TEACHING COMPANION / NO ACCOUNT NEEDED
A Door That Says Open
The right exists. Can you actually use it?
Participation, access & accountability · About 55 min of active work
Learning goals
- Distinguish formal rights from usable political access.
- Connect an institutional rule to an observed barrier.
- Test a hypothesis and transfer the reasoning to a new case.
Before the activity
No specialist knowledge required. Read the case records as you go.
Syllabus description
A worker tries to vote. A volunteer tries to reach voters. Residents try to get an answer. Find where access breaks down, defend your account at a hearing and replay one changed rule. Students produce evidence, hypothesis and revision report.
Discussion prompts
- At which point did a formal right become difficult to use?
- What did changing one rule establish, and what remained uncertain?
What to assess
Assess the mechanism linking a rule to access, the evidence chosen and the scope of the conclusion.
Limitations
Fictional cases isolate selected institutional problems. A changed-rule replay does not establish a general empirical effect.
Credit & permissions
Created by Yoav Duman. Free educational use, sharing and hosted embedding; software rights reserved. Software, artwork, branding and third-party materials are separate; see the full reuse information.
Suggested citation: Yoav Duman, “A Door That Says Open: Teaching companion,” Possible States, https://possiblestates.com/teaching/door-that-says-open. Include your access date.
ASSESSMENT & SUBMISSION
Grade the explanation.
The interface has no opinion.
Set an endpoint, ask for the activity’s readable report, and use your existing LMS. Students can use Print / Save as PDF where a separate download is not offered. A progress backup is for restoring work, not grading it.
A suggested 10-point rubric
For each criterion: 0 = absent, 1 = partial, 2 = clear and supported. Adapt the weighting to your course; this is guidance, not automatic scoring.
- Concepts / 2
- Use the relevant political concept accurately.
- Evidence / 2
- Support a claim with a specific record or comparison.
- Mechanism / 2
- Explain how the rule or arrangement produces a consequence.
- Revision / 2
- Address a rival account or explain a change of mind.
- Limits / 2
- State what the model or evidence cannot establish.
Say this before they begin.
- Choose For class and follow the instructor’s endpoint.
- Save a progress backup before moving devices or changing website address.
- Open the readable report and check the required responses.
- Upload it to the course assignment. Check the LMS submission confirmation.
Switching from exploration keeps the current work, but skipped class responses may still need completing. A local report cannot establish authorship or make an activity tamper-proof.
Make it an assignment.
Edit this text, then copy it into your LMS. These edits stay in this tab.
Syllabus description & discussion prompts
Syllabus description
A worker tries to vote. A volunteer tries to reach voters. Residents try to get an answer. Find where access breaks down, defend your account at a hearing and replay one changed rule. Students produce evidence, hypothesis and revision report.
Questions for a discussion board or class debrief
- At which point did a formal right become difficult to use?
- What did changing one rule establish, and what remained uncertain?