Using a “Gateway Game” to Stimulate Student Interest and Build Foundational Knowledge

Abstract

Active learning—and gaming, in particular—is now a well-established part of many political science courses. First, we discuss the design and implementation of a “Gateway Game”, a pedagogical tool with broad applicability and test its effectiveness in increasing student motivation, satisfaction, and learning. Crucially, we provide instructors with all the tools necessary to run the game in their classroom to experience this for themselves. Second, using surveys of classroom participants, we show that the game increases student satisfaction, motivation, and learning, suggesting that this game comprises an exciting entry point for learning in many environments. Third, we describe how this game can be integrated into a variety of courses and subfields.

Keywords:

• active learning
• games
• simulations
• student satisfaction
• student motivation
• social contract
• state of nature

Notes

1 This material has been made available by the gracious permission of Taylor & Francis and Routledge Press.

2 This research design is not a true experiment because we do not randomize who receives the treatment nor do we include a control group. Campbell and Stanley (1963) note that this research design potentially suffers from problems related to history (some variable other than the independent variable of interest actually causes the change) and maturation (subjects go through changes over time). For our purposes, it is possible that other events such as a really well-received lecture or other processes such as students getting excited about an upcoming break could account for the differences. To minimize this possibility, we gave the pretest in the class period immediately before the game was played and the post-test in the class period immediately after the game was played.

3 The survey was approved by the IRB. Students were aware that their participation in the survey would not affect their grade and their answers would remain completely anonymous.

4 We measure satisfaction with class by asking students if they enjoy attending class, recommend it to friends, or discuss it outside of class. There is no perfect metric for measuring satisfaction—indeed, the econometric literature on measuring student satisfaction is vast and makes use thousands of instruments. We selected these instruments because, at face value, they are indicative, at face value, of satisfaction. See, for example, Filak & Sheldon (2003).

5 We measure motivation to learn by asking if students find class exciting and whether they think about the class during their days. As other studies have shown, excitement is a particularly good proxy for motivation for learning (Costello and Lambert, 2019) and is intrinsically related to motivation, to the point that many scholars use the terms interchangeably (for an exhaustive review, see Ryan & Deci 2000a, 2000b)

6 We control only for whether students are political science majors or not. In addition to freshman, sophomore, juniors, and seniors, we have categories for post-baccalaureate and non-degree seeking high school students who were in the courses for college credit. Non-degree high school students are the omitted category.

7 Unfortunately, we do not have enough data to determine whether the game works better in different types of courses, for instance comparative politics vs. American politics. In addition to these kinds of differences, the fixed effects are capturing variation including instructor differences, time of day, and classroom culture. There is evidence that the game worked better in some classes than in others, but it is impossible to distinguish whether those differences are systematically related to important variables like class subject.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alex Cohen

Alex Cohen is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. His research interests include the effect of weather on political outcomes, institutional assessment, pedagogy, and zombies. His most recent book was entitled Living with Zombies.

John Alden

John Alden is a social studies teacher in the Williamsburg Community School District in Iowa. His classes cover government, US history, and global studies. He earned his master’s degree in social studies education from the University of Iowa.

Jonathan Ring

Jonathan Ring is the Director of Student Programs and Global Security Fellow in the Howard Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee.