Looking Back At Another Simulation

As promised in my last post, a brief review of another self-designed Excel-based simulation that I used this past Spring semester:

The purpose of this simulation was to teach students about freshwater resource use in Asia. I created three preparatory assignments on water scarcity in the region. The twenty-one students in the class were divided into teams that represented countries dependent on rivers that originate in the Himalayan watershed: Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Vietnam. Each team could build dams on the rivers that transited its country’s territory. Dams:

• Enabled a country to expand the area of irrigated farmland and produce more food.
• Generated more hydroelectricity, which in turn increased industrial production, per capita income, and, because of urbanization, municipal demand for water.
• Reduced the amount of water available to downstream countries.

Countries purchased dams with surplus food, which could also be donated to other countries. Because of population growth, each country’s food needs increased annually, and rainfall decreased, reflective of climate change. These processed served as an incentive for countries to build dams. If a country suffered a food deficit in any given year, refugees flowed into neighboring countries, increasing those countries’ food needs — an incentive for some countries to negotiate on dam construction.

Ultimately, however, the demand for water eventually exceeded its supply for several countries — an outcome I had deliberately built into the simulation.

As happened with Gerkhania in my comparative politics course, the need to regularly update a complex Excel spreadsheet created interruptions. And, as with the other class, I made a few errors in the process, which slowed things down even further. But although the design of the spreadsheet needs some improvement, I was generally pleased with how it worked.

I asked students to complete anonymous survey about the simulation after it had ended. Seven of the twenty-one students in the class responded. Six of the seven said they thought that the simulation accurately depicted water resource issues in Asia, and five felt that the simulation improved their understanding of these issues. The seventh student thought that the simulation was a confusing, unproductive exercise.

Several commented that communication within and between teams was problematic because of 1) the constraints of the Webex meeting platform, and 2) lack of participation by teammates. This feedback leads me to wonder if I should include a collaborative team assignment before the simulation begins, perhaps one in which teammates’ contributions derive from more formalized roles (e.g., agricultural minister, foreign minister, etc.). And I do realize that Webex’s chat box is not an ideal tool for conversation, so I need to find some other means by which students can communicate with each other in real time outside of the classroom.

But here is the big change I’m considering: for the last several years, based on Michelle Allendorfer’s reasoning, I have scheduled these simulations for the last week of classes. I’m now wondering if I should move them to the beginning of the semester, in an attempt to quickly engage students with course content before they get tired and distracted. This could become important if Fall semester gets disrupted halfway through by Covid-19 like Spring semester did.