning activity. First, students will have a proficient level of understanding of the theoretical foundations of small group communications. This objective will allow the students to rationalize the key concepts related to the interactions and engagements between members of a small group. Second, students will be proficient in applying small group communication practices in the real world. The students will need to efficiently interact with their group when they are working with their service-learning partners (Furco, 1996). The idea is that students will learn techniques by playing social deduction games that will improve their interactions with service-learning partners (Corporation for National and Community Service, 1990). Finally, students will apply and evaluate the effectiveness and function of small group communication concepts to the simulation of small group interactions. Simulation merely is the game itself. All three of these lesson plan objectives are based on both Bloom’s (1986) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ (1980) Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition.

Setup for the Class

The setup for the lesson began either during the Monday session (for the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday class) or during the Tuesday class (for the Tuesday and Thursday class). Both began with a version of the “Small Group Communication” presentation based on information from the “Communicate!: A Primer of Communication Studies” textbook (Verderber, Verderber, & Sellnow, 2013) that was assigned to the students. The highlights of the lecture included

There were four Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes. The Monday class began with a 2-min exercise where the students would need to write down three questions, statements, or points of concern about the chapter. The student would form small groups and pick two or three of the biggest questions, statements, or points of interest they had. The groups’ answers to this assignment were collected and would be followed by a 40-min lecture. The remaining 5 min would be a debriefing based on the questions the students gave at the beginning of the session and the plans for Wednesday. The Tuesday class would be formatted the same, except for the lecture would be 1 hr (with a longer presentation on problem-solving and task-oriented communication). For the day of the game (either Wednesday or Thursday), students were assigned to read the rules of either “AYAW?” or “The Resistance” before coming into class. The students in the two Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes in the fall played a 40-min version of “AYAW?” with 5-min days. The single Tuesday/Thursday class played a 60-min version of “AYAW?” with 7-min days. The two Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes in the spring played two games of “The Resistance,” whereas the single Tuesday/Thursday class played three games of “The Resistance.”

Debriefing

The remaining 5 min of the class is a debriefing session designed to be both a type of summative assessment focusing the class back on the learning objectives of the day (Harlen & James, 1997) and as a means of preparing the students for the follow-up assignment. The four questions that are asked during the debriefing session were as follows: “Did you have fun?” “What was the quote of the day?” “What surprised you the most by playing today?” and “How did this game change your impression of your classmates?” At face value, these questions do not fit within the traditional means of assessing a lesson plan (Taras, 2005). There are two underlying purposes to these questions. The primary purpose is to reframe the discussion from the weirdness of playing a game in the class to the establishment of the learning objective of the class within the framework of the interactions that occurred through the gameplay. The secondary purpose is to get the students to conceptualize the game as a model for studying small group communication. The first series of answers will allow the student to pivot to a more open series of questions related to the previous day’s lecture (e.g., “Why do you suppose Tony was getting excited toward the end of the game?”).

Assignment

To conclude the week-long lesson, the students were assigned to complete a 750-word reflective analysis addressing the following prompts:

The first prompt is designed to assess whether the students met the first learning objective for the lesson (“students would acquire a proficient level of understanding of the theoretical foundations of small group communications”). The main element of assessment was the students’ ability to rationalize the key concepts related to the interactions and engagements between members of a small group as it pertained to participating in the game. The second prompt was embedded in the assignment as a means of connecting the experiences from the game to the “real world.” This assignment was either due on Friday for the Monday/Wednesday/Friday or the following Tuesday for the Tuesday/Thursday classes.

Coding and Analysis

The assignments were coded and analyzed solely by the primary researcher using Fereday and Muir-Cochrane’s (2006) model of thematic analysis as a guide for this process. The 97 reflective analyses were read and re-read at least three times to note some of the initial ideas present in the students’ writing. The sentences and paragraphs within the reflective analyses were then separated into meaning units, which are defined as individually discrete and complex strings of words and phrases that communicate idiographic themes related to a central research question or hypothesis (Saldaña, 2016). It was at this point in the analysis that 164 different meaning units were coded from the data sets. Condensed meaning units were created from those 164 meaning units as a means of providing short summaries that could be used in the open coding process of the analysis. The open coding process allowed for four overall themes to be expressed via the reframing of the previously listed meaning units. This process meant that a codebook was not created as a means for the topics to be built naturally throughout the analysis. Instead, a series of sensitizing concepts (Bowen, 2006) became the framing constructions used in the thematic analysis. Sensitizing concepts are the thematics that come from the students’ perspective. These thematics are built from the work of Verderber et al. (2013) and Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters (2004) as it was these two texts that most of the learning objectives for the course were built upon. Specifically, the sensitizing concepts were

The second level of this analysis could be best described as a “nongrounded analysis” based on the themes discussed in the next section. The nongrounded analysis is reasonable given that the case study is built on an assessment protocol that is both summative and formative (Taras, 2005). It is important to note that the rubric for the reflective analysis was not incorporated into the interpretation of this research. The rationale for this action was a need to separate the pedagogical from the research.

