Reply Across
Player and Instructor Manual
Created by Yoav Duman
Reply Across Player and Instructor Manual
Answer composite correspondents in Canada and India before later evidence becomes available. Your job is to recommend an arrangement, explain what you expect and revise your advice when it meets an objection. You can change your reply; the historical record remains independent of your choices.
Version 2 · content edition 2026-10-10.3 · default core guide 55 minutes · available instructor guides 45 and 60 minutes · optional Spain postscript about 10 minutes · individual play
Start here
A basic introduction to nationalism is useful: constructed identities, ethnic and civic claims, national membership and federalism. You need not master a theory vocabulary. Open the first envelope to start. Your original expectations will be saved before hindsight opens. Use the visible prompts and optional worked example when you are unsure how to begin; explain in your own words.
Write advice before hindsight
Two dated cases
Canada opens on 1 October 1992, before the Charlottetown referendum result. India opens on 15 January 1956, before the adopted reorganization. The letters introduce recognition, jurisdiction, services, finance and internal minorities. They are authored composite correspondence, not recovered historical letters. Source cards distinguish period evidence from later enactments, observations and reproductions. Do not use later knowledge to pretend it was available at the opening date.
Four decisions
The Canada letters ask what to recommend on the agreement and how to handle jurisdiction and services. The India letters ask for a boundary principle and whether a shared Telugu language settles the question. Read the letter and relevant source inserts. Choose a tentative proposal, then write your expectation and warrant. Name an actor, mechanism and condition; select relevant evidence where asked. You may reconsider before sealing.
Seal and revise
Sealing preserves the first forecast. A choice-linked authored reply then challenges an implementation assumption or a safeguard. Read that reply and write a revision, a defended condition or a reasoned change of mind. Later replies can carry earlier recommendations forward. The feedback responds to an explicit choice; it does not infer or grade the quality of your prose. A confident tone or historical agreement does not make an answer correct.
Reopen the expectations
After the four decisions, choose one preserved forecast to reopen beside a dated historical capsule. Other forecasts remain available in a disclosure. Assess your chosen forecast as challenged, partly consistent or not tested by the record, and explain which exact part the record addresses and what evidence would test the remaining mechanism. An actual outcome cannot settle every unrealized alternative. Use the capsule’s source and limit rather than treating history as a score for your chosen policy.
Audit the category
Compare French-only with any-French mother-tongue responses and grouped Hindi with named mother tongues. Inspect the definition, denominator and date. These switches change what is counted; they do not move people or measure consent. Choose one of the explicitly invented briefing claims to challenge. Explain what changes across its two categories, what political conclusion does not follow and what evidence is still missing. The Canada and India institutional comparison helps distinguish a count from jurisdiction, representation and continuing rights.
Finish the reply
Apply your reasoning to the unfamiliar authored envelope. Return to a mechanism that travels, a condition that does not and a limit of your sources. Your final reply compiles the original expectations, challenges, revisions, forecast review, category audit and debrief. Complete the core before deciding whether to open Spain.
Save and carry your reply
Local progress
Your work saves on this device in this browser. Check the saved-status message. All saved replies returns to the home list; select the dated reply to resume. The correspondence list, including the mobile selector, lets you revisit reached pages. Revisiting does not undo the furthest progress or rewrite a sealed forecast. Use a downloadable backup before changing device, clearing site data or closing a session with a storage warning.
A resumable backup
Backup or Progress backup (.json) downloads the saved run, its pinned package and unfinished drafts. Restore progress accepts that JSON file and lets you review it before replacing the active view. Valid older runs keep their own edition and completion contract. Keep the JSON for resuming; the readable report and a PDF cannot reconstruct a run. If another tab has newer work, download your current copy before deciding which saved reply to use.
A readable report
Choose Report scope: Core report only, Core and optional postscript, or Optional postscript only when available. Download report (.txt) gives the readable record. Print / save as PDF opens the browser's print dialog for that scope. Original forecasts, authored challenges, revisions, later history and source distinctions travel with the report. Review which optional work is included and whether it is complete before submission. Upload the requested file or photo to Canvas yourself; the app does not submit it automatically.
