Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse: How popular culture can facilitate team building and understanding leadership

Abstract

This paper introduces a scenario-based learning activity to bring challenges in strategic communication and leadership to students’ lived experience. It details the goals, setup, steps, and appraisal of a group activity conducted at a course’s start. The activity aims to foster cohesion among students from diverse backgrounds and offers a hands-on introduction to the challenges faced by strategic communication practitioners and leaders.

Courses

Leadership, Strategic Communication, and courses within communication that include a complex group assignment.

Objectives

The Zombie Apocalypse (ZA) learning activity is part of a second-year course in an international master’s program. The course introduces students to key concepts in strategic communication and leadership and encourages students to apply these in practice. The ZA aims to 1) prepares students for undertaking a complex group assignment (develop a strategic communications concept) in a diverse group. Specifically, it concentrates on the following objectives: assess priorities, challenge own values and perspectives, experience challenges of planning and acting with limited information, understand the importance of delegation and trust in teamwork, reflect upon emotional responses and their impact on performance under time pressure. By that, the ZA is not limited to strategic communication and leadership courses. It is suited to prepare students for complex group assignments in a wide variety of communications courses.

Introduction and rationale

The ZA is a scenario-based learning (SBL) activity. As a “practical expression of situated learning,” SBL is based on the assumption that “knowledge cannot be known and fully understood independent of its context” (Errington, 2011, p. 87). SBL encourages students to explore multiple perspectives of a problem and to work together to find collaborative solutions (Andrews et al., 2015). In the ZA, we create a “near-world scenario” (Errington, 2011, p. 85)—one that resembles real-world workplace pressures and challenges but is exercised in a safe and controlled environment that allows for a reflection of lived experience and facilitator-led consolidation of learning.

We decided on a popular culture-inspired scenario for this learning activity.¹ Parviz (2020) emphasizes that “popular culture can be a powerful tool in the classroom to create enthusiasm, reduce stress, and generate interest in otherwise dry topics” (p. 45). Zombies are an established popular culture phenomenon, occupying cinema and TV screens (e.g. “Dawn of the Dead,” “The Walking Dead”), videogame consoles (e.g. “Resident Evil”), smartphone applications (e.g. the immersive running game “Zombies, Run!”), and even our everyday language use. We may for instance refer to people as “zombie-like” if they go about a task without thought or emotion or as “phone zombies” if they are oblivious to the world around them while being engrossed in their mobile devices. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011), as part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, even developed a comic of a zombie invasion to encourage citizens to assemble an all-hazards emergency kit.

Communication teachers have drawn on zombies to illustrate medium theory (Pulos, 2020), practice public-speaking approaches and techniques (Parviz, 2020; Pruim, 2016), as well as stimulate reflections on implicit bias and its impact on relationship building (Shetterly, 2022). Extending on this, the ZA learning activity proved particularly valuable for teaching heterogeneous graduate student groups with a broad range of cultural, professional, and educational backgrounds, “as it provides students with a familiar ‘anchor’ through which to better understand core issues and concepts within [a given field]” (Blanton, 2013, p. 2).

The activity

Zombies on campus: The scenario

The following scenario guides the learning activity. An unknown number of zombies are threatening the university campus. The classroom is considered safe from zombie incursions for the next 60 minutes. However, there are five imaginary groups of students on the campus that are hiding from zombies and need the course participants’ help. The participants are thus given the mission to locate and free the imaginary students as well as guide them to a safe location (the classroom). While the police may not be able to reach the campus in the next 60 minutes, the police have provided the participants with information on (1) where students are hiding from zombies and (2) which routes are safe for participants to use when escorting freed students to the safe location.

Conducting the ZA: Steps and necessary materials

The learning activity takes around two-and-a-half hours to conduct (including a break) and comprises the following steps:

Figure 1. Introduction of the Scenario during the Briefing.

Figure 2. Campus Map Introduced during the Briefing.

Step 1: Briefing (15 minutes).

The briefing entails a synchronous scenario delivery based on a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation (see Appendix 1). The present tense is used throughout the entire briefing to position the participants close to the scenario (Errington, 2011). By directly addressing the students (e.g. “We need your help.”), the briefing instils a sense of commitment among the participants. The briefing is purposefully designed to be complex and intricate. Not every piece of information presented is relevant to completing the learning activity. By that, the teacher creates an element of information overload among participants. The students are asked to filter what is key to completing the learning activity. At the same time, the briefing deliberately leaves information gaps to bring challenges of planning and acting with limited information to students’ lived experience. In other words, students are asked to make decisions based on imperfect information and many unknowns, thus making the activity representative of the real world.

The participants conduct the learning activity in groups of four to five students. In this instance, groups were created during the course introductory session prior to the ZA using an activity intended to diversify the groups along cultural/national, age, professional experience, skills, and values domains. The students remained in these groups for the duration of the course. However, in the interest of replicability, groups can be formed on the day of the activity. The benefit of creating diverse groups is twofold: first, it allows for a diversity of perspectives when resolving challenges of the ZA, and second, it places participants outside of their comfort zone by breaking up any cliques or prior friendship groups. This not only contributes to the learning outcomes of the activity but also encourages greater classroom cohesion and cooperation throughout the entire course.

