1. Discussion of this documentary (50 minutes): students discuss a number of questions in groups and/or pairs, and then are brought into group discussion to summarize their smaller discussions.
2. Understanding bias in research design (50 minutes): in discussing people’s propensities to lie, the documentary provides both experiments (empirical evidence), and a number of stories (anecdotal evidence) that relate to the same sub topics. Why do you think the documentary includes both types of evidence? What purpose does this pairing serve in illustrating the points the researchers are trying to prove? Do you find the stories or the experiments to be more revealing? Why? (If you think, “it depends,” be sure to discuss what it depends on.) Which experiment or story did you find to be the most interesting? Shocking? Important? What about this evidence made it this way? The research and findings presented in this documentary were originally published as a book. Why do you think this book was turned into a documentary? What differences are there between receiving this information via text versus a documentary? How do these differences relate to our past discussions on remixing and synthesizing? How do you think the topic of this film (honesty and lying) relates to our course’s overall focus on Corporate Social Responsibility? In what ways were the experiments designed to avoid bias and produce the most scientific results? What decisions did the researchers make to produce such results? Why were these choices needed?
3. Peer Review (50 minutes): Students use the remaining time to perform a peer review on the survey questions they are preparing for their research.