TEACHING COMPANION / NO ACCOUNT NEEDED
The Square
Everyone wants change. Who’s going to show up?
Collective action, coordination & selective incentives · 45–55 min · with optional discussion
Learning goals
- Explain pivotality and the difference between individual and collective incentives.
- Compare communication, coordination and selective incentives.
- Separate model behavior from empirical prediction.
Before the activity
No advance reading. You play one citizen; the other nineteen are programmed.
Syllabus description
You are one citizen among twenty. Predict what the others will do, decide whether to act and test what changes when incentives and communication shift. Shared interests are only the beginning. Students produce forecasts, choices and reasoning record.
Discussion prompts
- What made acting individually costly or worthwhile?
- Which comparison isolates the programmed intervention?
What to assess
Assess payoff reasoning, forecasts and explanation of the comparison. Participation in the model is not a moral grade.
Limitations
The other nineteen citizens are programmed. Controlled rehearsals illustrate mechanisms; they do not forecast real political behavior.
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, “The Square: Teaching companion,” Possible States, https://possiblestates.com/teaching/the-square. 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
You are one citizen among twenty. Predict what the others will do, decide whether to act and test what changes when incentives and communication shift. Shared interests are only the beginning. Students produce forecasts, choices and reasoning record.
Questions for a discussion board or class debrief
- What made acting individually costly or worthwhile?
- Which comparison isolates the programmed intervention?