(Note: This blog entry is the second part of a six-part series. Read more on using games in the classroom in parts one, three, four, five, and six.)

The first part in this series considered resources for finding simulation games. Once a potentially suitable sim has been found, however, it still needs to be tested and evaluated for classroom use. In other words, the teacher needs to play-test it. While teachers do not have to be experts in playing games they assign in class, they must be familiar with how those games play and how they represent reality. With this in mind, this segment addresses the most important considerations when evaluating a game for classroom use.

There are educationally useful computer games that are not simulation games because the games do not to any significant degree represent real-world systems and situations. In general such games tend to focus on teaching factual content. Simulation games, however, offer models of real-world systems, relationships, and scenarios. Their ability to immerse players in dynamic interpretations of the past is their primary strength. Therefore, the most critical question for a teacher evaluating a simulation is: How reasonably does the game simulate the aspects of the real world that will be studied?

Tip One: Do Accuracies Outweigh Inaccuracies?
This is not an all-or-nothing proposition for any simulation. There is no such thing as a completely accurate interpretation of the world, regardless of whether that interpretation is encapsulated in a simulation or some other form of media.

The real issue for a teacher is whether the core gameplay defensibly models the real world in ways that address the curricular goals of the class. Mission US: For Crown or Colony, for example, could be cited for any number of inaccuracies, particularly issues of oversimplification. The views presented by the characters are not particularly sophisticated; the player tends to encounter exceptional figures rather than average ones (Phillis Wheatley, for example); in these ways the game could be said to mislead.

Ultimately, though, the core gameplay suggests that there were conflicting opinions on British policies in colonial Boston that could be grouped into broad categories and that tensions developed over how to deal with these policies. This core of the game is defensible; it is a point of view that can be supported with weighty evidence. By this standard, For Crown or Colony is a valid classroom simulation game. Equally as important is that even the flaws themselves in a game’s interpretation serve a useful purpose, providing valuable opportunities for students to engage in criticism. Ideally, historical criticism involves both supporting the reasonable elements of an interpretation and challenging the unreasonable. In practice it is very hard to get students to challenge the interpretations of texts and teachers. It is far less intimidating for students, however, to challenge the flaws in a game.

Even with this criterion a teacher has considerable leeway when determining if a game’s version of the past is reasonable enough. Each teacher will ultimately have to decide whether the combination of accuracies and inaccuracies in a game is appropriate for their class. Still, a helpful general guideline when evaluating a simulation is to consider the worst-case scenario: if the student played the game uncritically and came away accepting its main historical points, would those be reasonable? If so, then the game is a contender for classroom use and lessons can be planned to refine students’ views of the game. If not, it may be better to find a different game.

Tip Two: Can Students Easily Grasp Major Concepts?
For example, if someone played Sid Meier’s Railroads uncritically, they might walk away with the sense that the 19th-century development of the railroad was driven by powerful companies competing with one another to connect various resources and markets by rails in order to maximize profits. Flaws aside, that’s a reasonable impression. A real-time strategy game like Age of Empires, on the other hand, suggests that all civilizations are engaged in a mad dash to exhaust the world of resources and crush their enemies with overwhelming numbers and technology. On a dark day some may suspect this to be the case, but it is a very problematic generalization and thus, Age of Empires is a more problematic game to use for a history class.

This general guideline is not meant to suggest, however, that students should ever be left in a position to receive the messages of a game uncritically. Accordingly, even when a game’s interpretation of the past passes a teacher’s standards of “reasonable enough,” it is important to be aware—and as part of the process of encouraging critical thinking, make students aware—that simulation games are constrained by their very medium to provide certain interpretations of the past.

Tip Three: Remember, Simulation Games are Simulations
First, simulation games, because they are games, often tend to deal with clear-cut goals: build this city, raise this amount of wealth, win this battle, manage this conflict. While historical actors certainly could have such clarity of purpose, games tend to present historical roles, goals, and methods for achieving goals with an idealized precision and accuracy. This is, in fact, one of the great strengths of simulation games as a representational medium, but teachers and students should still consider and analyze potential differences between the game and reality in this respect.

