Journal of Political Science Education, 2:171186, 2006 Copyright # 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1551-2169

DOI: 10.1080/15512160600669015

Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding: Applying Active Learning Principles to Research Projects
VICTORIA C. WILLIAMS
Alvernia College
This paper describes a pedagogical technique employed for an interdisciplinary course on Cold War America. Students had to become a fictional person and discuss how political and social changes during the Cold War era would have impacted that person. By doing a semester-long project that required primary source research, this quasi-experiential technique helped students gain a greater appreciation for Cold War culture and a more thorough understanding of the major political events of the era. Keywords active learning, Cold War, research projects, role play

What would it be like to be a 15-year-old black girl living in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1950? Or a hippie in California during the Vietnam war? What about a Republican staffer in the Nixon administration in the days following Watergate? When I wanted my students to learn about Cold War history and politics, I was concerned about more than just the major domestic and international events of the time. I wanted them to understand how the events of the Cold War helped shape American culture. Facing a number of pedagogical challenges, I designed a semester-long quasiexperiential learning project that required students to become fictional historical characters. During the course of the semester, students had to assume the identity of their character, researching how political and social changes would have impacted their character. They were required to turn in four projects that incorporated research from primary sources, principally magazines and newspapers. Through this task, students engaged American political and cultural history in a way that enhanced their understanding of the Cold War era. In this paper, I illustrate how this quasi-experiential technique can help achieve learning outcomes in political science courses. I teach at small private college with an undergraduate enrollment of about 1800 students. In the Spring of 2004 I taught an honors course on Cold War America, an interdisciplinary course that fulfilled elective credit in political science or history. I wanted to encourage class discussion, to force students to do research that required using primary source material, and to enable students to emerge with an in-depth
The author wishes to thank the participants in the Experiential Learning Track for their feedback and comments. I also wish to thank the JPSE editors and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Address correspondence to Victoria Williams, Alvernia College, 400 Saint Bernardine St., Reading, PA 19607. E-mail: victoria.williams@alvernia.edu

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appreciation of the subject. The course was offered at the 200-level and presumed only elementary background knowledge of Cold War history or politics. The goal of the course was to both investigate the structure and reality of American-Soviet political relations from 19451991 and to gain a broader sense of American culture during this time period. As stated on the syllabus, the content goals of the course were three-fold: 1) Students will be able to discuss some of the differences between Cold War culture and contemporary culture; 2) Students will be able to appreciate the reality of day-to-day life during the Cold War; and 3) Students will be able to talk intelligently about the significant domestic and international political events of the time period. Several pedagogical issues also needed to be addressed. The first is a universal problem: Students are reluctant to do research if they cannot type a phrase into an Internet search engine and find an answer. Primary documents and library research are rarely used. I wanted to find an interesting way to utilize historical documents. The second challenge is more likely faced by professors at small schools: I encounter the same students almost every semester. In the Cold War course, 14 of the 17 students enrolled in the class had taken at least one class from me previously. I typically run discussion-oriented classes, and therefore I had a good understanding of the skills and aptitudes, interests, and political opinions of almost every student in the class prior to the beginning of the semester. I wanted to make the class interesting, to increase the diversity of opinions, and not be able to anticipate what the papers would be like before I had even read them. A third challenge was integrating political science and history into a course that would hold the attention of nonmajors. As an honors course, half of the students were neither political science nor history majors but were taking the course to fulfill an honors requirement. My solution to addressing these three issues was to incorporate quasi-experiential learning as a primary component of the course. I call it quasiexperiential because, while students were not out actually experiencing the life of others in this historical time period, they were required to use their imagination and resources from the period to live the experiences of a fictional, but historically accurate, character. Two pedagogical tools helped frame the project: simulation=role playing and problem-based learning. Although it remains highly anecdotal, the evidence on the value of simulations and role playing is generally positive (van Ments 1989, 21, 25; but see Gosen and Washbush 2004). Students who are placed in these situations find themselves forced to understand the motives, goals, and limitations of the characters. Similarly, problem-based learning, in which students are required to investigate solutions to ambiguous, open-ended questions, has wide popularity as an effective technique to teach critical thinking. These two techniques are part of the larger active learning approach to teaching. Active learning includes everything from in-class discussion and debate to simulations (including role-playing activities), case studies, problem-based learning, and out-of-class experiences such as internships, service learning, and field trips. According to Smith and Boyer (1996), making students more active in the learning process helps encourage critical thinking and analytical skills and gives students a deeper level of insight into political processes while helping them retain knowledge (693). Playing different roles also helps encourage students to understand a variety of perspectives and opinions, potentially increasing tolerance and awareness of cultural diversity (Dougherty 2003, 240241). Perhaps one of the most generally agreed upon outcome of simulations and related

