Summary:

Whodunit is a murder mystery game whose goal is to provide an opportunity for students to use English in novel ways through collaborative problem solving, follow a story and find the key ideas, and support a claim with evidence. The instructions for the activity are accompanied by a YouTube playlist of trailers and clips from whodunit movies and TV shows which help set the tone for the game. Because the game is providing a novel environment for language use, students will likely come across terms they are unfamiliar with, so the game includes a Padlet for students to collaboratively form a “word wall” and crowdsource language supports for themselves and their classmates. Then students come across “The Scene of the Crime” which is an interactive image where students find clues to help them solve the mystery. The clues include reading passages in the form of suspect interviews and observations and listening exercises through overheard conversations. The students use a Google Form to take notes on their findings and, once they believe they have solved the murder, where they make their initial accusation. Students also complete a speaking activity by making a Flip video where they state who they believe the murder to be and support their claim with evidence.

Rationale:

Open-ended games and gameful learning activities can provide students with an opportunity to stretch their language skills in engaging ways. Drawing on TBLT and gameful learning strategies, Whodunit presents students with an unfamiliar scenario and a fun problem to solve in their target language. Through this, students will be reasonably challenged, but still engaged enough to push through linguistic hurdles—linguistic hurdles made more manageable through the collaborative nature of the game. Whodunit comes with several affordances including opportunities for vocabulary building through the unfamiliar language and the collaborative glossary, listening practice from the “overheard conversation” clues, interactions with multiple English dialects and accents in the YouTube playlist, and speaking practice through the solution Flip. It also affords students an engaging way to practice understanding main ideas and important details in unfamiliar contexts, forming opinions based on that understanding, and supporting that opinion with the important details they identified. A skill that is helpful in many circumstances outside of murder mysteries. Fundamentally, this game is a fun and collaborative activity that can break out of the mold reading, speaking, and listening activities usually fall in.

Context: 

This activity is designed for an undergraduate EFL course, specifically a 200-300 level course that uses films and other cultural touchstones to teach English.  The students would most likely be between 18-24 and would have around an A2-B1 level of English. This would give them enough of a language background to access the material, but it would still be reasonably challenging. This activity would come at the end of the unit that used a murder mystery movie, such as Murder on the Orient Express or Knives Out, as the cultural feature, and that focused linguistically on forming and supporting opinions. However, it could also be used independently as a fun activity for English clubs or any sufficiently advanced language students.

Standards and skills:

ACTFL “can do” statements:

• I can follow the main storyline and some supporting detail across major time frames in fictional texts.
  • Students must understand the main ideas and important details (clues) in the written passages.
• I can understand the main message and some supporting details across major time frames in conversations and discussions.
  • Students must understand the main ideas and important details (clues) in the listening activities.
• I can state a viewpoint with supporting evidence on some concrete, social, and professional topics of interest
  • Students must make a claim and support it with evidence in writing and verbally through the Google Form and Flip exercises.

Technologies:

• Google sites: hosts the game
• YouTube: students watch videos with examples of the Whodunit genre
• Padlet: students collaboratively build a word wall
• Canva: interactive image and many clues were created with Canva, but students are not independently creating on Canva
• Flip: the listening activities are pre-recorded on a view-only Flip topic and the students make Flip videos on an open Flip topic.
• Google Forms: students take notes and form initial accusations in a Google Form

Preparation:

The Whodunit game can be used by anyone as it currently exists. The YouTube playlist, Padlet, and Google Form can all be used by anyone playing the game. Flip requires students to make an account, but the account is free to make, and anyone with an account can make a solution video.

• For instructors using Whodunit
  • Make sure the clickable clues on the interactive image are still live
  • If the instructor wants access to the Google Form results, they should make a new one with their own account and provide it as an additional link for students.
  • If the instructor wants the students’ Flip videos to be only accessible to their class, they should create a new Flip topic and provide it as an additional link for students
  • I will share the code to embed the interactive “Scene of the Crime” image upon request to teachers who wish to build their own site around it.
• For instructors independently making a similar game:
  • Create interactive images on Canva
    • Create a “home base” image
    • Create clue images
    • Insert clue icons on the “home base” image and make them link to the clue images.
    • The “home base” image can then be embedded in whatever platform is being used to host the game
      • Whodunit is hosted on Google Sites
  • Optional additions
    • “Overheard conversations” clues were recorded on a “view only” Flip topic and linked to a clue icon on the “home base” image
    • Padlet allows users to create three free Padlets which can be embedded in whatever platform is hosting the game
    • Google Forms or Microsoft Forms can be used interchangeably depending on instructor preference and both can be embedded in the hosting platform

Procedures:

Time (75 min)	Activity	Notes
12 min	Introduction: Open the activity by showing 2-3 of the example whodunit YouTube videos Discuss the characteristics of the whodunit genre	Short explanation of genre is provided next to YouTube playlist
8 min	Explain instructions to students: Students work in pairsUse interactive crime scene image to discover clues Take notes on the clues in the Google FormUse the evidence collected to determine who the murder isMake a claim and support it with evidence in the Google Form and in a Flip videoWhen students come across an unfamiliar term, they should look it up and add it to the Padlet glossary	This was designed assuming students were working in pairs, but groups can be slightly larger or smaller depending on the size of the class Teacher can decide whether to share that there is no one clear correct solution to the mystery
45 min	Students play through the murder mystery game.	Teacher should walk around classroom and provide support where needed Encourage students to use the Padlet to crowdsource language supports
10 min	Closing: Look over Padlet glossary and discuss the unfamiliar terms Students share who they think the murderer is	Can also ask for feedback on the game When students are sharing their solution, listen for how well they support their claim and highlight when students do it well

Variations:

• Remote learning
  • This activity does not have to be done in person. It can be done in remote language learning settings, including synchronous and asynchronously. For synchronous remote learning, the teacher can send the students working together into breakout rooms and students can make individual flip videos with their solutions (in person they can make joint or separate videos with their partner at the teacher’s discretion). One student in each group should share their screen as they click through the interactive clues.
  • For asynchronous learning, students can work through the mystery independently. The teacher will likely need to pre-emptively provide additional language supports and specifically tell the students there isn’t one correct answer to avoid causing too much frustration.
• Open vs Close ended clues
  • This activity was originally conceived of as a digital escape room but expanded into a murder mystery to allow for more freedom in student answers than digital escape rooms generally provide. For example, many digital escape rooms also have interactive images, but the clues or puzzles have only one answer that can “unlock” the next clue or puzzle. The open-ended clues suit the mystery genre particularly well but including close-ended clues (ones with a clear specific answer) could make it easier to build a similarly structured game with different themes.

Potential Obstacles:

• The embedded Padlet and Flip are not optimized for the mobile version of the webpage hosting the game. This means that students accessing the game on a tablet or phone would likely have an easier time opening the Padlet and Flip in their own tabs for ease of use.
• There is no pre-determined correct answer to who the murderer is. There are clues, and suspects who are more likely than others, but the uncertainty may be frustrating to students. Explaining the ambiguity at the beginning may spoil the mystery but could prevent this. Revealing this is up to the teacher’s discretion based on their knowledge of the students.
• If the language is not accessible or too difficult for the students (if, for example, they are English club students with less than the assumed English knowledge), then the teacher could pre-emptively add language supports to the Padlet and give sentence stems for the claim and evidence portions of the game.

Images, names, and plot points borrowed from the “Clue” movie:

Lynn, Jonathan. (Director). (1985). Clue [Film]. Paramount Pictures.