Sarah Grubisich, Solomia Dzhaman, and Ayah Jaber
Ben Leff writes:
In my U. S. History class, I had an assignment in which students were supposed to create "digital exhibits" that compared a common theme across multiple 20th Century American Wars (e.g. an exhibit comparing World War II and Cold War Propaganda).
Most students did what I expected - using Powerpoint to create virtual slide shows that combined visuals and texts. But Sarah, Solomia, and Ayah did something much cooler. Their job was to look at the experience of ordinary soldiers in World War I and World War II. To do that, they created "choose your own adventure" style journeys for each war, in which "patrons" took on the persona of a given character, and make a series of choices that resulted in different outcomes for the character. The other students had a lot of "fun" choosing their own adventure, but the academic rigor was still excellent. The studentz baked in a lot of useful details about the life of a soldier in each war, and also were able to use the format to get on some of the difficult moral questions of war.
Finally, to fulfill the comparative aspect of the assignment, they made a special addendum that made valuable comparisons between the experiences of fighting the two wars (for example, the emotional difference between killing in trench warfare versus by dropping bombs from the sky). By taking the more creative route, they definitely made their lives harder - writing all the different "scenarios" was extremely time-consuming. But the result was an exhibit that the other students actually lined up to take part in.