Congressional Committee Simulation: An Active Learning Experiment

You Sunk My Constitution: Using a Popular Off-the-Shelf Board Game to Simulate Political Concepts

“…Even though auditory and visual learners might prefer a more conventional lecture, they nevertheless enjoyed the break in routine provided by Battleship. More importantly, these two questions confirm previous work on simulations being a better way of teaching certain lessons (Ciliotta-Rubery and Levy 2000;Newmann and Twigg 2000;Smith and Boyer 1996). I believe these two scores once again demonstrate that simulations are useful in the class, but only insofar as they can supplement other teaching methods.…”

Whipping Them in: Role-Playing Party Cohesion with a Chief Whip

“…The literature now contains multiple examples from political science and international relations, covering almost all areas of the discipline, including topics as diverse as the following: election campaigns (Caruson 2005;Kathlene and Choate 1999;Mariani 2007;Pappas and Peaden 2004); electoral systems (Hoffman 2009); the policy process (Grummel 2003); foreign policy decision making (Loggins 2009); arms control (Kelle 2008); the Middle East (Dougherty 2003); the European Council (Zeff 2003); and political theory (Schaap 2005). Published work on parliamentary role-plays and simulations have thus far focused mostly on the U.S. Congress (Bernstein and Meizlish 2003;Ciliotta-Rubery and Levy 2000;Lay and Smarick 2006). Our role-play is extremely loose in structure with very few rules, props, or instructions.…”

Learning Opportunities in a Department-Wide Crisis Simulation: Bridging the International/National Divide

“…In order to reach the widest audience possible, professors use a variety of pedagogical techniques. Active learning has proved to be an integral part of successful pedagogy (Kolb 1976;Endersby and Webber 1995;DeNeve and Heppner 1997;Brock and Cameron 1999;Ciliotta-Rubery and Levy 2000;McCarthy and Anderson 2000). Studies show that simulation and role-play exercises increase student interest in politics and stimulate greater understanding of political actors and processes (McKeachie 1986;Endersby and Webber 1995;Ciliotta-Rubery and Levy 2000;Galatas 2006).…”