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Abstract
What is the role of Model United Nations (MUN) in facilitating deep learning and professional skills attainment in the classroom? Using a 15-week MUN course, I gather data on student progress in four levels of knowledge: factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive. I use pre- and post-activity surveys as well as the instructor’s own assessments designed to capture respondents’ initial knowledge/skill levels and measure the improvement they achieve throughout the semester. Additionally, I conduct debriefing sessions with each respondent to gather additional data on their progress. The findings suggest that the in-class MUN experience as a whole has a substantial positive impact on students' factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge as well as their self-perceived skills of negotiation, decision-making, public speaking, research, and teamwork. A comparison of respondents’ self-evaluations and the instructor’s assessment of student progress offers additional interesting findings: Despite the holistic nature of MUN as an experiential learning activity, course design is still key in targeting the skills to be improved. The course assessed here has strengthened negotiation and public speaking skills most substantially. The analyses also reveal that findings based exclusively on self-assessments must be approached with caution because they significantly overestimate students’ initial knowledge and skill levels.
Acknowledgements
This paper is based on a project initiated by the Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars (WTFS) Program supported by the University of Wisconsin (UW) System's Office of Professional and Instructional Development (OPID) and the Provost’s Office at the UW-Stevens Point. The author would like to thank WTFS Co-Directors, Alison Staudinger & David Voelker, OPID Director, Fay Akindes, for their guidance in earlier steps. Previous versions of the study were presented at the OPID 2019 Spring Conference on Teaching & Learning, the 2019Teaching and Learning Conference at APSA, and the 2019International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference.
Notes
1 Deep learning can be defined as students’ ability to self-direct their own education, to adopt what is learned to a new situation, and to be lifelong learners (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001).
2 This project was determined to be exempt from IRB review under category 2/3 by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; protocol #17-18.033.
3 For more information, see https://outreach.un.org/mun.
4 For a recent review, see Meibauer and Aagaard Nøhr (Citation2018).
5 Such course design allows for measuring the impact of the entire course (not just the 4-week simulation) on student learning.
6 Such diversity suggests that the findings of this paper might also be applicable to other academic disciplines.
7 See Zainuddin and Halili (Citation2016) for a systematic discussion of the pros and cons of the FC approach.
8 While it would be possible (and logistically easier) to have one student per country (i.e., a total of 35 countries), assigning more than one student to a country allows for assigning group projects designed to improve students’ teamwork skills.
9 The survey is available as a supplementary online file.
10 The assumption here is that each participant has a certain amount of growth from pre- to post-semester, and my analysis, therefore, provides a measure for my students’ average growth over time.
11 The key question administered at these debriefing sessions is as follows: “The in-class survey you filled out twice during this semester (in January and in May) had 10 “On a scale of 0–10” questions (all on the third page of the survey). Please look at your responses from January and May, and explain in some detail why you think your response for EACH one of these 10 questions has (or has not) changed since the beginning of the semester.
12 While a larger sample size would help increase the reliability of my findings, 35 observations allow for meaningful statistical analyses as discussed below. Broadly speaking, a sample size of 30 is considered to be sufficient to safely assume normal distribution and representativeness of the larger population (Ott and Longnecker Citation2010). Also, see Jesuit and Endless (2018) for a similar argument.
13 The Wilcoxon signed-ranks sum test is a paired-difference test. The main reason for choosing it over a dependent t-test (a.k.a. paired t-test) is that the medians in my dataset are a more robust indicator of central tendency (and less sensitive to extreme scores). Still, there was no significant change in my results when a paired t-test was employed as an alternative.
14 The survey includes questions like “On a scale of 0–10, how informed do you think you currently are about global politics?” “How informed do you think you currently are about the UN?”
15 For example, respondents are asked whether North Korea is currently a member of the UN, whether The United States is the top contributor to UN peacekeeping in terms of troops, or whether the presidency of the UN General Assembly (GA) is held by each of the members in turn for 1 month.
16 This subgroup had been in college for an average of 2.5 years.
17 Similarly, 26% of this group reported that their initial self-assessment of how much they know about the UN had been overestimated.
18 For example, respondents are asked whether using the type/amount of foreign aid a country receives to explain how they cast their vote at the UNSC is a constructivist approach or whether the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” is a neo-realist concept.
19 The survey includes questions like “On a scale of 0-10, how would you rate your current ‘negotiation’ skills in a diplomatic environment?”
20 For example, respondents are asked whether “adoption by acclamation” refers to a special form of roll-call voting or whether a delegate responding "present and voting" during roll-call may abstain from voting on substantive matters.
21 The professional skills analyzed in the next section consist of negotiation, decision-making, public speaking, research, and teamwork, all of which could be considered valuable proxies for students’ level of procedural knowledge. For example, knowing how to negotiate with others in a MUN setting, how to use rules of procedure probably to make decisions on draft resolutions, when and how to give a formal policy speech, etc. all require a substantial level of procedural knowledge. Therefore, the findings in the next section also offer valuable insight regarding students’ procedural knowledge.
22 Due to time constraints, I was not able to conduct any assessments of the respondents’ initial decision-making, research, and teamwork skills. Hence, the findings on these skills are based on the respondents’ self-assessments only.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Mert Kartal
Mert Kartal is an Assistant Professor of Government at St. Lawrence University where he teaches in the areas of international relations, international organizations, and good governance. He earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and a guest researcher at the University of Gothenburg’s Quality of Government Institute. His primary research focuses on international organizations, conditionality, good governance, corruption control, and the European Union. His work has appeared in Comparative European Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy, and the Journal of European Integration.