Using Strategic Games to Illustrate Environmental Policy Concepts for Undergraduates
By Elizabeth Baldwin and Minwoo Ahn, University of Arizona
Games are useful to help students learn key concepts in environmental policy. Thus, using games is increasingly common in undergraduate courses. However, games are still primarily used as a tool for student engagement, rather than as a primary means for teaching core concepts. We argue that this is a missed opportunity for instructors to use games more systematically to build students’ basic understanding of policy. We develop a sequence of three games – enforcement, emissions trading, groundwater governance – to illustrate core concepts in environmental policy. We also offer a general framework to help instructors design their own policy simulation games.
The Journal of Political Science Education is an intellectually rigorous, path-breaking, agenda-setting journal that publishes the highest quality scholarship on teaching and pedagogical issues in political science. The journal aims to represent the full range of questions, issues and approaches regarding political science education, including teaching-related issues, methods and techniques, learning/teaching activities and devices, educational assessment in political science, graduate education, and curriculum development.