Second, simulation games generally focus on making trade-offs between quantifiable resources—they are computer models, after all, and computers are nothing more than billions of binary switches combined to magnificent effect. This can lead to all manner of terrific insights about humans and systems, but often at the expense of the historical narrative of what actually did happen. This is not a weakness, per se. Indeed, understanding that the past was not pre-determined and humans had a variety of options, albeit within a set of constraints, is a strength of simulation games. Nevertheless, it is important that teachers and students consider the difference between historically valid narrative, which attempts to reproduce what did happen and why, and a historically valid simulation, which attempts to model the variety of things that could have happened and why.

Finally, it’s important to remember that simulation games are one powerful tool for studying the past. They are not the only powerful tool and any rich environment for studying history should include a balanced variety of resources including primary sources, quantitative data, historical narratives, images, and/or film, among others. Certainly, it should be at the heart of 21st-century history for students to reconstruct the past critically through a wide variety of media.

Given the constraints of the classroom, the time required to learn and play the game meaningfully is perhaps as important as the reasonableness of the game’s interpretations. There are no hard and fast rules for determining the difficulty of a game. While some students may find a game easier to play than the teacher, it is simply not the case that adolescents are categorically skilled at playing computer games. The teacher must consider how long it will take to learn to play a given game and make preparations to instruct students who have difficulty. Likewise, there is no simple formula for assessing how long it will take to play a game sufficiently to understand and analyze its models. The minimum amount of time required to play a game is not the same as the amount of time needed to appreciate a game in-depth.

As an effort to bring some order to this uncertainty, this segment concludes with a rough categorization of games (with examples from U.S. history) according to the amount of time needed to learn and play them. Three caveats are in order. First, these are estimates based on my own classroom experiences; others’ experiences will vary. Second, if the resources of a school allow it, the time required to play a game does not all need to be class time: students can also play on their own in labs and for homework (again, if resources allow). Third, these time estimates assume each student learns and plays the game. As we will see in future installments, effective simulation lessons can be taught in which the teacher runs the game and the whole class participates in making decisions. These sessions will take less time to execute.

These games are relatively simple to learn and play.

• Jamestown Online Adventure
• One episode of For Crown or Colony
• Chevron’s Energyville
• Most ICivics Games

These games require a bit more time to learn and/or play and consist of lengthier browser-based games and less complicated commercial desktop games.

• The Political Machine (commercial)
• All of For Crown or Colony
• USC’s The Redistricting Game
• Sid Meier’s Pirates (commercial)

Full commercial games that require time to learn to play and additional time to actually experience gameplay in detail.

• Empire: Total War (commercial)
• Democracy 2 (commercial)
• President Forever and Congress Forever (commercial)

The most detailed and sophisticated of the simulation games. Generally speaking, teachers new to using simulations in the classroom should postpone games in this category until they are comfortable using simulation games in the classroom

• Making History: The Calm and the Storm (commercial)
• Hearts of Iron II and Hearts of Iron III (commercial)
• Birth of America I and Birth of America II (commercial)
• American Civil War—The Blue and the Grey (commercial)

The third part of this series will survey instructional strategies for teaching students to play simulation games.

(Note: This blog entry is the third part of a six-part series. Read more on using games in the classroom in parts one, two, four, five, and six.)

At the heart of any lesson or unit involving a simulation game is a three-step structure. First, students must learn to play the game; once they have learned to play they should observe and analyze the game; finally they must discuss and evaluate the game. Throughout these steps, the teacher serves as the critical learning expert and facilitator. This installment in my series of blog entries on games (see Part One and Part Two) explores the first two steps in detail, leaving issues of discussion, evaluation, and assessment for the next entry in the series. Before beginning, however, it is important to note these steps assume students will play the game individually or in small groups on a set of computers. This is not the only way to use simulations effectively in the classroom, however, and other configurations will be discussed in the next installment.

The misconception persists that those born in the past 20 years are naturally gifted with the ability to play all video games. The reality is far more complicated. While it is probably the case that most students are more familiar with computers than prior generations, that level of familiarity is uneven and often of little help when playing computer strategy games. Texting on a smartphone, navigating a webpage, and connecting through Facebook are not the same as playing a historical strategy game. To press the point a bit further, students who do identify themselves as skilled gamers are often skilled at console games like Halo that emphasize hand-eye coordination and swift tactical executions rather than the slower, often more complicated strategic planning and analysis required by historical simulation games. In short, while some students take to simulation games swiftly, many more do not.

Accordingly, teachers must apply their pedagogical skills to teaching students how to play the games they will use in class. The amount of formal instruction required to learn a game will vary: short browser-based games take the least amount of time to learn (+/- 10 to 20 minutes) and complicated desktop games take the most (20 minutes to two hours). The basic steps for teaching students to play remain the same:

1. Introduce the game: Explain to students what the game simulates and why they are playing the game. This is a good time to talk about the advantages of simulations and the idea that they are interpretations of the past, not absolute truths.
2. Provide direct instruction on gameplay: Though it may seem counterintiuitive to lecture about a game, providing an overview of gameplay is an important first step in training students to play. Ideally, the instructor can project the game for the class to see and show students how to begin the game, execute basic decisions, and achieve goals. The teacher can provide this instruction or ask a qualified student—i.e. one who knows how to play—to do so. During this instruction students should be encouraged to take notes and ask questions.
3. Practice: Once students have received an overview of gameplay they should shift to learning by playing the game directly. It is very important at this point not to rush students to form conclusions about the game’s representations of the past. Students can get lost and demoralized when asked to comment on the game before they have truly learned the basics. Again, the amount of time needed will vary greatly with the difficulty of the game. Whatever the amount, however, save the important analysis and evaluation questions for later. Failing to do so is an easy mistake for a teacher to make, and can undermine the entire exercise.
4. Provide introductory gameplay goals that promote comprehension: This is most relevant for sophisticated games like Civilization that take time to play and comprehend. Rather than focus on the big picture of the game, provide students with some simple goals in-game that they cannot achieve without learning the basics of gameplay: playing to a certain year, building a specific number of things, making a certain amount of money, etc. The point is to provide students with a smaller, more manageable goal than that provided by the actual victory conditions of the game.

After an initial period of learning, students should shift to observing and analyzing the workings of the simulation purposefully as they play. Since the whole point of working with simulations is to learn, not be entertained, this shift is critical. Some students can manage taking notes as they play. Many will find themselves too engrossed to do so, however, and it is a good idea to pause play for the class every 20 or 30 minutes and instruct students to spend five minutes making notes.

Providing guidelines helps foster the most effective observations. For example, students can be asked to note:

• The role of the player in the game world and the challenges the game world presents;
• The actions the player takes to overcome the challenges;
• The decisions players must make between competing choices and the ways that finite resources limit the number and kinds of actions they can take in the game;
• The strategies and actions that lead to success or failure and the measurement of success and failure in the game.

The more sophisticated the game, the more a general set of guidelines for observations will help. Many short web-based games, however, are simple enough that players can record every major choice they make, their reasons for doing so, and the impact of those choices on the game. Either way the goal of note-taking is not only to accustom students to the practice of observation and recording so critical for gathering evidence, but to encourage them to become familiar with the workings of the game—the better to reflect upon it, engage with it, and learn from the experience.

In addition to note-taking, providing students with comprehension and analysis questions helps students explore the details of the game. These are questions about basic gameplay that require an understanding of gameplay fundamentals. Screenshots from the game are helpful illustrations for these sorts of questions. So, for example, given the following screenshot from Energyville, students can identify and explain the functions of the:

• White buttons listed at the bottom
• The exclamation points over buildings
• The graph in the upper right column
• The meter in the lower right column
• The information provided for the petroleum option selected

These kinds of comprehension questions serve multiple purposes. First, a student must understand the basics of gameplay to answer these questions, so they reinforce what has been learned and point out what still needs to be learned. Second, they help illuminate specific components of the game—the supporting details for its interpretation of the world. The answers to these questions provide observational evidence that students can use to unearth and critique the interpretations offered by the game.

If it is not yet apparent, the teacher is the critical conductor of this whole process. Simulation games cannot replace expert history teachers. Indeed, no resource can, for the teacher provides the critical expertise in historical thinking, as well as learning strategies to guide students in their analysis of the game. Effective teachers in classes playing simulation games are constantly on the move. Here they see students struggling with the game and offer suggestions and guidance; there they overhear a historical question raised by the game and have a mini-discussion with those students. They warn of the dangers of passively accepting a computer game, raise provocative questions about the nature of the past and the games, and serve as the leader when it comes to phrasing questions, researching, evaluating evidence, and forming reasonable conclusions. True, teachers are not the dispensers of all worth knowing in this model, but they are the essential experts, the project managers without which these exercises become unreflective gameplay or passive acceptance of an entertainment company’s presentation of the past.

