Really? Actually really?

Spangly

Some more time to digest the lessons of Baltimore’s TLC, and I’m coming back once again to a big theme (for me) about how we use simulations and games.

At several points during the conference, I found myself pondering how we reconnect sims and games back into the rest of our teaching practice, or even whether we do that at all.

The argument I’d make (and I made) is that sims are essentialisations of the world: they take some aspect – an event, a relationship, a dynamic – and places it front and centre, stripped of all the other stuff so we can see it more clearly for our edification.

That essentialisation gives us the core of the gameplay of the sim. The mechanism we want to focus on logically also informs the choice of how we focus on it. So if we want to understand voting dynamics, we build a sim with voting in it, plus whatever elements we want students to consider as factors.

None of this should be controversial – it’s how all teaching works, in practice. We draw attention to something, to allow us to think about, discuss and learn about it.

Sims are just a more overt example of this.

But that essentialisation also implies a need to have an active reconnection, post-activity.

It’s why we talk so much about debriefing: we are trying to draw lessons out of the activity, back into the other modes of teaching we use, both within a course and more generally.

By definition, active learning places the locus of learning within the student, so to know what they have learnt, we (as teachers/instructors/facilitators) have to work to pull that out of them.

But what does that involve?

Typically, when we talk about debrief we are looking at ‘what did you learn?’ type questions. Asking students to vocalise their understandings and experiences in a more-or-less structured manner.

Obviously here, we can cover all the usual bases of substantive knowledge, practical skills and broader socialisation into communities.

However, the whole essentialisation process means we also need to ask a different type of question too: ‘how did this experience match up to the actual thing you’re studying?’

One of the first papers I wrote on sims was about realism and the ways we can make our sims versimilitudinous [sp?], but sims are always approximations to reality and we need students to be both aware of and thoughtful about this.

In essentialising, we strip away ‘the other stuff’ because it’s not that important to our objective. But ‘not that important’ doesn’t mean ‘unimportant’.

So part of our debriefing needs to ask students whether and how the simplifications of the sim distort our understanding of what matters. To go back to that voting dynamics exercise I mentioned earlier, if we exclude a particular element, do students now think that element isn’t relevant?

One way I’ve tried to explore this is being asking students to come up with ways they could make the sim work in a more realistic manner: and often I’ll use that the next time out. This process invites either constructive additions or thoughtful reflection about why something can’t be included (and the impact thereof).

None of this is to say that sims aren’t any good; only that they are imperfect tools (like all pedagogies) and so we have to ensure that students recognise and reflect on that.

The persistent gap in simulation design literature

About eight years ago, I wrote the following:

….there remains a severe lack of basic ‘how-to’ guides (whether grounded in higher pedagogic theory or not); instead, the typical process of spreading use of simulations is by word of mouth and the adaptation of existing models to new situations. 

I was arguing that while there was a metric tonne of individual case studies of the ‘show and tell’ type and another pile of more theoretical musings on the nature and purpose of simulation games, there was a gap in-between.

The theory pieces were great for that paragraph at the top of your paper for justifying ‘why simulations’ but didn’t tell you how to go about actually doing one, while the ‘show and tell’ stuff sometimes gave you enough to re-run that particular sim, that sim was never quite what you needed.

No tools, no easy way forward.

All of this came flooding back during TLC in Baltimore this last weekend, with many of the colleagues on the track talking about starting out on their sim-building journey and looking for help.

Even I, with a pretty healthy dose of experience, found that when I was designing an online, asynchronous sim, there was basically nothing at all that worked through the options and mechanics. If you read my paper, you’ll see that much of it ended up being a working from first principles.

This persistence of a lack of operational literature is frustrating.

It’s also quite understandable, in that there aren’t that many people who are bothered enough not just to build their own sim, but also to abstract from that out to general design and implementation principles.

And yes, before you ask, I did write various things, gathered here. But that’s not really enough.

Maybe you need something like Classroom Assessment Techniques, the classic handbook from Cross, or maybe you need something else more dynamically and interactively built online, but as long as we lack these kinds of resources then we’re doomed to lots of people spending lots of time they don’t need to, reinventing wheels that have been reinvented many, many times before or – and worse -just giving up because it’s too tough.

As usual with such thoughts, while I can identify the problem, I can’t offer a easy solution.

Maybe you can, in which case I’d love to hear from you. As would many others.

A small communication/adaptability exercise

Some Lego, recently. And yes, I do know the worktop needs varnishing again

My neighbour (and fomer colleague) Roberta came by the other day to borrow my Lego. I’d love to say this kind of thing happens regularly, but it really doesn’t.

She had recalled an activity I’d done with various groups some years ago, to teach them about the importance of communication

The game is super simple (if you (or a neighbour) have the Lego to hand and involves trying to recreate a model, albeit with some restrictions.

