Simulation articles in the latest PS: Political Science & Politics

The latest issue of PS: Political Science & Politics 46, 4 (October 2013) has three articles on classroom use of simulations. Two focus on the use of these in teaching about legal processes:

United States Supreme Court Confirmation Simulation: Learning through the Process of Experience

Arthur H. Auerbach, University of Southern California

Abstract

The traditional process of educating undergraduates is often relegated to the passive lecturing format. One means of engaging students in active learning is through the use of simulations. Students were asked to take on the roles of United States senators and a Supreme Court nominee during a United States Supreme Court confirmation hearing simulation. Each student participated by researching a sitting senator and the nominee selected and engaged in a question-and-answer session as is done in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Students came away from this valuable experience by not only learning a great deal about the operation of the confirmation hearing as well as the substantive material learned but participating in a process that few people will ever actually experience.

The Settlement Game: A Simulation Teaching Institutional Theories of Public Law

Dave Bridge, Baylor University

Abstract

Many political science subfields use classroom simulations. Public law, however, suffers from a lack of such activities. Many mock trials exist, but these games focus on jurisprudence and not on the more institutional aspects of the subfield. This article presents the Settlement Game, an original simulation that takes 15 minutes to complete and helps teach important institutional theories such as adversarial legalism, “bargaining in the shadow of the law,” and “haves” versus “have-nots” concepts heretofore overlooked by the simulations literature. I introduce relevant theories and describe how the simulation works, discussing preclass assignments, its operation, and debriefing about its connection to theory. I close with comments about assessment of students and explain why the Settlement Game is useful.

The third looks at the use of simulations in comparative pedagogical perspective, arguing that simulations are not necessarily the best method and that a variety of different teaching techniques may be more appropriate given variation in student learning styles:

Active Learning Strategies for Diverse Learning Styles: Simulations Are Only One Method

Pam Bromley, Pomona College

Abstract

Although political science instructors increasingly recognize the advantages of incorporating active learning activities into their teaching, simulations remain the discipline’s most commonly used active learning method. While certainly a useful strategy, simulations are not the only way to bring active learning into classrooms. Indeed, because students have diverse learning styles—comprised of their discrete learning preferences—engaging them in a variety of ways is important. This article explores six active learning techniques: simulations, case studies, enhanced lectures, large group discussion, small group work, and in-class writing. Incorporating these activities into an introductory, writing-intensive seminar on globalization and surveying students about their engagement with course activities, I find that different activities appeal to students with different learning preferences and that simulations are not students most preferred activity. Bringing a broader range of active learning strategies into courses can improve teaching for all students, no matter their learning style.

The findings are based on feedback from first year students (n=53) in several sections of a course on globalization. The results show that these students did not rate simulations the most effective learning strategy, ranking it behind large group discussion and only narrowly ahead of case studies (see below). Moreover, the standard deviation for simulations was the largest of the group, indicating a broader spread in student perceptions of this tool.

There are a couple of caveats that might be added to these findings. First, self-reported learning outcomes are not necessarily the same thing as actual impacts of learning. Participants in such a study might well overstate the learning effectiveness of methods they enjoyed (discussions, simulations) and understate the impact of methods they enjoyed less (enhanced lectures, and especially in-class writing—after all, who enjoys that?). Second, and more importantly, the findings might actually be measuring the relative skill of the instructor in these various techniques, the quality of the simulations or case studies used, or the way they were integrated into curriculum, rather than the  general efficacy of any particular method.

That being said, Bromley’s findings are a useful antidote to the notion that serious games and simulations are an educational panacea. They can work. They can work well. They do not necessarily work equally well with everyone, however, and they are not necessarily much more effective than some “traditional” methods (like large group discussions or small group work). The study also points to the value of seeing simulations as part of what I have previously called “intellectual cross-training”—that is, a mix of different approaches designed to both engage students in different ways and liven up the classroom experience.

New French-language games journal: Sciences du jeu

Sciences du jeu is a new academic journal/website that has been launched with the aim of promoting and disseminating French-language research on games:

Revue internationale et interdisciplinaire, Sciences du jeu a pour mission de développer la recherche en langue française sur le jeu, de lui donner une visibilité, de nourrir le dialogue entre les disciplines autour de cet objet, et de susciter des débats. Elle a pour objectif de publier des articles scientifiques inédits sur le jeu. Elle est ouverte à toutes les approches ou méthodes disciplinaires, portant sur tous les objets ludiques (dont, mais non exclusivement, les jeux vidéo), et a pour ambition de présenter des recherches issues de différents terrains concernant le jeu dans un sens large (objets, structures, situations, expériences, attitudes ludiques).

Actuellement l’université Paris 13 à travers le centre de recherche EXPERICE (axe B) en assume la gestion pratique dans le cadre d’une association avec d’autres universités représentées au comité de rédaction de la revue. D’autres personnes et institutions pourront se joindre à cette équipe de départ. La gestion pourra également tourner en fonction des possibilités offertes par telle ou telle institution.

Sciences du jeu est disponible intégralement en libre accès. Les numéros sont thématiques, et peuvent aussi contenir des articles hors dossier dans une rubrique « Varia », ainsi que des comptes rendus. Si les propositions hors dossier de qualité sont abondantes, des numéros de varia (ou avec des dossiers réduits) peuvent être mis en chantier.

