text: [Themes: mystery / thriller]
  
  You love dogs, but this one seemed to have an attitude, so you kick it out the window. You're a little curious to see what happened...
  
  Hey, buddy, what's goin' on?
  
  > screw that thing! It's not that important!
  You continue to walk forward without showing too much remorse. You are a bit irritated, do to the fact that you've had to deal with these random things, and at that moment two jet-pack equipped bank robbers fly out of a pie, and take all of your money.
  
  You curse the heavens, as you head to the door.
  
  Your many options
  
  > enter the room
  You walk in and look around. It's all so strange to you... well, then again, so has everything else.
  
  "Hehehe! Shhow! You mushht be da new one hee? Heeheehee!!!" Said some old guy with small whistles in his words.
  
  "What the hell's goin' on around here!? Where am I!? Where are you!?"
  
  "Heeheeheehee!!!..." His voice faded.
  
  Now what?[Themes: edutainment]
  
  Your name is Ben Neely. You're the General Manager of an educational technology startup that produces web-based adaptive software for mathematics.
  
  As a member of Cohort 21 in the Educational Leadership Program at UCLA, you are tasked with conducting an Action Research project.
  
  Unlike the rest of the cohort, you work for a for-profit business, that doesn't have a single site-- rather, the company's products are used by hundreds of schools across the country.
  
  What should you do for your action research project?
  
  [Author's Note: Putting the Mess in Action Research]
  
  > research something related to your company's product, SmartCity.
  MORALE +10!
  
  You decide to conduct Action Research on your own company's product. You're fired up! This is a great chance to introduce research into a product that deserves it.
  
  Now, how to handle your bosses, the co-founders of the company...
  
  > tell them about the project.
  MORALE -10!
  
  Your co-founders challenge the point of doing an Action Research project. After you ply them for a while, they begrudgingly say "Well, do what you want, but it has to be in your outside-of-work time. This should be your lowest priority."
  
  Guess it's time to define the research questions...
  
  > let's figure out what to research, specifically.
  As the head of the company division, you could pretty much decide unilaterally what you'd like to research. Is that consistent with the spirit of Action Research?
  
  If you seek to involve your colleagues, will they engage in the work?
  
  Decide how you'd like to define the study questions:
  
  > form a collaborative group of coworkers and client users.
  MORALE -10!
  
  You send two emails over the course of a week to coworkers and favored clients, but get only one response from your company's head of Implementation, who says she's simply too busy to meet on this. She suggests we look at why some struggling students don't improve after using our program.
  
  You get no response from any clients.
  
  What now?
  
  > guess it's best to use your own beliefs and observations.
  MORALE -10!
  
  Geez, working on your own doesn't feel like real Action Research... but at least you can probably get some things done.
  
  You're interested in students making the transition from middle school to high school mathematics, and the role that intrinsic academic motivation may play in their engagement with your SmartCity math program. You decide to examine intrinsic motivation amongst your student users, to see if there is a connection between that factor and students who elect to disengage and click randomly.
  
  Time to figure out your methods.
  
  > Need methods to get results!
  You plan on working with a number of potential sites to survey students and additionally interview their teachers. For the survey, you find the most respected instrument for intrinsic motivation from academia, but it costs $30 per student - $18,000 total across your projected student sample of 600 students.
  
  You could also write your own, or find another much less celebrated survey and adapt it for free.
  
  What do you do?
  
  > use the $18,000 survey, and fold it into your work budget.
  MESSINESS +20!
  
  You use your corporate credit card to buy $18,000 worth of surveys. Nobody will notice for about 20 days until the next expense report cycle.
  
  How will you get the internal performance data from your product?
  
  > Time to talk to the programmers.
  You sit down with your VP of Engineering, one of your direct reports, to discuss the research project and what kind of data you'll need in order to identify target schools and later extract matching student performance data.
  
  He's a bit cynical - how should you play this?
  
  > tell him what to do - you're his boss!
  MESSINESS +10!
  
  He's pretty upset at your request – the whole department has been pushing really hard lately, and his plate is full with other tasks that he thinks are more important.
  