Full details here.

For me, the value of the exercise is about getting students to think some more about how well they prepare for activities and how well they can make running adjustments should things turn out to be quite so simple as they thought. Which is of – hopefully – general application, not just for classrooms.

It’s also a nice ice-breaker, especially if you have multiple teams up against each other.

As I say, this isn’t a new exercise, but somehow I never really wrote it up fully. Perhaps I need to go back through my playbook and check there aren’t other things I could be sharing with you.

But do remember, you’ll have to wait for Roberta to return the Lego before you can ask for it.

Return to the source

Is that… America I can see? No. No it’s not.

It’s the new year, which also means it’s that time when several of us go “I really do need to write that TLC paper”.

[cough]

Yes, next month we have APSA’s Teaching and Learning Conference happening in the fine city of Baltimore (better than it’s reputation, I’m reliably told and who am I to argue). TLC is still the premier L&T event for polisci in North America, and is also the place where the people who give you this blog first met up.

Since those discussions back in Albuquerque a dozen years ago, a lot has changed: most of us have changed institutions and all of us have moved our practice on considerably. Indeed, it’s possible that only Victor is as he was, perennially on the verge of writing a post for us 😉

As a case in point, I’ll be attending this year in a number of capacities.

Firstly, I’ve a paper on how I’ve designed the asynchronous online simulation that I’ve mentioned here before: we’re still in the testing stage, but it’s looking good and my yes-still-to-be-written paper will talk through both the specifics and some more general theorising about how to go about such a thing. Links will follow.

Secondly, I’m part of the Journal of Political Science Education workshop on how to publish on L&T. We’ll be running a couple of sessions of this during TLC, so if you’re about do attend: as part of the editorial team and the one with responsibility for simulations submissions, I’m really keen to talk about how we can get the most out of your work for others. My own paper will probably pop up as an example of what I’m talking about, although whether as a good or a bad example remains to be seen.

Finally, I’m there generally as an ALPS blog person. This role is certainly the most enjoyable, not least because it reminds me of the most thing-that-could-be-in-a-film moment of my life.

Our blog has endured because of our excellent readers and contributors: without all you guys then what we do would be just so much hot air. So thank you all.

Chad and I have helmed this ship since the start and we’re both starting to think about the next stages of our glittering careers, so if you’d like to buttonhole me for a chat about becoming a more central and active part of the team here, then I’m all ears.

As in the past, I’ll be trying to live-blog from the event next month, but in the meantime I have a paper to write and a sudden reminder that I need to check out what Kim Kardashian is up to these days.

Mekong Dam Simulation, Part 2

Today we have a second guest post from Sharmaine Loh and Marek Rutkowski, of Monash University—Malaysia, and Joel Moore, Monash University—Australia. They can be contacted at sharmaine [dot] loh [at] monash [dot] edu, marek [dot] rutkowski [at] monash [dot] edu, and joel [dot] moore [at] monash [dot] edu.

In our last post, we described our Mekong River crisis simulation. The assessments that we use for this simulation are designed to reward student preparation and engagement (a detailed breakdown is in this appendix).

Students are initially provided with detailed position descriptions for employment in the organisations to which they’ve been assigned. They are asked to prepare for a mock job interview for that position, which requires them to conduct research and think about their role in the simulation. We have offered this scenario in an applied capstone class, so have required students to identify their own readings and research to be able to fulfil their roles.

Once the simulation begins, students write a weekly strategy memo for the lead member of their organization based on independent research they’ve conducted, an opportunity for them to consider the practical, actionable implications of scholarly work in the social sciences. Students also must also document their interaction with other organisations and the media during the simulation in a reflective journal.

The head of each organization in turn relies on his or her team members to regularly provide advice about the best course of action in the unfolding crisis. If a group suggests a questionable course of action, the instructor uses follow-up questions to prompt students to consider possible negative consequences, e.g. how would investors view a decision to cancel the project?

At the end of the course, students analyze their experience of the simulation in a writing assignment.

The simulation is designed to make it difficult for students to upset the status quo. Local and international NGOs usually must settle for limited gains based on a government’s willingness to placate its critics. While this sometimes leads to frustration and disillusionment for students, it allows them to gain a better understanding of the power disparity between governmental and nongovernmental actors. While students sometimes initially attempt to resolve the crisis by reaching a consensus among all parties involved, they quickly realize that this is impossible due to conflicting interests. While students are allowed to make risky decisions if they are well considered and not purposely disruptive, successfully negotiated political and policy changes in the simulation have always been limited and incremental. 