Steps 2 and 3: Planning and completing group tasks (60 minutes).

The planning phase is designed to give participants time to appreciate the problem as well as discuss problem-solving strategies. The students have access to the following materials: five group tasks they have to complete to rescue the five student groups, a campus map, and any notes they have taken during the briefing.

In the next phase, participants complete group tasks of varying complexity, ranging from a simple sudoku puzzle to complex mathematical riddles (Appendix 2 contains all group tasks, including solutions for teachers). Successful solving of a group task “releases” the hiding students, which then allows at least one group member to “escort” the rescued students to the classroom.

How does it work? The solution to every group task yields a code, which is sent to the teacher located in the safe location (classroom) via a text message. If the code is correct, the teacher provides the group with the information on where to obtain the nominal roll, which is subsequently brought back to the safe location by at least one team member using a safe route as dictated by the campus map. The nominal roll serves as proof of the rescue. The groups score points for every successfully completed rescue mission, with more complex rescues earning higher points. While some tasks can be completed by one person, more complex—and therefore higher-scoring—tasks require teamwork. This phase of the group activity allows the participants to explore communication and group processes during planning and conduct while under time constraints and imperfect information. The challenge to complete five group tasks in a limited timeframe shines a light on the importance of prioritization, delegation, and trust for achieving group goals.

Additionally, student groups receive updates on the situation at 10-minute intervals via a mobile device (see Appendix 3 for the information updates sent to the student groups during this phase of the learning activity). These updates contain (1) information on the number of students hiding at each of the five rescue points, (2) information on the level of difficulty of each group task, and (3) cues for solving the group tasks. The purpose of these information updates is twofold: first, they add complexity to the exercise and force participants to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, and second, they help the course participants assess priorities and make decisions under time pressure.

The student groups have 60 minutes in total to plan the group activity and complete all group tasks. While the teacher recommends spending 25 minutes on planning and 35 minutes on completing the group tasks during the initial briefing, the students can freely decide how to distribute their time within the 60 minutes.

Debriefing (60 minutes)

After one hour, all participants are asked to return to the classroom for a teacher-led debriefing (“After Action Review”), announcement of the winning team (based on the points scored in the rescue mission), and an exercise evaluation. The debriefing phase starts with a short breathing exercise to assist in emotional regulation following a mentally and physically challenging learning activity. Afterwards, participants are asked to reflect on their individual as well as their team performance, focusing on challenges with planning, decision making, communication, prioritization of effort, time management, response to changing circumstances, as well as their ability to manage stress-induced physiological responses effectively such as increased heart rate and “tunnel vision.” The debriefing phase puts particular emphasis on the reflection upon individual physiological (e.g. elevated heart rate, “tunnel vision,” breathlessness, etc.) and emotional responses (e.g. stress, decision paralysis, etc.) and how they can impact performance. Additionally, a significant amount of time is invested in establishing what worked well. Students are encouraged to reflect first individually and then as a group on aspects of the activity they did well. The aim is to highlight that even with imperfect information, significant time pressures, and a changing operational environment, exercising a decision-making methodology and planning will lead to better outcomes.

Appraisal and modifications

A qualitative evaluation of the learning activity conducted immediately after the ZA revealed that the activity was positively received, and all participants suggested keeping it as a team-building exercise that prepared students for tackling complex group assignments. Several participants addressed the value of the learning activity in preparing them for their future careers and helping individuals to rapidly establish trust within a team . The debriefing phase was appreciated by all participants, as it allowed students an opportunity to understand the underlying intentions of the learning activity in greater detail, emotionally regulate after a mentally and physically taxing exercise, as well as reflect by initially discussing lessons learned within one’s own group and subsequently with staff and other groups.

The participants suggested issuing information beforehand on the nature and intensity of the exercise to avoid triggering reactions. Inducing an element of information overload and stress both through briefing delivery as well as the need to “rescue” hiding students with a diverse group of international participants has the potential to trigger unexpected emotional responses. Although we had no undue stress responses from any of the participants, it is sound advice to add a trigger warning to ensure that concerns by any participants who have experienced trauma or mental health challenges are identified and addressed. Moreover, course participants remarked that the ZA may pose additional challenges for students with restricted mobility. Mobile virtual reality technology could aid with this and provides an opportunity for creating a learning activity in cooperation with partnering study programs or universities (Radianti et al., 2020).

The ZA requires substantial planning effort. To facilitate the adaption of the ZA to communications courses on both undergraduate and graduate courses, this paper comprises a comprehensive appendix, including briefing slides, all five group tasks, and the messages used for information updates. While we have conducted this learning activity with several colleagues, the materials provided allow for executing the learning activity with one to two teachers.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ben Grumley whose work as Director at Mission Ready Group has inspired this learning activity. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank all course participants for sharing their learnings and valuable feedback points with us.

Notes

1 The inspiration for the ZA stems from quick decision exercises (QDE) used in the Australian military context to prepare personnel for operations in environments characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. QDE are scenario-based activities that improve the ability to make quick decisions through the combination of an appreciation process, effective communication, leadership, and teamwork. The ZA adapts QDE to higher education contexts (1) by developing a popular culture scenario and (2) group tasks suited for students.