The Role of Nonverbal Communication in Task-Oriented Groups

The first theme to note from the analysis was the role of the nonverbal communication in the task-oriented group setting. The examples found in the class that played “AYAW?” were focused on whether people were quiet and body language. Dustin, ¹ an 18-year-old first-year student, made this argument. “In the start of the game, with direct democracy, the people who spoke too much or seemed suspicious were killed because their actions seemed atypical.” This position of people being rejected by the group for acting atypical was repeated six times by this group. Rachel, a 19-year-old first-year student, used the nonverbal cues as part of her criteria for selecting whom to eliminate from the game. “Charlie was kind of twitchy after the first few rounds and felt that was a good enough reason to vote him out of the game.” Another nonverbal aspect explored by the “AYAW?” group was the idea that those members who were quiet were seen as blankly going along with the will of the group. Anne made this argument when she wrote: “In the group there were two types of people, the people that were trying to convince the group of who they thought the werewolves were and the people that kept quiet and just voted along with the group.” In “AYAW?” a lack of good nonverbal communication may result in ineffective task-oriented communication patterns and potentially losing the game.

The groups that played “The Resistance” used nonverbal cues to determine who would be selected for missions. According to Abby, a 19-year-old first-year student,

Resistance is a great way to detect body language because in order for a person to determine [if] their participant is a spy, he or she has to be able to successfully pick up on nervous glances to opposing players or suspicious behavior toward another person in order to know not to choose them to participate in their mission.

The spy, like the werewolves, needed to learn how to mimic “normal” nonverbal cues in the task-oriented small group to survive and win their given games.

It is important to note that the role of nonverbal communication in task-oriented groups was the only theme out of the four overall themes that were not addressed in the setup lecture for this exercise. It was part of the reading assignment coming from the “Communicate!” textbook.

The Forming, Storming, and Norming Phases of Small Group Development

The second theme among the students was the idea that social deception games help conceptualize the forming, storming, and norming phases of small group development. Forming is defined as “an initial phase [of group organization] lacking in structure [that is] characterized by anxiety, guardedness, dependency, and a mixture of curiosity and confusion” which depends on a trainer or external organizer (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977, p. 422). Ralph connected this part of small group development to the Monday or Tuesday class.

We needed to be trained in the social norms of small group communication and the rules of [“AYAW?”]. Also, we were organized as a class to participate in the game on Monday. This would seem to be the forming stage of small group development.

Storming is defined by Tuckman and Jensen as “an early phase characterized by hostility and conflicts between subgroups characterized by an increasing sense of frustration, along with depression and anger” (p. 423). Brian described this phase when playing “The Resistance” by stating,

The players must build a group capable of completing their own goals . . . this storming phase was the struggle for power between the spies, either growing desperate or attempting to remain hidden, and the resistance members, fearful of failing or attempting to solidify their success.

Finally, norming is defined by Tuckman and Jensen as “the period of beginning trust, cohesiveness, interdependence, and group interaction [which represents] the mature work phase in which norms are resolved and interdependency and trust formation are apparent” (p. 423). Carly talked about this phase in her assessment. “After a few missteps in [“AYAW?”], we were able to slow down the game a little bit and begin a normal level of discussion and questioning to try to figure out who the werewolves were.”

The knowledge of these phases is important to the students as they also experienced these phases during their service-learning elements of the class and were able to translate their experiences with this game to the issues at the various service sites.

Groupthink in Small Group Communication

Based on the artifacts, the strongest of the four overall themes was the assessment of the concept of groupthink based on the number of times this theme was mentioned in the reflective analysis assignment. Groupthink is defined by Janis (1982) as the “deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures” (p. 9). This groupthink phenomenon was more present in the essays related to “AYAW?” than those discussing “The Resistance.” Michelle’s example of groupthink is a standard representation of the flaw of group communication:

For example, when one person at the beginning of the game accused me before anyone else had died, many people voted for me to be [removed from the game] even though there was no supporting evidence that I was the werewolf.

This quote is an example of groupthink because everyone began to think the same way without substantial evidence to support their ways of thinking. The groupthink mentality is shared in social deception games as these types of games present the group with the “incomplete poker” problem where members of the group are limited by a lack of knowledge and wisdom related to a given situation (Sandholm, 2010). The group is forced to make the best possible decision with a limited understanding of the “realm of the known” in a given environment. One of the major problems with groupthink as it connects with small group communication, task-oriented groups, and social deception games is that it “breaks” the usual logic processes associated with decision-making and social interactions. This breakdown was described very well by Ralph:

We were starting to run out of time for the round and somebody pointing to Ryan and said, “I think it’s him.” We all pointed to him and removed him from the game. Unfortunately, he was just a villager. We all realized that we just fell into the “groupthink” habit.