In past iterations of the simulation, the incumbent Thai leadership has usually been able to retain control of the government and dominate issue framing, in some cases solidifying its position in the process. Thai opposition groups have had to navigate between outright rejection of government policies and a more conciliatory and constructive criticism. Students have learned that political change is difficult to accomplish without a broad anti-government bloc that includes civil society organisations.

Changes at the international level have also been limited, accurately reflecting the shortcomings of the Lower Mekong  governance regime and ASEAN’s commitment to the principle of non-interference. Students’ attempts to amend the 1995 Mekong Agreement have been hindered by states’ competing foreign policy objectives and the strict application of sovereignty. At most, parties have agreed on a controlled and gradual extension of the Mekong River Commission’s supervisory apparatus.

We have identified a few ways in which the simulation can be further improved. Students’ concerns about free riding within teams, while partially mitigated through the use of a team member evaluation tool (e.g. CATME or Feedback Fruits, we used one developed for this class by Joel), have continued. A possible solution could be a “divorce option,” where students would be allowed to “fire” a free riding member. We have also observed that students’ insufficient background knowledge can lead to unrealistic behaviour in the simulation. This could be mitigated by an increased redundancy within groups (multiple students being given the same or similar role) and an added criterion of academic performance in determining group allocation (Joel’s tool for the allocation of students into groups for class assignments has also been used to allocate students into roles for this class). 

Mekong Dam Simulation

Today we have a guest post from Sharmaine Loh and Marek Rutkowski, of Monash University—Malaysia, and Joel Moore, Monash University—Australia. They can be contacted at sharmaine [dot] loh [at] monash [dot] edu, marek [dot] rutkowski [at] monash [dot] edu, and joel [dot] moore [at] monash [dot] edu.

We developed a six weeks long simulation with three contact hours per week about international competition over freshwater resources of the lower Mekong River. The simulation, which we call the Riparian Dam Crisis, is designed to provide students with the opportunity to build collaboration, communication, and negotiation skills while learning about Southeast Asia. Students are introduced to select theories before the start of the simulation and incentivised to conduct independent research and source other relevant materials to inform actions of their groups throughout. 

The simulation involves a Thai-funded hydroelectric dam project in Laos. Most of the dam’s electricity will be purchased by Thailand. Shortly before the dam goes into operation, a drought reduces downstream water to its lowest level in living memory. This scenario, which resembles the real-life Xayaburi dam a few years ago, reflects competing economic and environmental demands, weak regional regimes for dispute resolution, domestic political considerations, and transnational advocacy networks. Students assume the roles of various stakeholders that must try to achieve specific objectives in an evolving situation, such as the Thai, Lao, and Cambodian ministries of foreign affairs, rural NGOs, the regional Mekong River Commission, Thai political parties, and journalists. For example, the dam has been constructed wholly within Laos’s borders, which paradoxically gives the smallest country the largest say in the simulation’s outcome. Cambodia is the most negatively affected by upstream dams in Laos, but it has limited influence over Laos and Thailand because it is not a participant in the project. Meanwhile Thailand is very susceptible to domestic pressure from interests that either support or oppose the dam.

During the simulation, student journalists representing two Thai media outlets conduct interviews and create stories targeting different audiences. The simulation’s other stakeholders need to engage strategically with reporters to have their actions framed in a positive manner. 

Thus, there is one constellation of groups that broadly favours pushing forward with the dam, another one that generally wants to halt the dam, and a third whose position is flexible. After an initial feeling-out period, students identify aligned groups and develop strategies to achieve their objectives. Each time we have run this simulation, students have focused on their efforts on preserving or creating a sympathetic ruling coalition in Thailand after they had exhausted other diplomatic avenues. Students have been quite creative in creating novel strategies to achieve group objectives, such as staging mock mass protest campaigns, lobbying global powers, and bringing down Thailand’s ruling coalition with a vote of no confidence.

In a future post, we will describe how we assess student learning from the simulation and how we adapted it over time in response to student experience.

Typologies for Conflict Simulations and Games

Fresh off the virtual presses is my latest article, Simulations and Games (SAGs) to Teach Conflict and Political Violence, a literature review in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. In it, I pose several new typologies as I consider the key considerations for instructors who are considering what kind of game or simulation to use in their classes. This piece will be useful both to scholars publishing on SAGs, providing ways to categorize their activities, and also to instructors who are trying to decide what kind of SAG to use in their classroom.

Here are 7 considerations or decision points for choosing a game or simulation, according to my analysis of the existing literature:

Continue reading “Typologies for Conflict Simulations and Games”

The Marshmallow Tower Game

Along the lines of my last post, I’ve tweaked another game that I have used previously — the marshmallow challenge. My goal was to illustrate how economic development can be considered a collective action problem in which trust plays a key role. Here are the rules of the game:

  • Each team has 18 minutes to build a tower topped by a marshmallow using the materials provided.
  • The members of the team that builds the tallest tower earn 25 points each.
  • A “Red” player secretly placed on your team gets 25 points if their real team wins.
  • If a team correctly identifies its Red player, each team member wins 25 points. Only one guess per team.

