Another Semester, Another Simulation

The use of email “secret diplomacy” as an adjunct to the face to face simulation was forced on us last year by the “Great Flood” of 2009; and this year, in drier times, we continued the practice. It was enlivened a bit by the publication, during the simulation of the Wikileaks Cables, which gave the class a look at recent examples of the ‘real thing’  Student uptake on the option of email diplomacy was uneven – some took to it and engaged in elaborate exchanges behind the scenes of the in class sessions, but others made no real effort at it. I need to make a choice for future simulation exercises to either close off the email backchannel, or else to make it’s use fairer. I ma inclined to integrate it more explicitly into the assessment, and assign a portion of the grades for it. i can use the wikileaks cables as examples of the way diplomatic reports look are written, and get the students to follow those models as an explicit learning task. This fits, I think, with those learning outcomes of the course which emphasise understanding of how the process of negotiation in international organisations works.

The email question also raises an issue which I did not discuss with the class – whether or not I can reduce the amount of in-class time we spend on the simulation, if we use email and other online tools as part of it. In theory, I could cut the in-class time from 2 full 2 hour classes to 1, but I’m not sure that would work. Reflections in the essay drafts I’ve seen so far strongly support the value of having two face to face sessions to allow time for students to get “into” the simulation.

I also asked them if the simulation should be a team rather than individual simulation. At the moment, each student plays an individual position, but I am toying with having, for example, a US Team with President, SecDef, SecState and someone else, or a UN team with SG, High Commissioner for Refugees, Head of UNDP or other specialised agencies depending on the scenario. I think though this might move too much towards a politics sim rather than an international organisations simulation. I think however, I will certainly include several of the UN specialised agencies as player positions in future, so the group get a better feel for the range of activities the UN can make use of in a complex crisis.

We had a brief discussion about real world simulation scenarios v hypothetical – at the moment, the simulation scenario is “The Lost Continent”, a fictitious continent in the Indian Ocean with 5 fictional states which suffers from a range of problems modelled on real world conflicts. I went for this in order to provide some balance in the positions, and weave a more dense conflict than a real world crisis offered. However, I have been using it for about 5 years now, and I am afraid I am bored with it, and no longer communicating enthusiasm for it as a simulation to the class, so I need to shake it up.  One of the deciding factors in the switch was when I had a student doing research on playing Peru on the Security Council dealing with the Iranian Nuclear programme. It proved impossible to locate material, even using online translations of articles from Peruvian newspapers, to find enough material for him to get traction on the position. Opinions on real world v hypothetical were divided, and some good points came up – students felt they would find it easier to grasp the positions of real world states over hypotheticals, versus the problem with a real world crisis of knowing how it ended up, unless you run a simulation based on a currently unfolding crisis, which is hard to prepare, for at the start of a semester.

I was concerned about the flow through from the mid-term essay to the simulation. The mid-terms are group essays based on a number of recent UN missions in places like Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivore, Congo, Darfur and so on. In theory, the knowledge the students gained form those real world cases should inform their approach to the simulation but I felt that the work they invested in the mid-term didn’t successfully cross over to what they did in the simulation. This year the group mid-terms were very good, and I think they learned a lot from the process of writing group essays but I was worried about the transfer of knowledge from one part of the course to another. I feel I need to find a fix for this, but I don’t know how to bridge the gap.

This year, for the first time, I included in the course a range of articles about the use of simulations in teaching and learning in International relations so that students  could see other views  on the learning implications apart from my perspective and learning outcomes. In our system, we do not really challenge students to think actively about what learning means to them, and what their learning outcomes might be, and I wanted to open a door to that discussion. I’ve always said that student could devote part of the final essay, which is entirely based on the simulation, to reflecting on it as a learning experience, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out form those who feel comfortable engaging with that opportunity – after all, while I know how it looked from the podium, right now the best experts on how well or not the course works as a learning experience are the current students!