(Note: This blog entry is the fourth part of a six-part series. Read more on using games in the classroom in parts one, two, three, five, and six.)

The goal of lessons involving simulation games is twofold: to explore systems in the past by making choices and experiencing the resulting consequences and to critique simulation games as interpretations of the past in order to develop historical criticism skills and appreciate the role of modern media in shaping our views of the past. Accordingly, after students have had sufficient time to play and observe a game, they should be provided with learning activities and assessments that facilitate these two goals.

Activities and assessments can be divided into two types. The first consists of those that focus on analyzing, understanding, and extrapolating on the models posed by a simulation game. It concerns the content of the game, the questions raised by the game about how and why people in the past acted as they did. The second type of activity focuses on evaluating and critiquing the models in a game, determining the validity of the game as an interpretation. This blog entry will deal with the former.

Before beginning it is worth remembering that recent position statements from the National Council for the Social Studies and National Council of Teachers of English emphasize training students to interpret, critique, and create new media. Though not all of the activities and assessments that follow meet this goal, many do by design.

Gaining familiarity with how a game functions and models the past depends upon regular opportunities for play and reflection. Keeping a regular journal of gameplay is an excellent way to give students writing exercises and encourage them to consider and engage with the models involved in gameplay. As an added benefit, teachers can use the information in these journals to monitor students’ progress and understanding, and adapt lessons accordingly.

The game journal can be used to take observation notes along the lines of those explored in the previous segment. Providing opportunities for reflective writing is also a good idea. Consider variations on prompts that ask students how the game presents the past as a way to introduce them to critiquing the game. For example:

• What does Mission US suggest the key divisions in colonial Boston were?
• How important is money in winning a presidential election, according to Political Machine?
• Does Energyville suggest it is possible for U.S. cities to shift to renewable fuels in the near future?

Reflections like this should be accompanied with observations from the game that support the students' conclusions.

Where the resources are available, students can also log their ideas and observations in the 21st-century analog of the journal, the blog. There are many sites dedicated to providing free blogging capabilities to individuals and groups, most notably Wordpress and Blogger.

An excellent quick assignment that allows students to consider how a game functions is an annotated screenshot. Capturing a screenshot from a browser-based game is a straightforward affair. Both Windows and Mac OS machines have a printscreen function that will capture a picture of the browser window. The picture can subsequently be inserted into a program like Word. Students can print the image out and make annotations on the paper, or make annotations in Word or a graphics program. A general prompt for a screen annotation exercise is to explain the different features on the screen. This is a good way to develop and demonstrate an understanding of core gameplay. Another effective prompt is to take a screenshot and explain the current situation of the player.

Students can develop their skills of critical observation, analysis, and writing by studying a game just as they can a film, text, image, or other representation. The key to such essays is to teach and require students to provide detailed specific observations from the game to support their interpretation of it. Strictly speaking, essays on games can be divided into two types: those that focus on analyzing how the game represents the past, and those that evaluate the validity of those representations. Both are useful learning exercises. My next blog entry will consider how to locate and draw upon historical sources of evidence in order to craft an essay evaluating a game. Before engaging in a full-scale evaluation, however, it is necessary to understand what exactly the game is suggesting, hence the usefulness of analytical essays on core game models. The prompts for such essays generally use phrasing like: “What does [name of game] suggest about [historical topic]?” and the evidence comes from detailed observations about gameplay and feedback.

The following are just a few examples of written and illustrated work that can be based off of a game’s presentation of the past:

• A historical narrative of events in the game from the perspective of a character within the game.
• A speech for an in-game character justifying some action, drawing on historical sources.
• A letter or diary entry from characters who are underrepresented or missing from the game.

(Note: This blog entry is the fifth part of a six-part series. Read more on using games in the classroom in parts one, two, three, four, and six.)

Part Four dealt with activities and assessments focused on analyzing and understanding the models presented by a simulation game. Now it is time to consider exercises evaluating and critiquing the models in a game, determining the overall validity of the game as an interpretation. After a sample of activities we will consider the core principles that should guide all efforts to evaluate historical simulations as interpretations of the past.

