You Sunk My Constitution: Using a Popular Off-the-Shelf Board Game to Simulate Political Concepts

Abstract

Using an example, this article demonstrates how instructors can make use of popular off-the-shelf board games to model politics. I show how the rules of the popular board game Battleship can be manipulated to simulate centralization of power and, more specifically, the differences between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Off-the-shelf board games like Battleship provide a powerful—and virtually unrecognized—tool to help simulate complex institutions and concepts by modifying well-known rules to fit pedagogical needs. Board games therefore constitute an untapped resource waiting to be exploited by creative educators.

Keywords:

• active learning
• Battleship
• board game
• role-playing
• simulation

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Michael Baranowski, Rebecca Flavin, Kerstin Hamann, and Steven Lamy for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

*p < .10. ***p < .01.

Note: Percentages shown. Number of students in each category in parentheses; N = 89.

Some of the states (e.g., Rhode Island) were so suspicious of the new, more centralized system that they did not ratify the Constitution until years after it had gone into effect.

American Constitutional Development is a general education course required of every student at Baylor University.

I use Curry and Battistoni (2013).

The list contains roughly 30 terms. I tell students that the removed term will absolutely not appear on the exam. All students benefit, but the winners get to choose the removed terms.

As will be shown, there is evidence that students are more engaged because of the incentive to remove a term.

This is typically true of Introduction to American Government syllabi, too.

T tests showed that the 4.6 percentage point difference in essay scores were significant at p < .10. The 19.7 percentage point difference in test answers was significant at p < .01.

The only differences came in questions addressing the operation of the simulation. Freshmen were more likely to prefer the simulation to normal lecture (Question 6 in Table 3) and more likely to believe that eliminating an identification provided good incentive to win (Question 5). Political Science majors (n = 2) were also more likely to believe eliminating an identification provided good incentive to win (Question 5). There were no differences in any of the questions regarding the educational value or overall impression.