Power and Leadership in Small Group Communication

The final theme related to the exercise and conceptualization of small group communication theory is the idea of power and leadership within the small group setting. Michelle observed the way leadership emerged in the small group setting:

Almost directly from the beginning of the game until he was [removed from the game], Douglas was always offering opinions and attempting to sway the villagers toward who he thought was the “werewolf.” He was the most prominent emergent leader, as there was no assigned leader.

Margaret reinforced this position by stating,

Appointed leaders, a key part in small group interaction, emerged when students would take on roles to try and point out who potential werewolves could be. When given increments of time to try and pinpoint the wolves, there would always be certain students who would be instrumental in speaking up and leading the group in a certain direction.

The idea that leadership was tied to power was clearly explained by Anna:

Many of the emergent leaders used expertise—voicing their suspicions based on what evidence they could collect—as the source for their power over the group. Through their suggestions, they achieved a laissez-faire style of leadership.

Chris discussed the concept of power in the small group setting:

Some of the players obtained power from the source of reward. It was rewarding for the villagers to pursue the [end of the round] because the only way to eliminate the werewolves was for the villagers to [remove a player from the game].

Modes of knowledge can be powerful when they are used. Ronnie described an example in which this power was not used effectively. “The seer, Abbie, was the designated leader, because she had the ability to determine definitively who the werewolves were. Unfortunately, she was unable to establish herself as a reliable source. This caused the group to find her very suspicious.”

Assessment Analysis

There were two forms of assessment used for this lesson plan. The formative assessment (Loh, 2012) showed that the students were comfortable with the basic theories and terms related to small group communication and could apply them to the interactions that occurred during the game. This type of assessment varied between “AYAW?” and “The Resistance.” In “AYAW?” the formative assessment was performed away from the “village circle” established by the students and toward the students who were eliminated from the game. There was a series of questions focusing on communication patterns that were occurring in the village and how this pattern related to the previous lecture on small group communication. The students who were outside the village circle were able to identify presentations of power and leadership, changes in the focus of the small group, and the role of nonverbal communication within the game (i.e., how players were using nonverbal cues to make decisions regarding whom to eliminate from the game). This mode of questioning was applied as formative assessment as it was used both to deal with possible misconceptions that related to the concepts surrounding small group communication practices (e.g., differentiating groupthink from consensus) and attempting to understand what the students were learning throughout the class session (Wiliam, 2018).

In “The Resistance,” the formative assessment was at the end of each game. There was a series of questions focusing on the individual missions within the game and how “task-based” communication pattern framed the students’ ability to complete the mission based on their roles within the game.

The summative assessment (Bellotti, Kapralos, Lee, Moreno-Ger, & Berta, 2013) showed that the students could rationalize the game as part of the learning process. This form of assessment came from the assignment described earlier. The papers were evaluated based on the standard “Communication and Composition” rubric used by a large university in the southern part of the United States, as well as the students’ ability to reference elements from the lecture, the reading, and the gameplay. The students needed to support the reasons in their essay with evidence. The summative assessment showed that the students who turned in the assignment were proficient in their analysis as defined by the rubric and the evidence present in the previous class.

Limitations

The major limitation that needs to be acknowledged in this work is the limited scope of this particular lesson plan. Social deception games may be used in other aspects related to communication education or even as a general pedagogical practice. The lesson plan must be well designed to take advantage of the ludological aspects of the experience. However, based on the current study alone, it is difficult to generalize that these types of pedagogical processes would work in other classroom settings.

Another limitation would be that responses came from traditional first-year college students from a large university in the southern part of the United States. Therefore, the themes presented are limited to this particular population regarding their reaction toward this particular lesson plan. Further usage in other colleges and universities would show whether this opinion and analysis of the assessment were consistent across the United States and, perhaps, throughout global higher education.

A third limitation is the inability to comment on the degree to which students’ assignments reflected what they learned from playing social deduction games and cannot be compared with other modes of instruction in class nor to the students’ pre-existing beliefs or knowledge regarding small group communication. The nature of the case study and associated thematic analysis depend heavily on the students’ written assignments rather than a pretest/posttest mode of analysis. Future research should explore more experimental to investigate the benefit of this kind of learning activity.

Future Research

There are two recommendations for further research based on the results of this project. The first area would be to look at how experienced players of “AYAW?” use “task-based” communication patterns as a means for the villagers to complete the villagers’ end goal (picking out the werewolves). A preliminary pilot was conducted during the summer of 2015 to study how these experienced players thought about playing the different roles in traditional “AYAW?” (villager, seer, and werewolf) to look for both how the simulation aspect of the social deception games could be used in the development of lesson plan in the realm of communication (Tompkins, 1998) and to assess whether the model for instruction could be used in other disciplines (e.g., Could social deception games be used in the study of team building in the field of business and management?) (Wolfe, Bowen, & Roberts, 1989).

The second area for consideration, based on feedback, would be to expand this case study to other forms of game-based learning. Future research could focus on moderators of games outside of the classroom setting to see what strategies can be learned from those moderators to integrate their techniques into the pedagogy of game-based learning in classrooms.