Teaching American Political Development through a Fantasy Sports Draft

As student engagement has been down because of increased phone use, finding a way to increase student engagement is paramount to teaching the next generation of students. One way to do engage students is through gamification or introducing games into classes to teach students. While gamification has been used successfully in the past, there has not been a study examining the effect of a fantasy-sports model on student engagement. This study aimed to close that gap by introducing a fantasy-sports draft to teach students US presidents. Surveys, teacher interviews, and classroom observations were used to conduct this study and determine the effect of a fantasy-sports draft on student engagement. Results of this study show that a fantasy sports model does increase student engagement for both students who have not been exposed to a fantasy sport before and for students who regularly play fantasy sports. Implications include adding to the literature of learner-centric as opposed to teacher-centric classrooms and filling a gap in the literature.