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active learning techniques is that they help make learning fun (Smith and Boyer 1996; Jefferson 1999, 589; Bonwell and Eison 1991). Newmann and Twigg (2000) concur with that finding and posit that active learning reaches students who have a variety of learning styles while bringing the textbook to life (835). I integrated the techniques of simulations and problem-based learning by having students adopt the role of a character and then have to respond to the open-ended question of how that characters life would be impacted by the political and social events of the Cold War. Although this assignment was not a traditional simulation, it had many of the characteristics of such exercises. Like simulations, it sought to mirror real-world situations and help students understand the constraints and motivations of real players. Also, as in traditional simulations, students were engaged in a variety of activities, including research, writing, creative thinking, organizing information, creating presentations, and oral discussions of their findings (Josefson and Casey 2000, 843). This project differs from many role-playing exercises by requiring students to participate in the exercise all semester, but yet it was not as intense as some semester-long simulations (or some problem-based learning case-based classes) in that it was not the entire focus of the class. Since it was set up as a research project, most of what students did took place outside of class, and the project retained academic rigor because it required a large amount of research and writing, just like a typical research paper. Only certain days were devoted to role playing where students brought their characters into the class discussion. Unlike most simulations, characters only interacted with each other during the in-class discussions. While students have subsequently said that they joked with each other outside of class about getting involved in each others lives, none of the characters they created did so. Thus, students were only a part of the same case in that they lived during the same time period Apart from the ongoing project, the course itself was run fairly traditionally. The two main texts were selections of critical essays and primary documents on political aspects of the Cold War, and supplementary reserve readings were required on social topics such as the growth of suburbia, the governments plutonium tests, the rise of rock n roll, the role of women, and the paranoia of the Red Scare. The vast majority of class periods were devoted to a mixture of lecture on domestic and international political events and class discussion on the assigned readings, and exam material came from lectures and readings. I also showed some of the excellent films available on the era: Atomic Cafe, Radio Bikini, Civil Defense: The War at Home, Kennedys Cold War, and (of course) Dr. Strangelove. Only four of the class periods were designed for in-character discussion (one at the end of each approximately decade of the Cold War, corresponding to the four projects they had to submit). This project required inquiry-guided learning, as each new project demanded students to investigate the cultural and political realities to determine a path for their character. It also enabled students to apply disciplinary concepts to real life situations. By forcing students to place themselves in the shoes of others, and to create an entire lifetime of story line, students needed to be able to analyze how political and historical events would have impacted their characters. By creating their own narratives, students gained a new appreciation for the historical, political, and cultural realities of the era.

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Prior to the first day of class I wrote short descriptions of 20 characters. The characters spanned the spectrum of American society, including black and white, privileged and disadvantaged, educated and uneducated, military and civilian. Some had clear links to the political establishment (they were elected officials or desired to be); others were seemingly far removed from political power. The characters ranged in agesome were middle-aged in 1945, others had not even been born yet. For those characters who were not born by 1945, the student had to create the story of the parent or relative of their assigned character. On the first day of class, students randomly selected characters, which they were not allowed to change. While I did not want to box students in with overly restrictive or detailed character descriptions, I also did not want to give them complete freedom to literally create a character from scratch. I created characters I hoped would lead to interesting class discussions by providing a variety of viewpoints and perspectives. Many characters were created with specific events in mind that might have impacted them (Vietnam, race riots, the debate over birth control and womens lib, school desegregation, or Watergate), with the hope that students would recognize the importance of these events to their characters as the decades unfolded. Here are three examples of the character assignments (see appendix for more examples): Male. In 1945, a 35-year-old Representative from New Mexico, site of the nuclear tests and Los Alamos laboratory. Proponent of nuclear war and the necessity of nuclear weapons. A Republican who has aspirations of becoming president someday. Female, 27 in 1945, a white high school social studies teacher in an urban school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Married, 2 children, ages 5 and 7. Husband is a local politician. Active in the Southern Baptist church. World War II veteran. 21 upon return in 1945. Army air corps, spent time in army running bombing raids over Germany. Got married when you enlisted in 1941; your son was born while you were away (hes three years old now). Your wife and son live with her parents in the Northeast. She worked for the Womens Army Corp while you were in the war and wrote you letters faithfully. Students had a broad degree of latitude in how to tell a characters story (see appendix for project guidelines). Recognizing that students have individual preferences and learning styles, flexibility was built into the assignment to enable students to tailor the assignment to their own strengths. They could write research-style papers, take a more creative-writing approach, do scrapbooks or journals, letters or art work or songs. Further, they were able to focus more narrowly on particular issues, events, or years that most intrigued them, provided it was plausible that their character would be interested in or affected by the events. Students were required to turn in four projects, corresponding with the time periods as they were broken up on the syllabus: 19451953; 19541963; 19641978; 19791992. They had to trace the life of their character throughout the Cold War time period. I developed grading guidelines to help students understand the expectations of the project and also to help me keep grading consistent despite the variety in

