This game deals with social norms and helps to point out social expectations within our society that we don't tend to recognize normally. A professor can begin the first week by violating the social norm herself and move on to assign certain norms to other students. A social norm can be anything from burping in class, asking for money for unnecessary items, violating someone's personal space, clicking your pen frantically. The goal of the game is for the students to pick up on social norms and be able to point them out when they occur in the classroom. By the second or third week, students may begin to pick out students breaking from the societal norm who weren't actually assigned to violate a norm that day. This one can be a lot of fun, especially when students begin picking out what society considers a violation, things as simple as standing backward in an elevator.
John Paul from Washburn University suggests using the urinal scenario as a game to get people to open up and begin communicating on the first day of class. The game is based on a popular Internet game where an individual goes into a bathroom and is faced with the choice of three urinals, one close to the door, one in the middle, and one near the back wall. The popular choice tends to be the back urinal, even though it is proven to be less sanitary than the one closest to the door, a phenomenon which can spark an intelligent discussion among students. The game gets interesting when you are forced to make a decision of which urinal to choose when there is another patron in the restroom already using a urinal. You can even go on to question where the appropriate place to stand is when all urinals are occupied.
To prepare for test days, it can be beneficial for everyone to set up a study review day when students can optionally show up to play sociology trivia. The game should cover topics that have been covered the previous weeks in lecture that will be covered on the test. If you break the class down into groups, they can pool their knowledge and compete while simultaneously covering test material. If you want some added incentive, you can offer bonus points to the winning team that can be applied to their test scores the following class day.