Building Knowledge? Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Global Problems Summit Simulation

This paper is an initial attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the Global Problems Summit, a simulation exercise developed for the international studies classroom over 10 years ago. We first situate the simulation exercise within the wider literature on active learning techniques and discuss how the Global Problems Summit can be used as a learning tool to introduce international relations students to issues and processes that underlie diplomacy and negotiations. The paper then assesses the pedagogical value of the simulation based on data from an experimental research design. We test whether students who participated in the summit demonstrated a statistically significant level of increased knowledge about these issues compared with control groups who learned the same material in a traditional classroom (lecture/discussion) format. The paper concludes that while both the Global Problems Summit and traditional lecture environments promote learning, they have a significantly different impact on the types of knowledge that students gain from the experience