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the types of projects I received. All projects were required to demonstrate research using primary sources. The overarching goal of the project was to help students gain an appreciation for the culture of the Cold War. Popular magazines are both molders and reflectors of culture; therefore I decided that they would be the primary resource I required students to use for their projects. Magazines were used as a tool for understanding popular values and morals, desires and expectations, and available options facing their characters. Our local public library had a more extensive collection than the college did, so students were required to access the public librarys collection, or to borrow from my private collection. Reading magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, McCalls, Newsweek, Time, Ms., Ebony, Life, and Look, students saw how the political and social events discussed in class played out in day-to-day life as it was reflected in contemporary magazines. In this way they gained a greater appreciation for what the world was like for Americans during the Cold War. In their projects, students used pictures photocopied from magazines to show wedding dresses, houses, washing machines, new cars, fashions, and other aspects of the culture that their characters would have lived in. It made it easier for them to become a character because they could more concretely envision the surroundings and consumer goods available during that time. Looking at the advertisements and reading the articles also gave students a more complete idea of the cultural values and mores. Although there are, of course, Cold War resources available online, I purposely tried to avoid sending students to these resources. I wanted them to have the experience of going to the library and thumbing through the magazines, and not just seeing what someone else decided was interesting enough to put online. Further, some of the most informative pieces of the magazine would not make it onlinethe pullout advertisements for business schools or the small advertisement in the corner of a page for a one-way train ticket to the land of opportunityCalifornia. I wanted students to use the magazines to gain an overall sense of the culture, not to read one specific article or to see one particular advertisement.

Learning Outcomes and Student Assessment

There were several desired learning outcomes for the course. First, I wanted students to learn about the politics and international relations of the time period. Their knowledge of these events was primarily assessed through the midterm and final exams. Second, I wanted students to gain an appreciation of the culture of the time. This was assessed through their projects and through their in-class, in-character discussions. Third, I wanted students to learn how to use primary documents as historical artifactsthese magazines told a story of the history in a way that textbooks do not. This outcome was assessed through their projects and in-class discussions. I devoted several class periods to in-character discussion of certain issues. We sat in a circle and introduced each character, and students talked a little about their project for that decade. Students enjoyed hearing about each other, and it encouraged students to be punctual with their work. The issues we discussed were relations with the Soviets and thoughts on Communism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, school desegregation, Vietnam, Watergate, relations with China, and the Olympic boycott. Students were evaluated on the quantity and quality of their participation and on their ability to accurately reflect how their character might feel about the topic.

