EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

ABSTRACT

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.

KEYWORDS:

• Political simulations
• European Union
• active learning
• interest
• survey experiment

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Steve Jackson, Diane Johnson, Kayla Merkel, Zach Mull, and Sage Weikel for their assistance in administering the survey and collecting the data.

Notes on Contributors

Nicholas Clark is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Susquehanna University. His research focuses on public opinion, political representation, and electoral behavior within the European Union, seeking to empirically assess theoretical claims about the quality of democratic citizenship and governance in multilevel political systems such as the European Union. His research has appeared in such publications as European Union Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of European Integration, European Politics, and Society and Political Studies.

Gretchen Van Dyke is an Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Scranton, where she has taught International Relations and American Government since 1994. Following her undergraduate degree in Political Science at Trinity College, Washington, DC, and three years working in the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, Dr. Van Dyke completed both an MA and a PhD in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia (UVA). At UVA, she focused on the development of national security policy during the Kennedy Administration, within the broader context of broad theoretical questions about the national interest, presidential leadership, and foreign policy decision making. Dr. Van Dyke teaches an array of electives in the subfields of International Relations and American Government, including U.S. Foreign and National Security Policy, War and Peace, Genocide, International Humanitarianism, European Foreign Policy, the European Union, Women in the Global Community, and the American Presidency. Her publications and research interests have addressed national security decision making and policy implementation as well as the pedagogy of International Relations, specifically the value of active and experiential learning as it relates to civic education, engagement, and citizenship. She and her students have participated in the Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation program since 1996.

Peter Loedel is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Programs at West Chester University. His mission is to develop international partnerships, to promote education abroad opportunities, to recruit international students, and to generally support comprehensive internationalization at West Chester University. Previously, he served for 13 years as the Chair of the Department of Political Science. Dr. Loedel received his BA in International Relations and a BA in Germanic Languages and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He also completed his MA and PhD in Political Science in 1994 from UCSB. He has published three books: The Promise and Reality of European Security Cooperation, coedited with Mary McKenzie (1998, Praeger Publishers); Deutsche Mark Politics: Germany in the European Monetary System (1999, Lynne Rienner Publishers); and The European Central Bank: The New European Leviathan?, 2nd edition, coauthored with David Howarth (2005, Palgrave). Dr. Loedel has also published articles in leading journals and book chapters on the subject of European monetary politics as well as teaching/pedagogy in the field of international relations and the European Union. His teaching interests include international political economy, the European Union/Politics, and African Politics.

John Scherpereel is Professor of Political Science at James Madison University and Director of JMU’s MA Program in Political Science with a concentration in European Union Policy Studies. His research, which focuses on the relationship between politics and administration, the dynamics of territorial governance, and the politics of representation, has appeared in such publications as European Politics and Society, Governance, the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Journal of European Integration, and West European Politics.

Andreas Sobisch a native of Hamburg, Germany, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at John Carroll University, in Cleveland, Ohio, where he has taught Comparative Politics since 1990. He received his MA and PhD degrees from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. His research has focused on European integration and political violence, and he is author, with Ian Davies, of Developing European Citizens (1997). From 2005–2015, he was director of the Center for Global Education, where he was responsible for developing and directing John Carroll’s international partnerships and education programs. He has been involved in the Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation program since 2000.

Notes

The participating institutions include Susquehanna University, The University of Scranton, James Madison University, Lebanon Valley College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, West Chester University, and John Carroll University.

The possibility exists for selection bias, meaning students enrolling in an EU course due to prior interest. However, we seek to account for prior interest in the multivariate models, which include controls for students who have visited Europe, who have taken other classes on Europe, and who report having discussed Europe outside of the course. Moreover, the pre/post comparisons account for prior interest by measuring if interest has increased, decreased or stayed the same for the same respondents at different points in time. We would also note that many of these courses take place at small, liberal arts colleges, which do not offer as large a variety of potential electives. Thus, many students enroll in the courses to fulfill general or major-specific requirements and not out of a prior compelling interest in the material.

The EES only included those four questions.

The correlation between taking an EU class and participating in the simulation is .4, suggesting that the two are relatively weakly correlated.