Gender and simulation participation

From time to time I’ve had several anecdotal discussions with both students and colleagues about the ways in which participation in classroom simulations might be affected by gender. In my annual classroom civil war simulation we once asked an array of pre- and post-simulation questions designed to measure self-reported learning outcomes, and found no significant gender-based differences. I’ve also collectively asked the class  whether they think gender shaped participant behaviour. Both men and women tend to split 50/50 on the issue, with around half saying there are significant gender-based differences in simulation styles and participation, and about half disagreeing. I really should study it more systematically in the future.

A new article in the Journal of Political Science Education 9, 3 (2013) by Richard Coughlin on “Gender and Negotiation in Model UN Role-Playing Simulations” does just that. His finding are as follows:

This article reports on the relationship between gender and participation at the 2010 Southwest Florida Model United Nations (SWFLMUN). Three major findings emerge from this research: (1) Even though more females participated in the SWFLMUN than males, males accounted for most of the speeches and played more decisive roles in the formulation of the committee resolutions; (2) male and female delegates employed similar negotiating styles; and (3) surveys administered to delegates suggest that males and females derived about the same amount of satisfaction from the conference but that males, paradoxically, were more likely to report barriers to participation than females. These results leave the impression that gender is a significant, but unremarked factor in shaping participation. These findings are discussed with respect to a normative conception of Model UN (MUN) as a mode of global citizenship. MUN is designed to overcome national ethnocentrism by affirming the existence of multiple perspectives on world issues and by establishing a deliberative process through which these different interests and perspectives can be negotiated. The results of this research, however, suggest that gender stereotypes may alter the kind of political socialization that is both expressed and reproduced through MUN. Substantive inequalities associated with these stereotypes may be infecting formally inclusive public spheres—such as MUN—with the effect of coding politics as a competitive, male domain.

JPSE: Bringing Interactive Simulations into the Political Science Classroom

The latest issue of the Journal of Political Science Education 9, 2 (2013) is a thematic issue devoted to “Bringing Interactive Simulations into the Political Science Classroom.” There is a lot of interest within:

• Editors’ Introduction to the Thematic Issue: Bringing Interactive Simulations into the Political Science Classroom
  • Victor Asal, Nina A. Kollars, Chad Raymond & Amanda M. Rosen

• Constructing International Relations Simulations: Examining the Pedagogy of IR Simulations Through a Constructivist Learning Theory Lens
  • Victor Asal & Jayson Kratoville

• Simulations as Active Assessment?: Typologizing by Purpose and Source
  • Nina A. Kollars & Amanda M. Rosen

• Assessment in Simulations
  • Chad Raymond & Simon Usherwood

• Using Blackboard to Increase Student Learning and Assessment Outcomes in a Congressional Simulation
  • A. Lanethea Mathews & Alexandra LaTronica-Herb

• Bureaucratic Politics and Decision Making Under Uncertainty in a National Security Crisis: Assessing the Effects of International Relations Theory and the Learning Impact of Role-Playing Simulation at the U.S. Naval Academy
  • Nikolaos Biziouras

• Student Perceptions of a Role-Playing Simulation in an Introductory International Relations Course
  • Sean P. Giovanello, Jason A. Kirk & Mileah K. Kromer

• Political Simulations Using Excel
  • Steven F. Jackson

• Using a Virtual History Conference to Teach the Iraq War
  • Bruce Gilley
• The Politics of School District Budgeting: Using Simulations to Enhance Student Learning
  • Daniel Wakelee & Tiina Itkonen

• Book Review: Review of Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation
  • Jessica Feezell

The Journal of Political Science Education is sponsored by the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association.

Validating models of irregular warfare

A forthcoming article in the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation by Jeffrey Appleget, Curtis Blais, and Michael Jaye offers a useful look at “Best Practices for DoD Model Validation: Lessons Learned from Irregular Warfare Models.”

The US Department of Defense (DoD) requires all models and simulations that it manages, develops, and/or uses to be verified, validated, and accredited. Critical to irregular warfare (IW) modeling are interactions between combatants and the indigenous population. Representation of these interactions (human behavior representation (HBR)) requires expertise from several of the many fields of social science. As such, the verification, validation, and accreditation (VVA) of these representations will require adaptation and, in some cases, enhancement of traditional DoD VVA techniques. This paper suggests validation best practices for the DoD modeling community to address new challenges of modeling IW.

While the title stresses US Department of Defense practices, the article itself also has a great deal to say about the inherent challenges of validating models of complex human behaviour of the sort that are relevant to insurgencies and stabilization operations. Unfortunately, the full piece is behind the SAGE paywall, so you’ll need a subscription to access it.

simulations miscellany, 27 January 2013

With absolutely no predictability whatsoever, PAXsims once again brings you various and sundry items of gaming news,. This time we have quite a few interesting scholarly articles in the mix:

In the  International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations 4, 2 (2012), Mark Pearcy discusses “America’s Army: “Playful Hatred” in the Social Studies Classroom.”

America’s Army is a first-person “shooter” online video game produced by the U.S. Army and freely available on the Internet. Ostensibly a recruitment tool, the game constitutes a “mimetic” experience that encompasses real-life Army codes, regulations, and behaviors, approximating an authentic military experience, including realistic missions that involve violence. This article considers the educational role of such mimetic games, practical impediments to its inclusion in classrooms, and the conceptual demands the use of such games may place on teachers and students. Additionally, this article considers the ideological barriers and arguments against the educational use of games like America’s Army. Finally, this article connects the experience of America’s Army to Douglas’ (2008) concept of “playful hatred,” calling for a reconceptualization of the term towards a more competitive and pedagogically useful approach.

In Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 6, 1 (2012), Henrik Schoenau-Fog explores “Teaching Serious Issues through Player Engagement in an Interactive Experiential Learning Scenario.”

In order to inform about a serious subject concerned with the tragic consequences of being a victim of war in an interactive narrative game-like experience, it is essential to design a scenario which engage the participants despite the grave content. This paper thus focuses on how player engagement and playfulness can be applied to drive participants through a non-pleasurable experiential learning scenario in order to communicate serious topics. By investigating the concept of engagement in games, a framework of player engagement will be described. The framework has been used in a case-study to aid the design of an application – the “First Person Victim” – which is intended to be used in combination with an in-class discussion in order to address the serious topic. An evaluation of the scenario indicated that theme related feelings like hopelessness, fear, loneliness, and chaos are experienced by engaged participants and that there is a potential for using the scenario as a tool in teaching.

As the article discusses, this is done through the development of a “First Person Victim” video game which “places the participant in the role as a civilian in a war torn country during an airstrike, where it is possible to explore tragic and dramatic events.”

During the entire experience, the participant’s narrative construction depends on encountering several different audiovisual events varying in tension (Fig 2). There are in total 42 events organized in six scenes, each with seven events. These events can be audio events (e.g. a phone call or cries for help), audiovisual graphical events (e.g. an exploding building), texts (e.g. sms-messages) or video recordings of real actors placed the 3d world.

 

Fig. 2. (a) Meeting a smuggler. (b) Woman being harassed. (c) Rockets hit the City

An ‘Interactive Drama Experience Manager’ (Schoenau-Fog et al. 2010) organizes the various events by selecting the next possible events based on the users’ navigation in the environment as well as causality. For each scene there is one less event to encounter, so in the first scene in an apartment it is possible to encounter seven events, in the next scene on a street there are six events and so on. The final events are all concerned with tragic endings, and users have no options for happy endings. The scenario is mediated through the game engine Unity (2011) by inverting first person shooter (FPS) conventions so it is not possible to use weapons or engage in combat. However, the participants can be shot at, hit by rockets or explosions and step on mines, but in order to let participants encounter as many events as possible before the discussion, it is not possible to die. There is no explicit goal defined by the scenario, as it is the intention to let participants define as many intrinsic objectives as possible in order to keep them engaged through the emergent narrative.

Some participants found the experience engaging, and wished to continue—but others did not.

The main objective of this study is to evaluate engagement in the FPV application and the results show that 40% clearly wanted to continue playing, while 32.5% did not want to try again and 27.5% were in doubt. The survey and observations show that the engaged respondents, who wanted to try again had the desire to continue due to intrinsic objectives, activities related to exploration, solving problems, experimentation and experiencing the characters and story. Moreover, they also wanted to continue mainly because of the theme and positive elements from the game design. The evaluation furthermore investigates the affect experienced by the students, as the mediation of feelings related to the topic is important for the communication of the theme. The engaged group reported the experience of more feelings related to the theme than both the group of respondents who were in doubt and the group who did not want continue.

The group who did not want to continue playing reported that it was mainly due to game design issues and technical problems while feelings related to the theme were not as frequently reported as in the other groups. While most of the students in this group state that they did not feel anything in particular, the findings show that engaged students report that the FPV triggers negative feelings, which are related to the theme, and that they want to continue even though those feelings are not fun, enjoyable or pleasurable.

The findings thus suggest that this affect can be the result of the activities introduced in the PEP framework – e.g. exploration and experiencing the characters. Since there is nothing explicit to accomplish in the FPV, the affect encountered is not intended to include positive feelings such as satisfaction, triumph or closure, which is usually related to accomplishments in game experiences. However, disengagement can also be a sign of successful communication of the theme, since negative emotions related to the content can make participants not wanting to try again. For example, one teacher who did not want to continue stated that she felt afraid and powerless: “I felt a lot like a victim. […] that loneliness… I felt bad.” (Female, 42)

The study finds some potential educational value in the FPV, but provided it is appropriately debriefed and integrated with curriculum.

Another goal of the evaluation in this study is to investigate the potential for using the FPV as a tool in teaching. Findings of the survey show that the engaged students reported that they learned something related to the topic more frequently than the other groups. Moreover, a majority of the students who were disengaged state that they did not learn anything related to the theme. When discussing the experience with the classes, both students who were engaged in the experience and students, who did not want to try again participated in the discussions. Although there was a risk that the self-selective sample of the discussion could result in that only the engaged students would contribute, the discussion showed that also students who were not engaged during the experience of the FPV participated actively. However, the factor of social expectancy could also have affected the outcome of the discussions, as students might want to answer “correct” during the interview, especially because one of the designers, who is a refugee himself, was present at the discussions.

During the post-game interviews, teachers state that applications such as the FPV could have potential in teaching as an initiator for in-class discussions about a theme. Some of the teachers mentioned that there were examples of students, who usually never contribute to discussions (especially the “quiet boys”), who took active part in the discussions after the experience.

The findings from the discussion and teacher interviews supports the idea that an in-class discussion and debriefing is important and valuable for learning as it makes learners reflect on another level, which is no always achieved during the experience. However, a comparison with a group of students who did not have a post-game discussion would be needed to verify this impression.  The results furthermore suggest that the FPV can be seen as a successful exemplification of how learners in a designed experience (Squire 2006) can gain knowledge of serious issues by “doing and being” (ibid. p.32) in an experiential learning scenario.

Methodologically, this is a very serious and thoughtful piece of scholarship, and well worth a read.