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Project grades were based on five criteria: historical accuracy, depth of cultural appreciation=understanding, integration of historical events into the storyline, use of resources, and creativity of presentation and storyline. Students were creative in the types of projects they submitted. Students turned in journals and diaries, letters to relatives, and family albums. One students character wrote articles in a company newsletter that also highlighted contemporary issues of the day, such as the Three Mile Island nuclear plant crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the discovery of Saturns rings for the project on the last decade. Another handed in a newspaper in which her character had written a letter to the editor; other articles highlighted the major events of the day. Students used scrapbooks where they collected articles that their characters would have found interestinga gay male actor filled his with pictures of Rock Hudson and other male actors, complete with reviews of their latest movies. One student created a family newsletter, complete with pictures of the family and tales of their adventures. Another student handed in a fifth grade project entitled all about me, in which the character listed her favorite things (such as Care Bears and the Cosby Show) and some major news articles of the day (such as the Challenger explosion) with her thoughts on the stories. Others simply wrote narratives about their characters lives, mostly in first person. Students were creative in the directions their characters took, as well. One student had her character, a military officer stationed in Korea, fall in love and have an affair with a Korean woman. The woman became pregnant, and he paid for her to go to California where she lived with her daughter. He stayed in his unhappy marriage on the East Coast, making trips to California to see his other family. When he died, the daughter picked up the storyline. Another man, a senator, was discovered to be a spy for the Soviets and spent the rest of his life in jail spouting Marxist jargon about the evils of capitalism and worldwide revolution. Others led ordinary lives, such as the 16-year-old girl who marries her high school sweetheart, moves to the suburbs, and raises her children, always worried about the Soviets dropping the bomb. Regardless of the way they chose to tell the story, students embraced their created characters and really brought them to life. Challenges There were, of course, some aspects of the project that students complained about. Students found it difficult to get to the off-campus library to use the primary sources, and a few complained that photocopying cost money. Several students said that they did not have good imaginations and found the project time-consuming because they had to create a fictional persons life. This turned out to be sort of a mixed blessing, however. Some of the students who considered themselves unimaginative ended up calling their parents and grandparents and asking them about their lives during the Cold War. Several used old photographs of their relatives, or old documents such as telegrams or postcards that were from the family. One white student, who had been assigned the character of a young black man in an all-black army regiment, actually went online and tracked down a former member of the regiment and spent hours on the phone asking him about his life and his experiences and used that as the basis of his project. Despite the students self-perceptions, they were not less imaginative; they were just using their imaginations in different ways than I had anticipated.

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I found a few challenges in this project. The first involved primary sources. I knew that I wanted students to get a feel for the era by looking at magazines, and I knew that they did not have much experience with using primary documents, but I failed to build a how-to session into the course. After receiving their first projects, however, I realized that they really did not know how to use the magazines as an artifact. We spent an entire class period looking through the magazines and finding good cultural references and examples of things they could use, which greatly improved their ability to utilize these resources. A related challenge was that sometimes students simply photocopied articles or advertisements and submitted them without significant commentary or putting them in context for the character. This is something that could be offset by more clearly explaining how I wanted them to use the sources. The second challenge was the variety of projects that I received. I was delighted by the creativity, but it made comparative grading more difficult. I found that I particularly enjoyed stories with an interesting twist or unexpected event. Some students were better than others at creating characters that really seemed alive, delving into emotions and nuances of character. Similarly, some students produced beautifully creative and different types of projects each time, while others stayed with a more traditional research-style paper for all four projects. My grading guidelines helped ensure comparable grading, but I was glad that I had those guidelines and was prepared for the variety of student work. The third challenge was finding enough time in the semester. I had envisioned more time for class discussion in character, but trying to cover so much material limited the time we devoted to those types of discussion. In retrospect, I would try to do more of it, since student comments showed that they liked doing it, found it helpful and wished we had done more of it. Also, I had built in the ability to tinker with the characters lives but ultimately did not do so. I had really built that into the project more as a safeguard, if I saw a character getting too off-track, but no student project seemed to call for such intervention.

Course and Project Assessment

Students attested that the project helped achieve the expected learning outcomes of the course. Student perception and satisfaction of the course were assessed through the college-required student feedback forms, and a specific questionnaire on the project itself. Student feedback on the course was highly positive on the college-wide form, with scores ranging from 1.06 to 1.41 on a 15 scale where one is strongly agree and five is strongly disagree.1 When asked to comment on the best aspects of the course, 11 out of 12 students who responded to the question answered that the project was enjoyable, useful, and helpful in understanding the course material. When asked to comment on the aspects of the course that could use improvement, no one mentioned anything related to the design or content of the project. In fact, a few students wrote that they wished we had devoted more time to in-class, in-character discussions. I designed an open-ended questionnaire to more specifically ascertain the students perception of the project itself. The questionnaire was handed out with the take-home final so that students could turn both in at the same time. In the questionnaire, I asked questions that reflected some of the learning objectives, such as whether the project helped them understand the time periods in a way they otherwise would not have, whether they found working with the magazines interesting and

