“Putting Students in the Simulation Designer’s Seat”

This article describes my experience with student-designed political simulations in an advanced undergraduate course on Climate Change Politics. While simulations are used increasingly commonly as teaching tools in political science classes, engaging students in simulation design remains a relatively rare practice in political science teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level. In this course, the capstone project involved students working in groups to design, and then run in-class, climate change-related political simulations. While not necessarily more effective than traditional lectures in terms of substantive content delivery, the experience was successful in terms of student engagement, and it provided opportunities for the kinds of “authentic” learning and assessment that is increasingly important in an age when Large Language Model text generators are ubiquitous. It also allowed students to begin to develop design skills, and, perhaps most importantly, provided students with a greater opportunity to engage critically and comparatively with political simulations, and thus to reflect on the politics of simulation (or model) construction.