The third issue of the International Journal of Role-Playing came out late last month, with articles on “Creativity Rules. How rules impact player creativity in three tabletop role-playing games,” “An Embodied Cognition Approach for Understanding Role-playing,” “A tale of two cities: Symbolic capital and larp community formation in Canada and Sweden ,” and “The self-perceived effects of the role-playing hobby on personal development – a survey report .”

Want to know how best to teach agent-based simulation? C M Macal and and M J North have some suggestions in the Journal of Simulation (2013).

In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, Susannah J. Whitney, Philip Temby, and Ashley Stephens offer “A review of the effectiveness of game-based training for dismounted soldiers“—and find the results rather disappointing:

Computer games are increasingly being used by armed forces to supplement conventional training methods. However, despite considerable anecdotal claims about their training effectiveness, empirical evidence is lacking. This paper critically reviews major studies conducted in the past decade that have examined game-based training with dismounted soldiers. The findings indicate that these studies are characterized by methodological limitations and that the evidence regarding the effectiveness of game-based training for this military population is not compelling. Furthermore, due to methodological limitations with the studies, the possibility of negative training effects cannot be discounted. The paper concludes with implications for the scientific and military communities, as well as recommendations for the conduct of future studies in this area.

If you haven’t yet read the December 2012 issue of the M&S Newsletter, published by the Modeling and Simulation Coordination Office of the US Department of Defense, now’s your chance.

Michael Peck is in search of women. More specifically, in the wake of the recent US decision to (finally) open combat roles to women, his latest gaming column at Forbes asks “Are Female Soldiers Coming to Video Games?”

Issue #3 of Modern War (January-February 2013), complete with a game of near-future coalition operations against Somali pirates (and Somalia).

This year’s Serious Play conference will be held on August 20-22, 2013 at Digipen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA—and they are looking for speakers.

SEATTLE – Jan. 22 2013 – Submissions are now being accepted from professionals who create games or sims or lead game programs for the education, corporate, military, healthcare or location-based market to speak at Serious Play Conference. The annual gathering for leaders in the industry will be held August 20 – 22, 2013 at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Wash., just outside Seattle.

A new feature of the conference will be four pre-conference workshops on Monday, August 19 designed as introductory sessions for new serious game program directors, workforce and talent development professionals and K-12 educators and university faculty:

• How to Integrate Games into the Classroom – created for heads of school districts, curriculum specialists and cutting edge teachers
• Using Location-Based Games – designed for Instructional designers, museum education departments, non-profit organizations and entertainment destination professionals
• Using Games to Grow Talent, Train and Engage Employees – aimed at IDs, HR and organizational development, military and government workforce managers
• Building a Serious Games Curriculum – geared toward faculty of higher education institutions interested in adding serious game degree programs

Speakers at both the main conference and the various workshops will share their expertise and outline critical success factors in game design. Industry analysts will discuss the latest industry trends and how best to take advantage of current market needs.

The submission form is located online at www.seriousplayconference.com/speakers

The Stack Academie 2013 gaming convention will be held on 3-5 May in Montréal. Volko Ruhnke (designer of Wilderness War, Labyrinth and Andean Abyss, and codesigner of the forthcoming A Distant Plain) and Brian Train (designer of Algeria, Arriba Espana, War Plan Crimson, and a great many others, and the other codesigner of A Distant Plain) will be guests of honour. More details here.

 

Simulation & Gaming (December 2012)

The latest issue of Simulation & Gaming 43, 6 (December 2012) is now available:

Articles

• Simulating Poverty and Inequality Dynamics in Developing Countries

  • An Ansoms and Sara Geenen

•  Toward a Taxonomy Linking Game Attributes to Learning: An Empirical Study

  • Wendy L. Bedwell, Davin Pavlas, Kyle Heyne, Elizabeth H. Lazzara, and Eduardo Salas

• Modeling the “Profitable-Product Death Spiral”: Accounting for Strategic Product-Mix Interactions in Marketing Simulation Games

  • James N. Cannon, Hugh M. Cannon, and Manfred Schwaiger

• Task-Relevant Sound and User Experience in Computer-Mediated Firefighter Training

  • Joske M. Houtkamp, Alexander Toet, and Frank A. Bos

• Innovation Diffusion: Learner benefits and instructor insights with the DIFFUSION SIMULATION GAME

  • Cindy L. Kovalik and Chia-Ling Kuo

• Architectures for Developing Multiuser, Immersive Learning Scenarios

  • Rob J. Nadolski, Hans G. K. Hummel, Aad Slootmaker, and Wim van der Vegt

Ready-to-use simulation

• DEVELOPMENT MONOPOLY: A Simulation Game on Poverty and Inequality

  • An Ansoms and Sara Geenen

 

 

Simulation & Gaming (October 2012)

A new issue of Simulation & Gaming 43, 5 (October 2012) is now available online:

Articles

Unreliable Information in Infantry Situation Awareness: Improvement Through Game-Based Training

• Eric T. Chancey and James P. Bliss

Gaming Research in Policy and Organization: An Assessment From the Netherlands

• Leon de Caluwé, Jac Geurts, and Wouter Jan Kleinlugtenbelt

Goals, Success Factors, and Barriers for Simulation-Based Learning: A Qualitative Interview Study in Health Care

• Peter Dieckmann, Susanne Molin Friis, Anne Lippert, and Doris Østergaard

The Coaching Cycle: A Coaching-by-Gaming Approach in Serious Games

• Anna-Sofia Alklind Taylor, Per Backlund, and Lars Niklasson

Ready-to-use simulations

BUILDING TIES IN A STRATIFIED SOCIETY: A Social Networking Simulation Game

• An Ansoms and Sara Geenen

RABBIT-VENTURE

• Cecile N. Gerwel and Shamim Bodhanya

 

Simulations miscellany, 15 October 2012

PAXsims is pleased to present its occasional summary of recent (and sometimes not-so-recent) simulation-related news from around the world:

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Don’t have rubber dice in your pocket when you address a military audience? Perhaps you should! Graham Longley-Brown explains why.

