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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
The popular undergraduate political science course on “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” at the University of Michigan has had as its focus since 1975 an enormously successful large-scale simulation game, or simprovisation in Frederick Goodman’s phrase. While the four-credit upper division level course of some 100 students is of the quite standard lecture-discussion section format, the simulation game has been closely integrated into it. The game is the goal towards which the students move and is the educational structure around which the course has been organized.
The concept of simulation gaming was introduced almost as an aside when Clement Henry and I were designing the course, to be taught by Professor Henry, in 1974. The games organized that year were small, short and disjointed, but they were sufficient to demonstrate the educational utility of the idea, if nothing else. The following year, with the central collaboration of Leonard Suranski, the game was moved to the fore and from that point on it has been the focus of the course.
1 This course had been taught by others for a number of years prior to this.
2 Generally the course enrollment requires that two games be organized for from 50 to 60 players, which is the optimum size for a single game.
3 Clearly, Lebanon is a special case.
4 In one game half the participants were volunteers in both Control and country teams.