  He says he'll do it, but when you ask him when he can get the initial data you need to determine sites he snaps at you and walks out.
  
  Now, time to identify school sites to partner with.
  
  > reach out to potential sites.
  You get the data from the VP of Engineering, and use it to determine appropriate school sites and classrooms, where the students are using the program weekly over a sustained time.
  
  There are a total of 20 teachers and 75 classrooms that fit the bill, and you'd like to get at least 6 teachers and 25 classrooms to participate.
  
  How should you connect with these schools?
  
  > work with your company's Implementation team to secure sites.
  MESSINESS +50!
  
  You email the 3 members of your company's Implementation team to get their help with securing sites. The division director calls you and says that she's very concerned about her team using their time on your project.
  
  "Aren't you worried that our company's financial performance has been terrible for the past quarter? Is this really the best time to be doing a little research thingy?"
  
  Looks like you'll have to take care of this on your own.
  
  > Time to fly solo on this one.
  You put together an email that describes the project, and its importance. Before you send it out to the teachers, you think about whether or not they'll need incentives to cooperate.
  
  Should you offer some money for participation? This would come out of your pocket.
  
  > No money offered - just a nice email pleading for help.
  You get 3 responses. Not fantastic, but better than nothing. You schedule times to travel to the sites to interview the teachers and get them going with the survey tools for their students.
  
  Suddenly, you're called into your co-founder's office.
  
  > He doesn't look pleased...
  MESSINESS +10!
  
  MORALE -10!
  
  Your boss sits you down and wants to look over the sales performance for the company, which is hemorrhaging cash at a rate of approximately $100k per month.
  
  First, he says "hey, what were you working on just now?"
  
  > Proudly state "Action Research!"
  MESSINESS +50!
  
  Your boss seriously questions your priorities, using colorful vocabulary that oughtn't not be shown on this page. It is implied that for the health of the company and your own personal employment, the research needs to be put on hold.
  
  What do you do?
  
  > keep going with the Action Research project.
  MORALE -10!
  
  Two days later, you arrive on your scooter at the first site to meet with one of the teachers. As you pull into the parking lot, you get a text message from the teacher saying that they're sorry, but they can't meet today and need to reschedule.
  
  You open your email and find that your top sales person has just revised their pipeline for future business downwards by half.
  
  Should you persevere in trying to meet with the teacher anyway?
  
  > go to the teacher's classroom anyway.
  The teacher is sitting at their desk meeting with the parent of one of their students.
  
  You wait awkwardly at the door for 30 minutes, then the bell rings and a crowd of students comes rushing in.
  
  You leave and head back to the westside.
  
  > At least the traffic is nice during midday.
  You arrive back in Santa Monica. Both of your co-founders and the COO are in your office. They ask you to step in and close the door.
  
  "Based on our terrible cash flow situation, we have to wind down the division. You need to fire everyone on the product development team, but we'll keep on the sales folks for now. You can stay on to help manage the transition."
  
  MORALE -50!
  
  MESSINESS +50!
  
  What do you do next?
  
  > stay on to help manage the transition.
  MORALE -40!
  
  You lay off several good coworkers. They'll be okay, you think, but it doesn't make it any easier.
  
  Now, about that action research project... there won't be any more product development in the future, and it'll be hard to get the needed info out of the database without your VP of Engineering, but you can try to salvage your project anyway.
  
  What do you do next?
  
  > keep trying to salvage your Action Research project.
  While you're no longer employed by the company, you have access to the email account still.
  
  You send followup emails to teachers, increasing the offered gift card if they'll schedule time with you. You get no response.
  
  Time to go see Linda.
  
  > What do you do from here?
  You describe the situation to Linda, who gives you some good perspective.
  
  "Obviously this wasn't how you planned it, but life is unpredictable."
  
  She suggests that for your report you expand your literature synthesis, and include ample reflections about the project and descriptions of what happened.
  
  MORALE +20!
  
  While you really wanted to have amazing results and findings, you are still contented by the knowledge that you learned a lot about Action Research and yourself during the process. And you learned where not to conduct research in the future...