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The CBC’s Brian Stewart sees something significant in the growing number of Iran wargames and crisis simulations conducted by US think-tanks:

In the headlines, the possibility of war over Iran’s nuclear program flares up and then fades, hot one week, cool the next. But behind the scenes the war-gaming by global crisis experts has taken on new urgency.

These strategy-and-tactics simulations, which can be found over much of the think-tank universe these days, are much about war, but certainly no game.

Their objective, using all available data and intelligence, is to analyze in advance what’s likely to happen should Iran cross Israel’s so-called red line, the point where it is felt to be only a few months away from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

This means often exhausting debates over questions such as: What happens if Israel attacks Iran on its own? Or acts with U.S. air support?

What would be Iran’s reaction in either case, and would such an attack end the Iranian program, or merely steel its resolve and delay it a few years?

Then there are the questions like: How badly would the world’s economy be shaken? And what are the broader strategic implications for global politics?

You may think these are just navel-gazing exercises. But I always view these flurries of Washington war-gaming seriously because every modern U.S. war has been preceded by just such a mobilization by think tanks and foreign policy magazines setting out the prognoses of former diplomats, conflict resolution advisers and retired military commanders on any looming conflict….

Pointing to the dangers highlighted by many of these wargames, Stewart concludes by warning “we may just never game war enough, before we make it”.

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In the meantime, those interested in conducting their own US-Iran simulation in the classroom can find some helpful ideas in an article by Charity Butler on “Teaching Foreign Policy Decision-Making Processes Using Role-Playing Simulations: The Case of US–Iranian Relations” in the May 2012 issue of International Studies Perspectives:

Most undergraduate courses on foreign policy discuss important models and explanations of foreign policy decision making, such as the rational actor, organizational process and governmental politics models, and groupthink. It is often difficult for students to fully understand how to apply and use these concepts to analyze foreign policy decision-making processes. One way to encourage such analytical thinking is to have students utilize various models to explain a specific event. While this is a useful task, students often gain a greater level of comprehension when they are evaluating a decision-making process in which they have personally taken part in. As such, role-playing simulation can be a very effective tool in helping students learn to understand and, more importantly, apply these various decision-making models and explanations. This paper presents an example of how simulations can help teach these concepts by presenting specific information regarding a simulation of US–Iranian relations.

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Another article from the forthcoming special peacebuilding issue of Simulation & Gaming is now available ahead-of-print from the SAGE website (subscription required). This time it is by Roger Mason and Eric Patterson, on “Wargaming Peace Operations.”

Today’s military personnel fight against and work with a diverse variety of nonstate actors, from al-Qaeda terrorists to major nongovernmental organizations who provide vital humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, the nontraditional battle spaces where America and its allies have recently deployed (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq) include a wide range of activities quite different from classic military campaign. How can the United States and its allies train its military personnel to think through the intersection of issues regarding working alongside and against nonstate actors, particularly in culturally sensitive environments? This article describes one such approach, the development of a war game for peace, designed for U.S. military officers and now utilized in the classrooms of several military colleges. More specifically, the article describes how reconstruction and stabilization operation decisions are modeled and worked through in the highly religious environment of contemporary Afghanistan through the use of an innovative board game, suggesting that this model can be applied to many other scenarios and classroom environments.

The Afghan provincial reconstruction game described in the article was previously reviewed at PAXsims here. Given the way things seem to be headed in Afghanistan, the designers may have to develop a Taliban-themed game a few years from now…

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The Guardian (8 October 2012) reports on a recent UNICEF UK emergency response simulation.

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At the blog HiLoBrow, Joshua Glenn ponders H.G. Wells and “War and Peace Games.”

CFP: Engagement, Simulation/Gaming and Learning

Nicola Whitton  (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Alex Moseley  (University of Leicester) will be editing a special issue of Simulation & Gaming devoted to “Engagement, Simulation/Gaming and Learning.” The deadline for article proposals is 31 October 2012 (details below, click to enlarge).

Simulations miscellany, 6 October 2012

Once again, PAXsims is pleased to offer some recent tidbits of gaming and simulation-related news.

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The current election campaign for State Senate seat #25 in Maine has been rocked by the shocking and scandalous news that Democrat candidate Colleen Lachowicz plays an orc rogue in World of Warcraft. According to a press release issued by the state Republican Party:

Candidate’s Bizarre Double Life Raises Questions

– October 4, 2012

Posted in: Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: David Sorensen, 207-205-7793
Communications Director, Maine GOP

Democratic Senate Candidate Colleen Lachowicz’s Disturbing Alter-Ego Revealed

 Online comments raise questions about candidate’s fitness for office

AUGUSTA – Colleen Lachowicz, the Democratic candidate for State Senate District 25 (Waterville), has been living a time-consuming double life as a member of the World of Warcraft community. World of Warcraft is an online gaming network where people play a fantasy role-playing game in an imaginary world called “Azeroth.”

Today, Colleen is playing at level 85–the highest level one can attain. Studies have found that the average World of Warcraft gamer is 28 and spends 22.7 hours per week playing.

