Lexi's Final Assignment - "Power Play"

Our final comprehensive concept assignment involved creating an educational board game that teaches a communication concept. I chose to base my board game activity upon Marshall Scott Poole’s concept of Adaptive Structuration. This idea describes the way people adhere to expectations, make decisions, and handle power within small group communication. A structure within the group is created through the rules and resources and as they change, the system of communication may change as members adapt. Integrating these guidelines into my game design was important to help regulate the player’s behaviors throughout the game. The ultimate goal is for expectations to form in order for group members to anticipate each other’s behaviors over time and be able to adapt to have successful interactions resulting in “social integration”.

Poole’s idea states that there are five types of power a decision maker may hold. These include reward power, coercive power, referent power, legitimate power, and expert power.

• Reward Power: when the decision maker can give rewards to the subordinates for complying.
• Coercive Power: involves punishing subordinates for non-compliance.
• Referent Power: occurs when compliance is gained or subordinates desire the person in power to like them.
• Legitimate Power: when the power is given to that person and others accept that position over them.
• Expert Power: when the person knows the most about the issue at hand. 

These power positions are symptoms of the rules within the situation or emerge naturally due to one’s ability or right to make decisions. I decided to represent this aspect of the theory in my game by using a die. Each side stands for a different type of power, determines how the roller will move, and the sixth side represents the following aspect.

My Printed Game Pieces

Another element of this concept is the idea of discursive consciousness and practical consciousness. Poole identifies discursive consciousness occurring when group members are able to share their thoughts with each other and practical consciousness as a phenomenon when certain thoughts or actions can not be expressed. After much deliberation, it seemed most useful to incorporate consciousness as an interactive part of the game. Consciousness cards (drawn when a “C” is rolled on the dice) describe different scenarios that or challenges that the players must either discuss or work through in order to learn what consciousness is all about. For example, one card asks the player whose turn it is to act out a phrase on the card. If they are successful in getting another player to guess correctly without using words, they have achieved discursive consciousness and can move forward on the board, but if they fail, practical consciousness has occurred and they may be penalized. 

After thinking about the different elements of the theory I began to design the downloadable game board as a stepped pyramid with three levels (A, B,C) leading up to the top level, which is labeled with an S.I (Social Integration). Around each level are holes for pegs to fit in and at each corner of the first three levels, there is a number (1-4). Every player will have a representative playing piece that fits into the pegs and will start the game on a numbered corner. Once they have gone around the level once and returned back to their starting number, the player can move up to the next level. My Instructions, go into more detail about all the logistics of playing the game, but in order to win all the players must reach the top of the pyramid. No one individual wins; it must be a group effort.

The merit of this activity is to show how using the different types of power can help or hurt group communication. By making the goal of the game for everyone to succeed, the players have to know that working towards everyone achieving social integration is how successful group communication takes place. 



There were a few challenges I faced throughout this assignment. I chose a complex concept, which is definitely the point, however I struggled in the beginning about how I was going to incorporate the different parts of Adaptive Structuration. If this class has taught me anything though, it is that the more complicated the idea, the more rewarding it feels when you experience the moment(s) of inspiration that help you simplify the concept in order to share your ideas with others. With this project, I am particularly proud of the way I was able to create a game that, while complicated, has every element of the theory involved in some way that allows for the player to remember it as well as possibly apply it in the future.

All of our educational games, made possible through the use of 3D technology, will help teachers and students grasp complex communications concepts in a more exciting and immersive way.

Below is a link to where each element of my game and the instructions are available for free download. I also included the link to our group's promotional video for all the games we created. 

Google Drive Folder of Game Elements

Promotional Video