Annotated screenshot assignments provide an excellent opportunity for students to demonstrate their understanding of game mechanics. The same is true of screenshots annotated with an eye to evaluating the game. The distinction in this case is that notes made on the screenshots should address the strengths and weaknesses of the game's historical interpretation.

For a quick research and evaluation exercise, students can find (or be provided with) a valid source that deals with an element of the game. In some cases an accessible primary source can be used. The students read the source and use it to corroborate or challenge the game. This can be done in a brief oral presentation, an annotated screenshot, a reflective write-up, or a more formal essay.

Examples:

• Read a primary source written by a Boston Loyalist and compare it to the    Loyalist reasoning expressed in Mission US: For Crown or Colony.
• Study a map of major army placements in the U.S. at any point in the    American Civil War and compare it to the setup for that same year in a    Civil War simulation.

These smaller-scale evaluations can pave the way for an excellent full-class discussion where each student presents his or her findings. As a summative exercise after all the presentations, each student can write a reflection or formal paper on the overall accuracy of the game.

A formal researched essay on the ways a game does and does not reasonably present the past is an excellent high-level summative assignment. It requires a real familiarity with the game and its models, knowledge of a set of historical evidence, and an ability to compare the two and consider what can and cannot be said about the past from the evidence available. The core prompt for such essays is straightforward: In what ways does the game effectively represent the past? In what ways does the game misrepresent the past? Any formal essays on these questions must be grounded in valid historical evidence and detailed descriptions of gameplay.

Formal discussions, where students are assessed on discussing and debating the merits of a historical simulation directly with their peers, is a fantastic form of authentic assessment. When students are placed into small groups—say three to five students—and the teacher is removed from a discussion, students must engage each other in true dialogue, not just search for the magic words they think the teacher wants to hear. Such formal discussions can result in spectacular displays of engagement, curiosity, and intellectual achievement on students’ parts.

Some time prior to the discussion, students should be given a set of one to four provocative questions about how the game presents the past and the accuracy of that presentation. They develop responses to the questions based on gameplay and study of relevant evidence discussed in class and assigned as homework. During the actual discussion they may bring notes and sources with them and they must work effectively as a group to explore the questions.

Though the exact specifications for research and evaluation assignments can vary widely there are several guidelines that should inform all serious efforts to critique simulation games.

1. Whenever it is feasible, students should craft their own research    questions. Doing so leverages the ability of simulations to inspire    questioning and provides students a far greater sense of investment in the    discussions they pursue. Even when the task is to argue the main    strengths and weaknesses of a game's historical interpretation, let    students decide what they think those main strengths and weaknesses are.
2. Criticisms must be based on valid evidence. Refer to valid historical    sources and, ideally, both primary and secondary sources. Reference to    primary sources and high-quality secondary sources, especially historians'    works, is the critical foundation of any exercise in historical criticism.
3. Criticism should focus on the core aspects of gameplay. One could spend    an eternity listing the details that a game represents well or misrepresents    —articles of clothing, names, types of weapons, exact figures. Such an    exercise misses the whole for its parts. The real questions should be about    the core gameplay, the strongest statements a game makes about the past.
4. Students should consider historical elements the game represents well    in addition to those it does not. Indeed when teaching students how to    handle historical interpretations it is a very good idea to reinforce for    them that, generally speaking, no historical interpretation is completely    valid or invalid. Accordingly, students should not fall into complacent    patterns of entirely accepting or rejecting a game. Instead they should    push themselves to support and critique. In doing so they can develop    their ability to see more than one viewpoint.
5. Remember that a simulation game is a human creation. Consider and    discuss why the designers made the game the way they did.    Understanding how this form of media portrays the past demands    considering the goals and constraints of game designers. It is vitally    important to be clear that, in many if not most cases, designers intend    their games to be entertaining and commercially viable. The goal then    should not be to criticize designers for failing to achieve some objective    standard of historical accuracy. Rather the goal is simply to understand    what shaped their particular game, their particular representation of the    past.

Years of working with simulation games have prompted me to re-examine and re-evaluate the content, methods, and skills of studying the past. Since last May, I have been slowly developing a new framework for using simulations games and simulation game thinking in the study of the past that I’d like to share in this last installment. This is still very much in the initial conceptual stages, but already proving successful in my own classes.