The optional Spain postscript
Open the Spain postscript adds about ten minutes after core completion. Two dated context letters compare Catalonia and the Basque Country within a 31 December 2023 frame. Examine authority, finance and internal minorities, choose a proposal and safeguard, then answer a safeguard-specific authored stress test. This is not a reported event. Finish here preserves core completion and leaves a later invitation. You can return to the core report while keeping postscript progress.
Listen or read
Listening covers the currently visible letter, proposals, evidence and eligible source inserts. Use play, pause, resume, stop and speed controls. Opening a new stage cancels the earlier narration. The written content remains the authoritative available text. If your browser offers no speech voice, continue reading or use your usual access tool.
Use Reply Across in a class
The learning task
Use this after a basic nationalism lecture or reading. Students should reason about an arrangement with period evidence, make a bounded forecast, respond to an objection and distinguish what later records can test. The category audit asks them to separate a classification, a political claim and its missing warrant. The cases support questions about federalism, democracy, representation, state capacity and finance without offering one universally best arrangement.
Prepare and pace
Preview a new v2 run, one sealed reply, the later follow-up and the category audit. Check saving, JSON restore, narration and actual printing on classroom devices. The public website uses the 55 minute core guide; the separate instructor studio offers 45, 55 and 60 minute guides. Timing is a suggested allocation, not a measured completion time. For a 50 minute class with discussion, have students begin beforehand or finish the debrief and export after class. Keep Spain outside the core budget.
Specify the submission
Ask for one individual record per student. State whether the required submission is the core TXT, a PDF or a photograph and whether Spain is optional. A backup is for resuming and should not replace readable evidence of reasoning. Ask students to identify their work in the submission according to course instructions. Allow concise explanations and additional time or access tools when needed.
Facilitate the distinctions
Ask what was knowable at the letter's date, who can enact a proposal and who bears its cost. Challenge a student to distinguish language from a mandate or a constitutional status from actual capacity. Permit disagreement about a policy and permit not tested as a justified historical assessment. The first forecast matters because it reveals an assumption; students should not be punished for revising it.
Example of reasoning
Weak: “History proves this proposal worked.” Stronger: “The dated record shows enactment, which addresses my legal forecast. It does not test my service-access mechanism; I would need comparable refusal records and staffing evidence.” Reward a bounded revision even when it changes the student’s original advice.
| Criterion | Look for |
|---|---|
| Mechanism | A forecast with an actor, condition and plausible institutional link. |
| Warrant | Period evidence used for the claim it can support. |
| Revision | A response to a specific objection, not merely more confident wording. |
| Category audit | Definition and denominator distinguished from political consent. |
| Transfer | A traveling mechanism paired with a condition or source limit. |
Discuss sources and limits
Questions after the correspondence
Which expectation did the later record actually test? What could a referendum tally tell you, and what could it not tell you about motives or jurisdiction? Why did sharing Telugu fail to settle every institutional question? What changed when the language category changed? Who might become an internal minority in a new arrangement? Which mechanism traveled between Canada and India, and which relationship should not be copied?
Extend the comparison
If students open Spain, ask which Catalan and Basque powers concern a territorial institution, which concern financing and who remains inside an arrangement without controlling it. Use Aran to examine a nested minority. Distinguish this territorial comparison from Indigenous or treaty jurisdiction in Canada. An analogy is useful when it specifies a shared mechanism and a difference that limits transfer.
Edition and instructor controls
This manual covers the fixed v2 website edition, 2026-10-10.3. The separate protected instructor studio supports editing drafts, publishing immutable packages and rollback. An authorized identity and the instructor code are required. A studio release applies to new runs on its hosted game; it does not silently replace the public website copy or a learner's pinned edition. Preview edited content and specify the assigned URL. Keep dates, measurement definitions and source limits in any new edition.
Primary sources to continue with
- 1992 Charlottetown Consensus Report (opens a new tab)
- India States Reorganisation Commission Report of 1955 (opens a new tab)
- Spain constitutional text used for the optional frame (opens a new tab)
Access and artwork
The game's source cards provide additional dates, definitions and limits. The AI-created cover is conceptual correspondence art, not a historical record or accurate jurisdiction map. Keep the title and Created by Yoav Duman credit visible when reusing it. Completion records participation; it does not establish learning gains or enjoyment.