Editors’ Introduction to the Thematic Issue: Bringing Interactive Simulations into the Political Science Classroom

Over the last 20 years the nature of undergraduate education has changed dramatically, at least in part in response to shifting student demographics. At the same time, college and university professors are being held to tougher standards of accountability by students, administrators, accreditation agencies, and legislatures. Students are increasingly focused on acquiring marketable skills and are less interested in learning disciplinary content. Administrators and accreditation agencies require evidence that learning outcomes are being achieved and learning objectives are being met. Yet, curricula often still emphasize the delivery of an undergraduate education as an academic apprenticeship in which students develop the same scholarly abilities used by their instructors. In political science departments, undergraduate curricula are often designed primarily around faculty expertise and interest rather than around a critical evaluation of the knowledge and skills that are essential to the discipline and to the student. The ability to build skills and knowledge that can serve a wider population is one area where simulations can serve to help us teach more effectively, especially when students are bombarded by a variety of different concerns and exist in a world that has so many more opportunities to be distracted than even their older siblings faced when they were in college 5 years ago. Simulations were first employed in political science as a means of understanding complex social processes that did not lend themselves to experimental testing, and their use soon expanded in scope to include the teaching of political science itself. In contrast to traditional pedagogical approaches that many of us encountered in college or in graduate school, simulations rely upon