Spending time with simulation games suggests that countless human situations past and present can be studied as problem spaces. In this context, the term “problem space” borrows elements from the field of problem solving and game theory. A problem space in the historical or current political, economic, social, etc. sense can be likened to a simulation game. There are players with roles, though we would more likely term these players agents or actors. These players have motives and goals, though they may not always seek them or know them—the goals may not be rational or achievable. Player/agents have choices and strategies, though not all choices or strategies are always readily perceived, and those that observers outside the space identify may not have been choices at all at the time. Finally, the environment itself—the physical space, objects, and resources—offers affordances (aids to carrying out decisions and strategies) and constraints (limits to carrying out decisions and strategies). Additional affordances and constraints are posed by psychological and cultural factors.

That simulation games represent the world in these terms is self-evident, but it never hurts to have some specific examples:

Energyville
Player/Agent & Roles:

• A conflation of city manager, city planner, city council with (unrealistically) extensive power to make choices about fuel sources

Goals and Motives:

• To power the city for the future
• To minimize and balance the security, environmental, and economic impact of fuel sources (insofar as this earns higher scores in the game)

Choices and Strategies:

• Types of fuels to employ
• Balance of fuel types to employ

Affordances:

• Variety of fuel types available
• Complete authority over the fuel types to use
• Information on the impact of each fuel type

Constraints:

• Petroleum is required in some amount for vehicles
• Unpredictable future events can make certain fuel choice liabilities
• More advanced fuel possibilities cannot be used immediately

This only scratches the surface of ways one could fill in a chart like this. The point is that simulation games, as an interactive, goal-oriented, problem-solving medium, lend themselves to this type of structure.

Why use this problem space as a means for analyzing simulation games and historical settings? Beyond the value any effective strategy provides by presenting cognitive hooks to which students can attach new learning, problem space offers several particular advantages. First, this concept aids in moving beyond identification in history education to comprehension and analysis because it requires students to move beyond terms and information to look at the relationships between agents and their goals, choices, and environment. It also provides a flexible yet clearly applicable guideline for the usefulness of historical evidence and information. If an item helps fill out the elements of the problem space it is useful; otherwise, less so. When one cannot teach, learn, or study everything, and meaning has to be made, criteria for the most useful information can benefit students.

There is also the potential for greater engagement. The study of the past becomes more a matter of problem-solving rather than simply learning information. Addressing the perennial student question of “what's the point?” a problem space analysis sets up a world with independent actors with problems that must be solved. Emphasis shifts to choices and outcomes, actual and potential. Engagement is also generated by the potential to game with the content more—in other words, to think more about the agents and their choices, including why they decided against or never considered alternative choices.

Finally, I suggest that exploring the past as so many problem spaces fosters the kind of intellectual flexibility and creativity that 21st-century history education should promote. The ability to view the world in terms of the physical and intellectual interactions of agents with their own goals and choices carried out within affordances and constraints can only help students become the problem solvers of tomorrow.

How can this conceptual framework be put into practice? History educators can use simulation games to lead the way.

Play simulation games and analyze their problem spaces: Studying problem spaces in simulation games helps students gain familiarity with the concept and more readily apply it to situations beyond those in the game. Discussion of games becomes a discussion of choices, affordances, and constraints. To this end, teachers discussing simulation games should focus on the choices the players have and the obstacles and resources.

Assess the problem spaces in games in light of historical evidence: In critique, focus on how the game represents a historical problem space. When all is said and done, how reasonably, in the light of historical evidence, does the simulation game cast the player’s role and the choices available?

Start to analyze historical scenarios in terms of problem spaces: This is where simulation games, beyond being important tools for studying the past in their own right, can start to shape the way history is taught. In between readings, discussions, and lectures, have students diagram problem spaces. There are many ways one might do so. Click here to see a diagram representing one possibility. Players and roles are listed at the top, then goals, followed by choices. At the bottom left are affordances and motivations and at the bottom right are constraints and prohibitions.

Once students have sifted through the evidence and plotted out the problem space, they should be presented with some historical or hypothetical scenarios and consider how they think historical players could have and did respond given their situations. Here, the lessons of simulation gaming about the importance of choice and systems-thinking come full circle and students begin to game the past in another meaningful way.