MMU Good Practice Exchange

Critical Thinking Murder Mystery

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Project Details

Susan Cobb and Carla Hamer, Student Experience Support Tutors at MMU Cheshire, have designed a critical thinking workshop with a twist. Wanting to avoid a stale presentation, the workshop brought critical thinking skills to life with the use of storytelling and roleplay techniques. Working in groups, students collected evidence and clues from around the classroom to support their argument for who had committed the crime in question – a murder most cruel!

The murder mystery themed workshop was received very positively by the students, who enjoyed the activity and felt they learned from it:
“This was productive. It was giving us skills, teaching us how to use them and letting us put it into practice”.
“We are using skills we’ve been taught in an enjoyable and creative way”.
“It’s been a brilliant experience. I’ve really enjoyed it”.

The staff involved were also very positive:
“There was a really good selection of prompts/stimuli for them to choose from when creating their [cases]”.
“We need more hands on, engaging workshops like this”.

CELT resource: Using Storytelling in HE