BASED HISTORY

If you are reading this message, your academic group has become participants of the global project for historical research named "Based History." The mission of the project participants is to search and systematise detailed knowledge about historical epochs for the Encyclopaedia of World Civilisations.

The main entries of the new Encyclopaedia are composed by artificial intelligence on the basis of existing textbooks, articles, and other sources. AI is responsible for entries about major events (e.g., the Battle of Marathon), major figures (such as Hammurabi), famous buildings (e.g., the Egyptian pyramids) and human achievements (such as the creation of alphabetic writing).

What do the projects include?

What is the meaning of a pack of cards?

What is the point of the competition?

How is the final competition organized?

How are game points scored and counted?

Who wins and what is the prize?

MISSION & MEANING

What is your role?

Human researchers are needed to find nuances: events, artifacts, and details of historical eras that are overlooked by textbook and encyclopaedia authors.
With this, the editors of the new Encyclopaedia will control and develop artificial intelligence. To participate in this task, your group must successfully go through trials.

What do the trials consist of?

Your team is codenamed after an 18th century encyclopaedist. Together with other intellectuals, he wrote articles for the Encyclopaedia edited by Diderot and d'Alembert. Your team will compete and work on 4 projects under the name of the Encyclopaedist.
While carrying out the projects, you need to demonstrate…
…research skills: searching, processing, verifying and presenting information, attention to detail, organisation and punctuality.
…soft skills: cooperation, collaboration, persistence, desire to learn — something that distinguishes humans from AI.

What do the projects include?

Every fortnight, all the teams receive a set of topics for their research and choose one theme for their project.
The theme is a specific historical era, to which each group creates a pack of cards with associations.
The pack consists of 10 cards. Each card has two sides: an illustration and a commentary on it. By the end of the semester, your group will have 4 decks, each of 10 cards.

What is the meaning of a pack of cards?

The aim of each project is to find non-banal and non-trivial associations with a historical epoch. The originality of the associations is tested in the final competition at one of the last seminars.

What is the point of the competition?

During the final game, two groups compete with each other using one of their decks. Each group's task is to guess the era from the association cards. The more interesting and unexpected your associations are, the harder it will be for your opponents to guess the era. Keep this in mind when making the cards.

PROCEDURE

How is the final competition organized?

Your group will have 4 packs, but you use only one pack at the game. The pack for the competition is chosen randomly by drawing a number card (1 to 4).
Each team's task is to reveal as many association cards as possible before their opponents guess the historical era.
First, one team reveals their cards in the order they decide. It makes sense to start with the least obvious associations to make it more difficult for the opposing team.
When a card is revealed, the opposing team has 1 minute to think about their answer. If they are ready to name an era, they must explain the relationship between the presented image on the card and the guessed era. If the answer is correct, the game with the pack stops and the players count their points.

How are game points scored and counted?

You score points for two main activities:

research work on projects
a final competition game with another group.

10 game points = 1 point of the Institute of International Education (ИМО) rating system.
Each team can receive a maximum of 110 game points (11 rating points), which are distributed in this way:

participation in research work (60 points)
punctuality badge (10 points)
participation in two rounds of the final game (40 points).

At the end of the semester, game points are converted into course points at the rate of 10 to 1. If the group scored 85 points for the game, they are converted to 9 points of the point-rating system. If the group scores 74 points for the game, they are converted to 7 points on a point-rating system.

Research work on projects

Teams work on cards within 10 days of the themes being published and then upload their packs to a special form.
Each pack of 10 cards uploaded on time, before the deadline, is valued at 15 game points.
At the same time, each card in the deck is valued at 1.5 points.
If a card is not counted by the instructor checking the decks, 1.5 points will be deducted from the total score.
If the deadline is violated, 3 points will be deducted for every 12 hours late.

Punctuality badge

If a group has completed and uploaded all 4 projects on time, before the deadlines, they receive a badge for being organised and punctual. It earns an additional 10 game points.

Competition between groups

The final battle game consists of two rounds, during which each of the 2 groups reveals their decks.
In each round there are 20 points at stake - 2 points for each card played and unplayed.
The group presenting their cards gets 2 points for each card revealed minus the last card played if the era is guessed.
The guessing group gets 2 points for NOT revealed cards + the last card played.
Thus, if a group guesses the epoch from three cards, they get 16 points: the number of unrevealed cards + the last card played is 8. The other group in this case gets 4 points: the number of revealed cards minus the last card - 2.
If the epoch remains undiscovered, the group that revealed its pack gets all 20 points.

Who wins and what is the prize?

17 teams with the most points win the competition. They keep their names/encyclopaedists in the project for the second semester. The names of the losing teams are withdrawn from the competition.
In the second semester, two teams play for one name/encyclopaedist:

the first team is the one that kept the name/encyclopaedist;
the second team is the one that lost the right to perform under its initial name/encyclopaedist.

These teams will be able to act separately or together, but their points will go into one score.
The winning teams from the second semester will become contributors to the Encyclopaedia of World Civilisations.