Her character in the game is called “Santiaga,” an Orc Assassin Rogue, and Lachowicz lives vicariously through her, making comments about World of Warcraft and other topics on the liberal blog, The Daily Kos. Here is a sampling of Lachowicz’s comments:

“So I’m a level 68 orc rogue girl. That means I stab things . . . a lot. Who would have thought that a peace-lovin’, social worker and democrat would enjoy that?!”

“Yes, I am seriously slacking off at work today. And I called my congresswoman’s office today. And told them I would probably be calling everyday.”

“I spent my day leveling my alt — an undead warlock…”

“I’m lazy, remember?”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I may have to go and hunt down Grover Norquist and drown him in my bath tub.”

“Or my dream from election season last year where John McCain sat at my childhood dining room table and I reamed him a new a**hole about Sarah Palin.”

“I like to stab things and I’m originally from NJ…. what’s your f***ing point?!”

“Do not send me a campaign contribution or I will have to stab you! Seriously!”

“Yes, join us! We’re progressive… in fact we joke about being a socialist guild.”

“I love this diary because it sums up the teabagger mindset.”

“These are some very bizarre and offensive comments, and they certainly raise questions about Lachowicz’s maturity and her ability to make serious decisions for the people of Senate District 25,” said Maine Republican Party spokesman David Sorensen.

The Maine Republican Party will make an effort to give voters all of the information about candidate Lachowicz. To that end, the party has established a website, www.colleensworld.com, where people can see Lachowicz’s online activity for themselves. In addition, a series of mail pieces will be sent to the voters of District 25, including the one below.

Voters should have all the information they can obtain about those who choose to run for office. The Maine Republican Party will present that information to them and let them decide who is most able to represent them effectively.

You’ll find more of the story via Reuters, BBC News, Jezebel, and Kotaku.

We at PAXsims are, needless to say, completely and utterly shocked that anyone would ever play a rogue in a role-playing game, or show any affinity for orcs whatsoever. Certainly we would never do anything as ridiculous as that. No sireee.

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At the website mental_floss, D.B. Grady offers a brief overview of 5 Fictional Countries Where the U.S. Army is Trained to Fight.

When the U.S. Army trains for battle, it strives for immersion and realism. To help prepare soldiers for the overwhelming nature of invading a country where the language is unknown and the culture is mostly alien, the U.S. Army invents fully realized countries, from international dynamics to currency. Here are a few fake countries where the United States is prepared to fight.

To that list we could add the Republic of Florabama, where I’m proud to have once role-played (a rather murky) part of the opposition movement that brought President Ortega to power. Below is one of the rather tongue-in-cheek videos we generated during the exercise.

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GAMEON-ARABIA’2012, the 3rd annual Pan-Arabic Simulation and AI in Computer Games Conference, will be held at the Arab Open University in Muscat, Oman on 10-12 December 2012.

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Virtual Mediation Lab (a project devoted to “mediation skills development around the world with Skype”) recently featured a blogpost about Kristen Drucker’s continuing peaceconferencing  initiative, which uses the Open Simulation Platform. (h/t Skip Cole)

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The Educator’s Edition DVD of the video World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements (together with Facilitator’s Guide) is now available. For more on the project and John Hunter’s work, see the website

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Two more articles from our forthcoming special peacebuilding issue of Simulation & Gaming are now available “online first” from SAGE:

• Peter Landwehr, Marc Spraragen, Balki Ranganathan, Kathleen M. Carley, and Michael Zyda,  “Games, Social Simulations, and Data-Integration for Policy Decisions: The SUDAN Game.”

In this article, the authors discuss the development of the SUDAN GAME, an interactive model of the country in the time period leading up to the Sudanese referendum on the secession of the South. While many simulations are designed to educate about their subjects, the SUDAN GAME is intended to be a prototype for policy making via gameplay. It is implemented within COSMOPOLIS, a massively multiplayer online game that is currently undergoing development. In this article, the authors discuss the game’s design and how it can be used for policy development, with a focus on the underlying model and some discussion of the COSMOPOLIS implementation. They situate the game relative to other games that have crowdsourced serious problems and discuss the meaning of the policy solutions and collaboration witnessed along players. They conclude with a discussion of future development to be done to improve and expand upon the concepts used in their game.

• Sean F. McMahon and Chris Miller, “Simulating the Camp David Negotiations: A Problem-Solving Tool in Critical Pedagogy.”

This article reflects critically on simulations. Building on the authors’ experience simulating the Palestinian-Israeli-American Camp David negotiations of 2000, they argue that simulations are useful pedagogical tools that encourage creative—but not critical—thinking and constructivist learning. However, they can also have the deleterious effect of reproducing unequal power relations in the classroom. The authors develop this argument in five stages:
1. They distinguish between problem solving and critical theory and define critical thinking—something not done by the simulation orthodoxy.
2. They describe the Camp David simulation. This is their contribution to the relatively small corpus of literature on simulating Palestinian-Israeli relations.
3. They review the constructivist learning and peer teaching accomplished through their simulation. This section is notable because it is authored by a graduate student who participated in the simulation as a meaning maker.
4. They review the manner in which simulations promote creative, not critical, thinking, and reproduce asymmetrical power relations.
5. They reflect on the overall utility of simulating the Camp David negotiations in the classroom.

A subscription to S&G is required to access the full text.

Forthcoming Simulation & Gaming articles on peacebuilding

Several more articles from the forthcoming special issue of Simulation & Gaming on peacebuilding have now been made available in advance by SAGE, including our own short introduction to the collection:

Rex Brynen and Gary Milante, “Peacebuilding With Games and Simulations.”