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helpful, and what they found most enjoyable about the project. I also asked questions that would help me decide what I should change if I were to adopt a similar approach in the future, such as whether the students found the grading guidelines helpful and whether they enjoyed being randomly assigned to their characters. Again, the feedback here was highly positive, with students saying that they found the character assignments challenging but helpful. Students were divided on the random assignment of characters, seeing both benefits and drawbacks to the approach. Students commented that, despite the amount of work required, projects were preferable to quizzes on each section of the course. In July of 2005, I administered a postcourse survey to specifically assess the projects value as a pedagogical tool.2 Such an evaluation is not only interesting and helpful, it is, judging by the literature at least, exceedingly rare. However, like other educators, political science professors increasingly are being called upon to provide evidence of student learning outcomes. Most of the literature on active or experiential learning, simulations, case studies, and similar pedagogical techniques touts the value of such approaches, but evidence of their effectiveness remains mostly anecdotal. As Cooke (1986) illustrates, there are many difficulties in assessing learning outcomes, and especially in trying to compare various pedagogical techniques (110114). One of the most obvious ways of trying to assess the value of different techniques, establishing a control group, is simply not an option for professors at small schools (and, for a variety of obvious reasons, is usually not scientifically reliable even at large schools).3 The survey I administered asked students specifically to assess the role of the project in achieving learning outcomes (See Table 1). The questionnaire relied primarily on scaled questions, with 1 being the highest or best and 5 being the lowest or worst response. Table 1. Postcourse survey results How well did the project help achieve the following learning objectives. . .? Making the course more interesting Students will be able to discuss some of the differences between Cold War culture and contemporary culture Giving a broader feel for the Cold War culture Analyzing the time period Engaging in critical thinking about how political events impact individuals Students will be able to appreciate the reality of day-to-day life during the Cold War Helping understand the significance of major political events on day-to-day life Making the course more challenging Students will be able to talk intelligently about the significant domestic and international political events of the time period Examining political events from a variety of viewpoints Making the class accessible to non-majors Engaging in critical thinking about diverse viewpoints Helping students become familiar with the use of primary documents
indicates i

1.2 1.4 1.4 1.5 1.5 1.7 1.7 1.8 2.0 1.9 1.9i 2.0 2.9

the desired content learning outcomes explicitly stated on the syllabus. Interestingly, the response was a 1.3 for those in the class who actually were nonmajor.

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As is clear from the data, students found the project interesting, challenging, and eye-opening. It provided a good laboratory to explore the ideas presented in lecture and in the texts and succeeded to bringing the textbook to life. Students felt that they were required to think critically, they gained an understanding of how political events impact individuals, and they felt that the project helped them gain a better feel for the period. The lowest response came on whether the project helped students become familiar with the use of primary documents. It is possible that students do not fully know what primary documents are (the margin response by one student would indicate this possibility), but this also may point to one of the challenges that I described aboveI needed to prepare students more to be able to adequately do the type of research I envisioned, and they found it frustrating to have to go to the off-campus library to do the work. The highest response, a 1.2, came to the question of whether the project made the class more interesting. Studies show that interest in a subject is a major incentive to learning and helps with knowledge retention. For example, one student said, the journal gave me a lot of incentive to want to obtain a lot of sources since I was extremely interested in knowing how my character would be=act during this time in history, and another commented that the project was helpful because I became interested in the topics and how I could tie them to my character. If nothing else, interest in the subject prompts students to do the assignments, to ask interesting questions, and to show up to class, which makes the environment more conducive to promoting higher-level thinking skills and in-depth study of issues. In addition to the questions above, I also asked two other quantitative questionscompared to other college courses you have taken, how well do you remember the material from this course, and how much of a role does the project play in helping you remember material from this course? The response to both questions was a 2.2, which, while still good, is lower than I would have hoped (we all want students to remember everything we teach them!). Without comparative data from a nonactive learning course, it is difficult to put that number into perspective, but it at least does not provide strong support for the argument that active learning leads to longer-term knowledge retention. I asked several open-ended questions. They were asked to talk about three things they remembered best from the class and which of those things were tied to their projects. I received a wide variety of topics in response to this question, including some students who said that they remembered other students projects. In response to the question did the project help you understand the Cold War better or differently than you would have if the course had just been lecture=reading=exam-based?, I received all affirmative replies. Most students talked about the value in viewing the time period through a personal lens. Here are a sample of student comments on this question: . You were able to see how these people thought and how the Cold War really affected how people thought and lived. . When you are stuck reading about a subject a lot of the time you get distracted or dont retain all of the information. With the project, it made us actually delve into the era a little further to find out more about our characters. . It helped me to relate better to the topic and make it my own rather than just memorizing facts and regurgitating information.

