📋 Activity Overview

A village Panchayat must decide who gets a scholarship to a girl child. Students are given 5 rules (AND, OR, NOT conditions) and 15 applicant profiles. They discover Boolean logic in action — how multiple conditions interact in real decision-making.

💡 Teacher Tip

Create one 'edge case' applicant that genuinely could go either way depending on how you read the rules. When groups disagree, ask them to point to the exact rule text that justifies their verdict. This is exactly how legal systems and AI models struggle with ambiguous rules.

🎯 Learning Objectives

  • ✓ Understand AND, OR, NOT as logical operators in decision-making
  • ✓ Apply Boolean rules consistently to evaluate applicant profiles
  • ✓ Build and read a simple decision flowchart
  • ✓ Recognise that computers use the same Boolean logic in all decision systems

🗂️ Materials Needed

15 applicant profile cards Scholarship rule sheet Decision flowchart template Boolean logic reference card Verdict tally sheet Highlighters

📌 Step-by-Step Instructions

Context Setting (5 min) — 'Your village Panchayat has ₹50,000 for scholarships. Here are the rules for who qualifies.' Distribute rule sheets.
Explain the Rules (5 min) — Rules include: 'Applicant must be a girl students AND age between 14 to 18 AND scored above 60% in Class 10; OR is an orphan; NOT from a family that received scholarship in the last 3 years.'
Practise with 3 Cards (8 min) — As a class, work through 3 applicant profiles together, drawing the decision tree on the board.
Group Evaluation (15 min) — Teams work through their remaining 12 applicant cards, marking YES/NO for each rule and arriving at a final AWARD/REJECT verdict.
Compare Verdicts (5 min) — Compare across groups. Did everyone get the same verdict for each applicant? Discuss any disagreements — often caused by interpreting rules differently.
Build the Flowchart (7 min) — Groups convert their rules into a flowchart with diamond-shaped decision nodes. Share one flowchart.
Connect to Computing (5 min) — 'Every if-else statement in a computer program is one of these Boolean decisions. Search engines, loan approvals, and exam results all run on rules exactly like these.'

🧠 CT Pillar Connections

Algorithmic Thinking
Applying scholarship rules is an algorithm — a precise, repeatable procedure that produces the same output for the same input regardless of who runs it.
Abstraction
The flowchart is an abstraction of the scholarship policy — it captures the essential decision logic while hiding the specific details of each applicant.

💬 Discussion Questions

  • Can a rule be 'fair' and still produce unfair outcomes? Give an example from the activity.
  • How do loan apps decide whether to approve your application in 30 seconds?
  • What happens when two rules contradict each other? How would you fix that?
  • Is a flowchart a program? What's similar and what's different?