Simulations and games can offer valuable insight into the management of conflict and the achievement of peace. This special symposium issue of Simulation & Gaming examines several such approaches, used in both educational settings and to prepare practitioners to deal with the concrete challenges of peacebuilding. In the introduction, the authors offer some brief thoughts on the how and why of simulations and games-based approaches, scenario choices (abstract, fictional, and real world), intended audiences, and design approaches. They also address the question of how games might (or might not) contribute to policy making in this field.

Tucker B. Harding and Mark A. Whitlock, “Leveraging Web-Based Environments for Mass Atrocity Prevention.”

A growing literature exploring large-scale, identity-based political violence, including mass killing and genocide, debates the plausibility of, and prospects for, early warning and prevention. An extension of the debate involves the prospects for creating educational experiences that result in more sophisticated analytical products that enhance preventive policy action. This article details an attempt to bridge the theory to practice gap. It describes the role of a simulation COUNTRY X within the educational contexts of both a graduate course in prevention of mass killing and genocide at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and a practitioner training workshop designed for regional conflict early warning analysts in Africa. The authors review educational theory describing problem-based learning and apply it to a web-based educational simulation. Using a recent training of professional conflict early warning analysts as their case study, they explore several assumptions regarding the utility of simulated environments as educational tools in moving from theory to practice. Use of the simulation resulted in active and engaged participation by learners, increased capacity for well-reasoned perspective taking, and improved analytical confidence in complex scenarios.

Richard B. Powers and Kat Kirkpatrick, “Playing With Conflict: Teaching Conflict Resolution Through Simulations and Games.”

Playing With Conflict is a weekend course for graduate students in Portland State University’s Conflict Resolution program and undergraduates in all majors. Students participate in simulations, games, and experiential exercises to learn and practice conflict resolution skills. Graduate students create a guided role-play of a conflict. In addition to an oral debriefing, students wrote a debriefing report following the Description, Interpretation, Evaluation (DIE) model of debriefing. The written debriefing report gave all students an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and evaluate their experience in depth. The use of two facilitators allows one to facilitate while the other observes and rests, makes 2 points of view available for the debriefing, and offers a model for resolving minor disagreements between them. Trust among students increased across the weekend as evidenced by an increase in cooperative choices and estimates of the likelihood that others would cooperate in the TAKE-A-CHANCE game, a version of PRISONER’S DILEMMA. Most reported having fun while they learned about themselves, interpersonal conflict, and some large-scale social conflicts.

Julian Schofield, “Modeling Choices in Nuclear Warfighting: Two Classroom Simulations on Escalation and Retaliation.”

Two classroom simulations—SUPERPOWER CONFRONTATION and MULTIPOLAR ASIAN SIMULATION—are used to teach and test various aspects of the Borden versus Brodie debate on the Schelling versus Lanchester approach to nuclear conflict modeling and resolution. The author applies a Schelling test to segregate high from low empathic students, and assigns them to hard case positions in three simulations to test whether high empathy students can engage in tactic bargaining and whether low empathetic students are necessarily as escalation prone. He has a bipolar nuclear simulation that is an easy case for the Brodie set of assumptions about nuclear war, avoidance, and Schelling-esque tacit bargaining. He expects the system structure and high empathy leader selection to contain escalation, despite the temptation of relying on accelerated Single Integrated Operational Plan solutions and the counterincentive of diminished tacit bargaining through decapitation attacks. The second simulation is a multipolar nuclear simulation set in the near future of Asia, and emulates the Borden-esque logic of nuclear war as artillery exchanges, with a Lanchester square law logic encouraging rapid escalation, coupled with a selection for the most autistic leadership. The author expects rapid nuclear escalation under these structural and decision-making conditions. His conclusions are anecdotal, but seem to indicate, from student feedback during class discussions, that the failure to model fear may be a factor in undermining successful tacit bargaining by players, suggesting that Borden rather than Brodie better conceptualized nuclear conflict. Therefore, peace is about restraining war initiation, as there are great pressures for escalation once war is initiated.

These and other forthcoming articles can be found here.

Simulation & Gaming (August 2012)

The August 2012  issue of Simulation & Gaming (43, 4) is now available online.

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Articles

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Simulating REAL LIVES: Promoting Global Empathy and Interest in Learning Through Simulation Games

• Christine M. Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, and Chad Raphael

Comparing Objective Measures and Perceptions of Cognitive Learning in an ERP Simulation Game: A Research Note

• Timothy Paul Cronan, Pierre-Majorique Léger, Jacques Robert, Gilbert Babin, and Patrick Charland

The Validity and Effectiveness of a Business Game Beta Test

• Steven C. Gold and Joseph Wolfe

Ritualistic Games, Boundary Control, and Information Uncertainty

• J. Tuomas Harviainen

Similarity of Social Information Processes in Games and Rituals: Magical Interfaces

• J. Tuomas Harviainen and Andreas Lieberoth

Toward a Model for Intercultural Communication in Simulations

• Bradley E. Wiggins

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Association News & Notes

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Association News & Notes

• Songsri Soranastaporn

Simulation & Gaming (April 2012)

The latest issue of Simulation & Gaming 43, 2 (April 2012) has just been published:

Articles

• Formalizing Game-play
  • Tomas By
• Innovation Diffusion: Assessment of Strategies Within the DIFFUSION SIMULATION GAME
  • Jacob Enfield, Rodney D. Myers, Miguel Lara, and Theodore W. Frick
• Employee Impressions of a Manager: Computerized Simulation Predictions
  • Clare A. Francis
• Life Span as the Measure of Performance and Learning in a Business Gaming Simulation
  • Precha Thavikulwat 

Autobiographies

• How Simulation/Gaming Transformed My Life
  • Henry Ellington
• Simulare Necesse Est
  • Paul Meerts

Book review

• Book review: Stretching Video Games
  • Pierre Corbeil

Agent-based modelling and the US troop surge in Afghanistan

The latest issue of the Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation 9, 2 (April 2012) is now out. Most of it is devoted to technical discussions of “Resuability, Interoperability and Composability in Air Warfare Simulations,” but it does also feature an interesting and well-written piece by John Sokolowski, Catherine Banks, and Brent Morrow on “Using an agent-based model to explore troop surge strategy.”

