"ThanAverage is a small unscientific investigation into how we value and compare ourselves to each other."
This is an interesting interactive website that asks a series of questions that require the user to rate how they compare themselves to what they perceive to be average.
Once they answer the questions, they see the percentage of people that answered the same. (At time of writing, most questions had been answered between 30 and 40k times.)
This encourages people to reflect on how they see themselves in relation to others and how other people might see themselves. The question are engaging and once you answer them they get instant results.
Try it here: https://thanaverage.xyz/
How to use it:
- Put students into pairs and ask them to discuss the questions together before answering.
- Once they have answered they can look at the percentages and try to explain the results, e.g. Why do I think I'm more privileged than average people? Why do I think I smell better/ worse than average?
- You can also get students to discuss -What are the implications if I am wrong?
- Get them to work through about 10 questions and make a record of their answers.
These are some useful group follow-up questions once the students have finished working through some of the questions on the site.
- How many questions were you above average/below average?
- What did you learn about yourself from the site?
- Why do you think the site was created?
- What has the maker of the site learned?
Finally, get students to create 5 similar questions that they could ask.
I hope your students enjoy this activity. Check out my book Hacking Creativity for more creative ideas to get students thinking, creating and interacting.
Comments ()