The debriefing discussion included my brief description of Rousseau’s stag hunt scenario, and these questions:

  • If one considers the height of a tower as an indicator of a society’s level of economic development, why did some societies (teams) develop more quickly than others?
  • Did cultural values promote trust among team members?
  • What was in each person’s best interest? Were these interests achieved?
  • How did having a Red on your team affect your team’s behavior?
  • Who do you think the Reds were? Why?
  • How does it feel to be accused of being a Red?

At the very end of the discussion, I revealed that there were no Red players.

The class had ten students that I divided into three teams. One team’s tower collapsed when time expired, but none of the teams exhibited a high degree of dysfunction due to suspicions about the identity of its Red player. As usual, I think the game would work better in a class with more students.

The Bandit Game

In an attempt to rectify the failure of my previous classroom game on ethnic heterogeneity, democracy and dictatorship, I created another game that included a loss aversion component. I intended the game to demonstrate the concepts found in Mancur Olson’s 1993 article, “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development” (The American Political Science Review 87, 3). Here are the rules for game’s initial version:

  • Each person gets a playing card and 4 chips.
  • The class is divided into small groups.
  • The person with the highest card value in each group is a bandit.
  • The game has five rounds.
  • Each group’s bandit confiscates 1, 2, 3, or 4 chips each round from every other group member. This decision is made by the bandit. The bandit has to confiscate at least 1 chip from each group member each round, assuming the group member has a chip.
  • After round 1, 2, 3, and 4, each non-bandit gets 1 additional chip if they have ended the round with > 0 chips.
  • The person in each group with the most chips after round 5 earns points equivalent to the number of chips in their possession.

Version 2 of the game has the same rules as Version 1, plus:

  • A bandit can switch to a different group after each of rounds 1-4. The bandit with a higher value card turns another group’s bandit into an ordinary person.
  • The new bandit takes the eliminated bandit’s chips and can keep them or distribute some or all of them in any manner to members of their new group.

Version 3 has the same rules as Versions 1 and 2, plus:

  • Members of a group can eliminate a bandit if (a) they have card suits different from the bandit’s suit, and (b) the combined value of their cards exceeds the value of the bandit’s card. If a bandit is eliminated, the bandit’s chips are distributed equally among the challengers.
  • A bandit can retain control if (a) group members with cards of the same suit as the bandit’s decide to ally with the bandit and (b) the combined value of cards of this suit exceeds that of the bandit’s challengers.

Before play started, I stacked the deck with cards from only three suits because of the small class size — thirteen students are registered for the course, but only eleven showed up. I divided these eleven students into three groups.

For all versions of the game, all bandits confiscated the same number of chips from their group’s members in each round, even though the rules did not specify that they had to do this. In Version 1, one bandit confiscated all the chips from every group member in one round, which ended that group’s game play for the remaining rounds — demonstrating that it’s better for a stationary bandit to extract only a portion of wealth from the populace at any given time. During Version 2, no bandit changed groups, and in Version 3, no one tried to eliminate a bandit.

This game worked better than the last one, but it still needs a much larger number of participants for it to function as intended.

When a Game Fails

An inadvertent update to a 2015 post on the perils of small classes:

I recently ran a game in two classes that I had hoped would demonstrate the effects of ethnic heterogeneity in dictatorships and democracies. The basic mechanics of the game:

The class is split into groups. Each person gets a playing card. Card suit represents ethnicity, though I didn’t tell students this. A card’s numeric value equates to the power level of the person holding it. If someone in a group has a face card, then the group is a dictatorship. The person in the group with the highest value face card is the dictator, who makes all decisions. If no one in the group has a face card, then the group is a democracy, with decisions made by majority vote. The numeric values of the cards don’t matter.

The game is played in multiple rounds, with a greater number of points at stake in each round — I used five rounds, worth 3, 5, 7, 10, and 15 points, respectively. These points count toward the final course grade. In every round, each group allocates its points to its members according to the rules above. If anyone in a group is dissatisfied with how the points were distributed, the person can recruit a cluster of allies who have cards of the same suit to challenge the distribution. In a dictatorship, the challenge succeeds if the cluster’s combined power level exceeds that formed by the dictator’s allies. In a democracy, the challenge succeeds if the cluster’s total power level exceeds that of the rest of the group. When there is a successful challenge, the group has to distribute its points in a different way. Each round had a time limit of just a few minutes, and if a group failed to successfully allocate its points before a round ended, the group’s points for that round disappeared.

Continue reading “When a Game Fails”