Outsourcing Learning: Is the Statecraft Simulation an Effective Pedagogical Alternative?

Although rising costs have been a general trend in higher education since the early 20th century, a fundamental restructuring of the higher education marketplace is currently underway. In recent decades students and their parents have been forced to finance college education through greater and greater debt. As a result, students and their families are increasingly demanding that institutions of higher learning provide evidence of value. Universities must now ask what methods of instruction most efficiently expand a student\u27s knowledge base. Can instruction that has been traditionally supplied in a physical classroom be delivered more effectively at lower cost through digital means? If so, how can these savings be measured and can they be propagated across an entire curriculum? This paper examines the effects of using Statecraft, a commercially-available online simulation, in teaching international relations. The simulation was used in two semesters of an undergraduate international relations course as part of a flipped classroom pedagogy, in which Statecraft replaced lectures and other instructional activities that required a physical classroom. The study demonstrates that a significant portion of instruction can be outsourced to an online provider of standardized content with little to no negative change in pedagogical outcomes

Regional Geographic Influence on Two Khmer Polities

This paper examines the effects of Cambodian geography in two Khmer polities: Funan, an empire that occupied the southeastern portions of modern-day Cambodia and Vietnam during the early centuries A.D., and Democratic Kampuchea, a Cambodian state that existed from April 17, 1975, until the Vietnamese invasion of December 25, 1978. In the construction of a national identity, a community must possess a tradition of a territory that the community regards as its ancestral home. The tradition of a territory provides a chronological anchor for the supposed authentic and pristine origins of the nation. As demonstrated by myth, propaganda, and policies, the same territorial tradition was present in both Funan and Democratic Kampuchea

“No Responsibility and No Rice”: The Rise and Fall of Agricultural Collectivization in Vietnam

Communist leaders in Vietnam attempted to use agricultural collectivization to transform a poor, agrarian country into a modern, socialist nation with an industrialized economy. Collectivized agricultural production lacked sufficient economic incentives for Vietnamese farmers; they preferred to produce privately for household consumption or the free market. State-initiated reforms to collectivize agriculture failed to improve the performance of the agricultural sector and eventually the Vietnamese Communist Party was forced to abandon collectivization altogether. Once farmers were freed from collective labor and could pursue private production for the free market, Vietnam’s agricultural output skyrocketed

Do Role-Playing Simulations Generate Measurable and Meaningful Outcomes? A Simulation’s Effect on Exam Scores and Teaching Evaluations

Role-playing simulations are frequently claimed to be effective pedagogical tools in the teaching of international relations; however, there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence on their classroom utility. The assessment of simulations remains mostly anecdotal, and some recent research has found little to no statistically significant improvements in quantitative measures of academic performance among students who participated in them (e.g,, Krain and Lantis 2006; Powner and Allendoerfer 2008). Scant research has been conducted on how role-playing simulations might affect students’ perceptions of the instructor’s teaching. This paper investigates whether a simulation had statistically significant effect on students’ exam scores in an international relations course or on student teaching evaluation scores

Can\u27t Get No (Dis)Satisfaction: The Statecraft Simulation\u27s Effect on Student Decision Making

Simulations are often employed as content-teaching tools in political science, but their effect on students reasoning skills is rarely assessed. This paper explores what effect the Statecraft simulation might have on undergraduate students perceptions of their decision making. As noted by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman (2012: 203), decisions are often evaluated on the basis of whether their outcomes are good or bad, not whether a sound reasoning process was used to reach them. A survey was administered at multiple points in an international relations course to gauge students satisfaction with the decision-making processes and outcomes in their respective teams during the Statecraft simulation. Students also engaged in exercises in which their teams tentative plans were evaluated as if the plans had generated unfavorable outcomes after implementation. An analysis of students reactions to the Statecraft simulation, their performance in the simulation, and other data showed no obvious association between Statecraft and changes in student perceptions of their decision making

When Students Design Their Own Games: A Failed Experiment In a First-Year Seminar

This paper compares indicators of student engagement across different sections of a first-year seminar taught in Fall 2017. As part of an active learning pedagogy, students in the author’s sections of the course were clustered into teams that designed and played games on refugee migration, aid, and resettlement. Students in seminar sections taught by other faculty members experienced traditional forms of instruction that did not include game design. Data from a survey administered to students in different seminar sections did not indicate an association between game design and student engagement. Further investigation revealed substantial declines in the results of student evaluations of the author’s teaching from the previous year, despite only minor differences in course content. Colleagues anecdotally reported a marked decrease in the academic orientation and performance of first-year students in 2017, suggesting that pre-existing characteristics may be a greater influence on student engagement than an active learning pedagogy involving games

Effects of a Short-Duration Online Simulation on Global Empathy

In an investigation of whether a particular instructional method is associated with greater global empathy among students, undergraduates were exposed to information about Haiti through lecture, news video, or an online game that simulated life in Haiti. Our hypothesis was that students would exhibit greater global empathy after playing the interactive online simulation than they would after hearing the lecture or watching the videos. Average scores for survey questions varied according to the instructional method, as did students behavioral responses during the experiment, but the variations were not statistically significant. A larger sample, a longer duration experiment, or the exclusion of students from particular academic majors from the experiment might elucidate a more noticeable indication that instructional method affects global empathy

Assessment in Simulations

Simulations are employed widely as teaching tools in political science, yet evidence of their pedagogical effectiveness, in comparison to other methods of instruction, is mixed. The assessment of learning outcomes is often a secondary concern in simulation design, and the qualitative and quantitative methods used to evaluate outcomes are frequently based on faulty paradigms of the learning process and inappropriate indicators. Correctly incorporating assessment into simulation design requires that an instructor identify whether a simulation should produce positive changes in students\u27 substantive knowledge, skills, and/or affective characteristics. The simulation must then be assessed in ways that accurately measure whether these goals have been achieved. Proper assessment can help demonstrate that simulations are productive tools for learning and that their popularity in the classroom is justified

Piloting a Networked Curriculum

This pilot study examined student learning outcomes and potential instructional cost savings in an undergraduate Principles of Marketing course that combined online delivery of content, flipped classroom and experiential application for on-campus classes, referred to as a networked curriculum. This model separated the traditional 3-credit course into a common online content section and a smaller application section. Student learning and engagement outcomes in the networked curriculum were compared with a traditional lecture format, and no significant differences were found. Potential savings in classroom space utilization and faculty compensation encourage further research of this model

The Effects of Simulations on Global Empathy

The learning outcomes for college curricula typically emphasize the development of a greater understanding of and empathy for people who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. In this research project the Alexandrian Inventory, a pretest/posttest survey instrument, was administered to undergraduate students to examine which simulations used in two courses were associated with the greatest changes in students’ global empathy. An analysis of the data did not reveal a clear, statistically significant association between the simulations and empathy indicators