Hobbes

Hobbes allows instructors to run complex N-player games as classroom activities in real time.

N-player games, such as public goods games or guess 2/3 of the average, are popular in-class activities. For example, as a philosophy professor I would have all my PHILO 100 students participate in a public goods game when we covered the tragedy of the commons. Without Hobbes, I would have students submit their contributions to the public good on index cards, and then I'd manually tabulate each student's final score after class. With a large class this is a tedious burden.

Hobbes automates this process. Students can participate in the game by submitting their contribution online, and the game's result is immediately computed when the instructor closes the session. Each participant can see an anonymized table of contributions and final scores, and the instructor can download the full, unanonymized data so that it can be uploaded directly into the class gradebook.