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. It helped me experience the Cold War. . I understand the Cold War much better as a result of the project because it made me feel as if I was living it instead of just learning about it. . There were many tiny topics that were involved in my project that I would have overlooked if it were just a lecture course. . Its a lot more meaningful to actually create something than just taking notes and listening. Perhaps most reaffirming of the benefit of this type of project, when asked would you recommend that I adopt this method in the future or in other courses, or would you want to see other professors adopt a similar technique, again the universal answer was yes. Below is a sample of student comments on this question: . It allows students to explore their own creativity while integrating their characters into situations that everyone would have faced. . Even though it is time-consuming and requires a lot of hard work it will encourage the students to want to learn more. I honestly feel the students will be proud of the fact that THEY wrote a journal based on an important time in history. . I truly enjoyed the interviews I conducted and I still know a lot from it. . I thought it was a great thing being able to get inside the mind of someone who lived back then. . It really was a method I enjoyed and it definitely made the class more interesting. It made the material easier to take in and more interesting to learn. Projects like this make learning fun and help us dabble in our creative side, as well as enhancing our research, writing and critical thinking skills . I feel like it gave me a better understanding of the time period. Also, I remember the information. Its not something I memorized for a midterm or final. Its something I absorbed and understand. . I loved the projects. I never had that much of a chance to be creative in any of my other classes, and it was a really good way to get involved in the way of life during that era. I liked going to the library to look at the older papers and such, even though many did not. Out of all my classes, this was my favorite. . Of course. It gives everybody the opportunity to be creative and use their strongest skill sets. Also it makes the course much more interesting and allows students to share what they have learned, and what they have learned might not always be points or things that the instructor has thought to bring up. . I definitely would love it if other classes employed your techniques because I learned so much and had fun. I was also happy to be able to really push myself. The course load was demanding without being stressful. The results of the postcourse survey helped substantiate my conclusions about the value of this quasi-experiential approach as a learning tool. It gives me valuable feedback about what students found most helpful in this approach and provides some evidence of where such pedagogical approaches can help achieve learning objectives. While these are self-reported perceptions of the learning experience,4 they match what I observed in student performance on other measures of student learning, namely the research papers and projects that were produced through the experience, the in-class discussions, and the performance on the two essay-style exam.

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Conclusion
Students did very well in this course. Their knowledge of events and ability to synthesize information and analyze events in broader historical contexts was tested and demonstrated on their exams. Their projects ranged from elaborate and creative to well-researched and fact-filled. It was obvious that students had devoted large amounts of time to their projects. Further, they commented that they enjoyed bringing their projects to class and having the time to be their characters in class. I was delighted with the results of this project. It definitely overcame my pedagogical challenges: It forced students to use primary documents, enabled me to get a variety of interesting work and introduce many different opinions into the class discussion and made the course accessible and interesting to both majors and nonmajors. It also achieved my learning objective of getting them to understand Cold War culture and the impact of significant international and domestic events on day-to-day life in America. In addition, the project helped with my honors course objectives of integrating the two disciplines, engaging in creative discourse and examining events from disparate viewpoints. It forced students to engage in critical thinking, as they had to really understand and to communicate how political events and cultural norms would have influenced their character. Further, as an added benefit, no students were left out of this projectall were engaged, interested, and participating. Although this course was an interdisciplinary honors course, this quasiexperiential model could be translated into other political science courses (see Larson 2004). Whenever active learning experiences are introduced into the classroom, it is essential that the activities are carefully designed to help achieve coursespecific objectives. In my case, those included cultural awareness, historical understanding, and the ability to compare two political eras. Thus this approach would need to be carefully applied to meet the needs of each professor and may not be applicable to all courses. Although it would be most easily adapted in small classrooms, with a little creativity it could even be adjusted to midsized onesyou could have teams of people as each character, for instance. One could take the approach of assigning characters to analyze a domestic public policy issue, having students use contemporary artifacts such as newsletters or websites or television shows that would promote a particular viewpoint. Such exercises help students see research as something intrinsically connected to the course, not as an irrelevant exercise. Imagining the life of ordinary citizens in foreign countries may also be effective in having students understand the impact of foreign policy or economic issues. To get the experience of being someone else helps broaden a students perspective on the world. While this experience does not replace alternative out of classroom experiences such as internships or studying abroad, it can force students to think about issues, events, and policies in ways that they are not accustomed to and are rarely required to do. Quasi-experiential learning assignments such as the project described here can increase student understanding and appreciation of different cultures, eras, and lives.

