Judithanne Scourfield McLauchlan, Karla Morris, and Steph A. F. James
May 4, 2020
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Educators have long praised the value of
simulations and role-playing exercises and the impact of those experiential
activities on student learning. As Bjorn Billhardt (2005) explains,
“Simulations offer huge advantages over lectures, handbooks, or on-site
trainers. They engage students while helping them retain and apply what they
have learned.”
For more than two decades, one of us (Judithanne
McLauchlan) included the use of role-playing simulations in her face-to-face
American government course as a way to let students use in practice what they
were learning in the lectures, helping them to think critically about the
issues covered in the respective units. When redesigning this course to
transition from face-to-face to fully online delivery, she wanted to retain a
synchronous simulation, where students could see and hear and interact with
each other “live.”
She found that moving the simulation from
face-to-face to online actually improved the instructor and student experience
and that the online format extended student engagement with the course material
beyond what the face-to-face delivery achieved.
The simulation: freedom for the thought we
hate
This simulation is designed to give students
the opportunity to deepen their appreciation of the cases and issues that are
covered during the civil liberties unit in an American government course. The
role-playing during the simulation also gives students a better appreciation of
the difficulties that confront elected officials when the topic moves from
theoretical support for free speech to an actual controversy involving First
Amendment issues.
The simulation is based loosely on the events
that took place in Skokie, Illinois, in the 1970s. A Chicago suburb, Skokie had
a high concentration of Jewish residents, including some survivors and relatives
of survivors of the Holocaust. A splinter group of the American Nazi Party
applied for a parade permit in Skokie to march through Jewish neighborhoods
with Holocaust survivors.
For the simulation, a fictional version of the
Skokie city council has to decide whether to grant a permit to Nazis who want
to organize a torchlit, nighttime march through a neighborhood of Holocaust
survivors. Students are assigned roles such as mayor, city council members,
Socialist Party members, Nazi Party members, unaffiliated white supremacists,
ACLU attorneys, religious leaders, and neighborhood residents.
Students are expected to participate in the
live simulation and then write a response as a discussion board post in our LMS
(Canvas). Students who cannot participate in the live session can watch the
recorded version (posted on the LMS), write a short (one-page) reflection paper,
and then also post in the discussion board.
Prior to participating in the simulation,
students are expected to complete all assignments related to civil liberties
unit (i.e., complete the readings, watch the video lecture, take the quiz) as
well as prepare for their respective roles. For example, students who will be
on the city council are expected to draft questions they would like to ask the
presenters, and if they are to be presenters before the council, then they
should prepare opening statements. A handout with the basics of parliamentary
procedure is also posted for the students to review prior to participation in
the simulation.
We used Blackboard Collaborate Ultra (BBCU),
which facilitates synchronous virtual meetings for up to several hundred
participants, to run the simulation. Participants
can interact with one another through voice, video, and text chat. BBCU also
allows for recording, so students who are unable to attend the synchronous
session can watch the recording. Of course, any comparable tool, such as Google
Hangouts or Zoom, will also work.
The primary features we used were voice and
text chat. Students assumed their roles in the simulation and contributed to
the post-simulation discussion orally, using their microphones. Occasionally,
the professor provided input via voice or chat to help the simulation progress.
Additionally, the tool allows for private chats, so the professor could
communicate individually with students while not disrupting the simulation
overall.
Figure 1. Our
students using the BBCU platform
The first semester that we introduced the
synchronous simulation, we offered it at two different times: over lunch (noon–1:00
p.m.) and in the early evening (6:00–7:00 p.m.), both on weekdays. Students could
indicate which session they preferred to join when they submitted their
simulation role preference. But since the simulation can be recorded easily (in
BBCU), in subsequent semesters we offered only one session (on a weekday during
the lunch hour), and the remaining students watched the recording and then
participated in the discussion board. The
“Freedom for the Thought We Hate” simulation is designed to have up to 75
participants, so one session is sufficient given the enrollment cap in this
course.