In October of 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan and replaced the Taliban government. Since its overthrow, the Taliban has pieced together and waged an insurgency to retake Afghanistan, and that insurgency has gained momentum and grown in strength while the United States/North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) effort shrank in size to about 55,000 troops in 2007. A wide range of factors contributed to the insurgency, ranging from socio-cultural to economic to political. This research applied an in-depth study of Afghanistan to an agent-based model to determine if a military troop surge emphasizing a focused security effort could be successful in battling the growing insurgency within Afghanistan. An agent-based model was created and validated against the strategy and situation on the ground in Afghanistan that existed in 2007. Three experiments were conducted representing surges of 50%, 200%, and 400%. The results indicated that a surge of 200% or greater of the existing size force would be necessary to reduce the size of the insurgency, but that a surge of only 50% (50,000 more troops) would not bring about any significant changes as compared to the existing strategy. These model results provide insight into the potential success of various sized troop surges in Afghanistan that implement a focused security effort.

The piece is, unfortunately, behind a paywall, so you’ll need a subscription to JDMS to access the while thing. The core political-military dynamics of their model, however, are captured in the diagram on the right (click to enlarge). These in turn provide the context for the pseudo-tactical model, in which the insurgent and coalition agents fight it out, with detection ranges, a version of the usual Ph and Pk (probability of hits and kills), and probabilities of collateral damage (which in turn affect local attitudes) all modelled. Unlike some of the work done in the technical M&S field, the piece is written in language that is likely to be clear and accessible to those working in very different, non-quantitative areas.

A number of questions might be raised about the model that the authors have developed. One could endlessly quibble about the key variables they have identified, and in some cases whether the relationships always have the directional values they impute to them (for example, deployment of the Afghan National Army—and even more the highly corrupt Afghan National Police, which they don’t model—can sometimes have negative effects on local attitudes, in cases where they are either seen as abusive and predatory, or because they attract Taliban attacks in areas that might otherwise be quiet). However, those criticisms hold true for any game design, and in general my own general reading of conflict dynamics in Afghanistan suggests that quite a bit of it sounds intuitively right.

The authors do validate their model, using open source reporting of changes in Taliban numbers and adjusting the model until it fits the historical record. I’m not sure that their estimates of insurgent “density” are robust enough to provide much validation, however. Moreover, to increase calibration they manipulate only a few of the variables and relationships in the model in order to provide a match against this single indicator. To my mind, that doesn’t provide very strong validation of the underlying model itself.

The simulation attempts to draw conclusions about the relationship between an increase in coalition troop strength in Afghanistan (“the surge”) and the strength of the insurgency. In this, the authors are refreshingly realistic about the limits of agent-based modelling in illuminating policy questions (emphasis added):

The purpose of this study was to provide a means of assessing if the implementation of a military troop surge designated toward a focused security effort strategy might reverse the trend of the growing insurgency in Afghanistan. The strategy using the United States/coalition/Afghan National Army troop strength of about 101,000 soldiers has failed to defeat or even stop the growth of the Neo-Taliban insurgency. This research sought to add some insight into whether or not a surge with a specific role could work within Afghanistan.

…The results of these experiments indicated that a surge of 400,000 or 200,000 troops will reduce the size and strength of the insurgency, but a surge of 150,000 troops would not. These results are not definitive or absolute, but give insight into the possible outcomes of a surge of the given size based on a model built using careful research. This research represents a tool for analysis in the decision process to determine if a surge should occur. It is not the answer to the question of whether a surge would be effective.

In my view, however, they’ve both overstated and understated the value of their analysis. Given the great many assumptions built into the model, I’m even more doubtful than they appear to be that the outcome of the experiment provides useful policy guidance. On the other hand, I think they could do far more to highlight the potential contribution of the experiment as a heuristic device—that is, as a way of helping decision-makers think about a large, complex, wicked problem. As Gary once put it, the article would be even more interesting for a broader audience interested in insurgency and counterinsurgency  if there was less seer and more sage in its approach to the material. The model might offer some insight, for example, in why a limited surge might not work; what key indicators and metrics might be useful in assessing the effectiveness of increased coalition troop strength; or even what variables or nodes seems to have an especially important effect on outcomes. In other words, I think the article would be all the more interesting if rather than simply reporting experimental results, it also highlighted what the construction of the model itself may suggest about conflict dynamics (or our understanding of conflict dynamics) in Afghanistan. It would have also have been useful to report some of the more detailed simulation findings about how particular variables changed under different coalition troop strengths, or which relationships other than troop strength seemed to be most important to outcome.

Still, for the many readers of PAXsims who are interested in such issues but are rarely exposed to either agnet-based modelling or work in the M&S community on political-military issues, it is certainly worth a read.