Appendix: Cold War Project Guidelines

The year is 1945, and the United States has just accepted the Japanese surrender. World War II has officially ended, and, although most people dont realize the

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change that will be happening in their lives, a new era has been entered: the Atomic Age. The Atomic Age will be dominated by the nuclear arms race and fear of nuclear war, the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, the ideological struggle of communism versus democracy, and dramatic social changes in the United States. This project will help you gain a greater appreciation for how these events permeated the culture and impacted individual lives. This is an ongoing, multipart project. Overview of the Assignment You will have to become a character. The character will be assigned to you, and you will have to do cultural research to understand what the character saw and did, felt and cared about. You will have some latitude in determining the direction of the character, but the assignments have been chosen to reflect the diversity of experiences of Americans. You must remain faithful to that experience, as your character will represent the broader experiences of the cultural subgroup of which he or she is a part. The Projects For each period we study you must turn in a paper or project that traces the developments of the period and how they impact you. Your papers must be well-integrated works that reflect on more than just one episode or event, although if you can convincingly argue that one event was most likely to resonate with your character (for instance, if your character gets sent off to Vietnam), then focusing on that is fine. The papers must be as long as you need to adequately reflect on the events in the life of your character and to give an in-depth feeling for what he or she is experiencing and thinking about the world around them. For at least the first paper, I will not specify a page-length, because I want to give you flexibility in how you approach the project and do not want to put constraints on your creativity. Because the goal is for you to develop a sophisticated understanding of and feel for the era, you are required to rely mostly on primary documents for information and research. You are required to use magazines from the resources available at the Reading Public Library (see attached). You should include the list of magazines and articles (or any other interesting information you gathered) in a bibliography. You may also check out newspapers from the era (Reading Eagle or New York Times). You may look at movies, listen to music, watch reruns of TV shows on Nick at Night, even read novels or books that reflect on the times. I have some resources that you can borrow. You are encouraged to interview people who lived at that time to ask them what they remember thinking or feeling. Look carefully at the pictures, advertisements, and language of the times. What do they tell you about your life? One thing you cannot do is avoid talking about the major cultural, scientific, political, or international events. Even though some characters may be more interested or caught up in the dramatic events of the Cold War, every character should be interested in what is going on and reflect on how it could impact their lives. Therefore, even if you dont think your character would be reading Time magazine (for instance), it should still be used as a resource for your paper. The only things I ask in how you form your characters life is that you a) be faithful to the timeswhat would have been the opportunities, challenges, obstacles, or expectations for this person on the basis of race, gender, or economic situation? If they do something that