The simulation, in terms of format, was
implemented in the same manner and with similar instructions as in the
face-to-face classroom. The mayor calls the city council meeting to order, the city
councilors have the opportunity to ask the applicants questions about the
parade permit, there is an opportunity for public comment, and then the city council
discusses and votes on the permit request. The student who plays the mayor
essentially runs the simulation, and the instructor observes the simulation and
takes notes on the students’ participation for use in assessment.
After the simulation, there is a debriefing in
which the instructor asks questions regarding the city council’s decision-making
process as well as the results. Sample questions about the decision process
include, for the city council members, How important was the pressure from the
affected neighborhoods? the articulateness of the groups who spoke? For the
Nazis: How were you treated? Where did the burden of preventing violence seem
to lie? For city council members, questions about the results included, What
factors most influenced your vote? And, for all students, regardless of role: What
was the most important thing you learned from participating in this simulation?
After the synchronous simulation, students
participate in an online discussion board. Prompts include questions such as,
How did your participation in the simulation help you to better understand the
challenges that elected officials face in protecting the First Amendment free speech
rights for all their constituents? What did you learn about the value of free
expression in a democracy? What was the most important thing you learned from
the simulation?
Figure 2.
Coauthors running the simulation using BBCU
Results
Student response was overwhelmingly positive. Students
reported having a better understanding of the challenges that confront elected
officials and the values of free speech in a democracy in a way that would not
be possible by passively listening to a lecture.
Below are sample student comments
representative of the summer 2019 discussion board posts
My participation in the simulation has helped me better understand the challenges elected officials face in protecting the First Amendment free speech rights of all their constituents.
The simulation helped me get a better understanding of civil liberties and how difficult it is for elected officials to reach an impartial decision, since it will not always satisfy everyone.
Putting myself into a city council member’s shoes was pretty difficult with the choice we had to make.
We were surprised that even those students who
watched the recording of the simulation reported the same takeaways from the
experience, even though they were observing their classmates rather than
speaking during the simulation themselves. Below are representative comments
from the summer 2019 discussion board posts:
I learned a lot by watching it. Even though I wasn’t involved in it, I felt like I was there as I heard the back and forth arguments that each person used to defend their position.
What I observed during the recording of the simulation “Freedom for the Thought We Hate” was it much like a current city council meeting I recently attended.
In addition to the discussion board posts, an
anonymous student survey was administered online following the simulation. Student
feedback was again overwhelmingly positive, and students highly recommended
that the simulation be included in future semesters. Students also noted the
benefit of the lessons learned and that the skills developed during the
simulation would help them become career ready. For example, one student
responded,
I liked everyone’s ability to act in roles. I know some were more difficult because you had to act the opposite of your viewpoint to create that person. An experience that will assist me in the future as I complete my political science degree and possible job opportunities.
We have also discovered some advantages
to running the simulation online rather than face-to-face. First, the
instructor was able to communicate with students and to answer questions during
the simulation without interrupting or disrupting it. It is often the case that
participants have questions for the instructor or that the instructor would
like to intervene during a simulation. The videoconferencing software allowed
for questions to be asked and answered in the text box, without interfering
with the flow of the simulation. This led to significant improvement in the
simulation experience for both students and instructor.
Second, integrating the online discussion
board into the assignment requirements enabled more interaction and engagement
among students who participated in the synchronous simulation as well as with
those who observed the recorded simulation. When teaching face-to-face, McLauchlan
would conduct the debriefing after the simulation and then move on to the next
unit. This discussion board feature used in the online course extends student
engagement with the course content and the concepts that were related to the
simulation beyond that necessarily brief in-class debriefing session.
We would encourage instructors to
consider using simulations in their online courses.
Judithanne Scourfield McLauchlan, PhD, is an
associate professor of political science; Karla Morris, MEd, is an adjunct
instructor of education; and Steph A. F. James, MEd, is an instructional
designer at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.