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someone in that situation would not usually be able to do, what enables them to do so? b) be true to the characterif theyve always been a pacifist and then suddenly enlist in the army, thats not a plausible storyline. I have the ability to interfere with any characters life at any timeI can add twists and turns, like pregnancies or moves or job changes. As sad as it might seem, all characters die at age 60 unless I give you a stay. I can also chose to kill your character earlier. (You may not have your character commit suicide or be killed unless you warn me first and have a story-related=plausible reason.) If=when your character dies, you must become someone he or she knew or was related toan army buddy, a spouse, a child, maybe even someone who s=he seemed tangentially related to, like a student, a neighbor, or someone else who his or her death may have affected. That new person must be young enough to live through the end of the Cold War (i.e., they must not turn 60 before 1992). Choice of the replacement character must be in consultation with me. If you have not been born as of 1945, the first story must be about your parents and their lives. You must do one project for each era: 19451953; 19541963; 19641978; 1979 1992. Due dates are noted on syllabus. There are a number of approaches you can take, for instance, you could pick a major event or two and talk about them, or you can do a more general overview. You can focus on particular years, but must cover that year (or years) in depth. You will be expected to share experiences with others in the class; in fact, there will be debate days where, as your character, you share your opinion on a given issue. You may be creative, but you must remain in voice and historically accurate, and without historical foresightyou must be the character and live in the moment. Your projects will be graded on the following things: 1. Accuracyhave you accurately explained events? Have you accurately represented how those events would impact your character or be viewed by your character? Was there any major event that you failed to include that would seem to have been important to your character? (For instance, if your character wants to be an astronaut and you fail to mention the moon landing or Sputnik, thats a pretty glaring omission.) 2. Depthhow nuanced is your story; how much does it show a deep understanding of the events, cultural realities, and social position of your character? How well do you demonstrate the societal norms and pressures that this character would be expected to live up to? What are the risks if s=he does not conform? What are the true desires of the character? 3. Integrationhow well do you integrate the events into a story about your characters life? 4. Resourceshow well does your story reflect the use of a variety of resources? 5. Creativityhow well do you tell the story? How creative are you in imagining how your characters life is going? You have leeway in how you compile your project and in what you show . . . it doesnt have to just be a paper. If you want to include a poster or a scrapbook or a photo album, or an example of a paper you wrote for school, or a diary entry, or a phone conversation, or any other way you want to communicate your message, thats fine. And you can do it in different ways for each era, if you desire. You are really encouraged to do something interesting and different, as long as it still has the required substance.

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Character Descriptions
World War II veteran. 44 in 1945. A general in the army, career military. Only old enough to enlist at the end of WWI, never got over the disappointment of not being sent over there, so decided to stay in the military and get your next chance. You are moving up in rank and some have suggested that someday you may be head of the army. Married with three children, ages 24, 20, and 16. 41 in 1945, male. Elected to the Senate in 1936, a Roosevelt Democrat and, at age 32, the youngest member of the Senate. Represent the people of Virginia and serve on the armed services committee and the appropriations committee. Support social welfare programs. A lifelong public servant with aspirations of running for president someday. Male, 40 in 1945, you were a junior physicist on the Manhattan Project. You are hopeful that the advances in nuclear technology will bring peace and prosperity to America. You are married with an 18-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. You are 35 in 1945. Male. You have made your way to Hollywood, where you have won acclaim for being a rising star who is unafraid to tell the truth the way you see it. You are excited by the open climate in Hollywood, where social norms are quite different than they were in your hometown in Missouri. Even so you are worried about being too open about certain aspects of your life because you worry about discrimination and losing your nation-wide audience. You were working on a movie about the rise and fall of Adolph Hitler when the atomic bomb was dropped. You wonder about the future of the world and of the United States. Male. In 1945, a 35-year-old representative from New Mexico, site of the nuclear tests and Los Alamos laboratory. Proponent of nuclear war and the necessity of nuclear weapons. A Republican who has aspirations of becoming president someday. Female, 30 in 1945. A Jewish immigrant from Germany, where much of your family perished in the concentration camps. You have many Jewish friends who immigrated to Palestine. You live in New York City and have three children. Female, 27 in 1945, a white high school social studies teacher in an urban school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Married, 2 children, ages 5 and 7. Husband is a local politician. Active in the Southern Baptist church. World War II veteran. 21 upon return in 1945. Army air corps, spent time in army running bombing raids over Germany. Got married when you enlisted in 1941; your son was born while you were away (hes three years old now). Your wife and son live with her parents in the Northeast. She worked for the Womens Army Corp while you were in the war and wrote you letters faithfully. World War II veteran. 19 in 1945. Spent a year in the Pacific theater with the 555th Parachute Infantry Co. The Triple Nickel, a segregated black division. Decided to remain in military upon return home. 16 in 1945, female, live in New Jersey. Dreaming of getting married to your sweetheart as soon as he gets back from Germany. You love to dance and read romance novels. You volunteer time at your church, where you also sing in the choir. You hope to start a family as soon as possible! You have heard about the wonderful new suburb of Levittown and hope that you can buy a house in such a family friendly place. 10 in 1945. Female. Daddy died a hero in France when you were 7. Mom works as a receptionist for a local doctor. You do well in science classes and are fascinated by science fiction stories. You got a chemistry kit for your 10th birthday and dream

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of being a scientist or maybe a pilot. You were awed by the atomic explosion in Japan. 10 in 1945. Born in 1935 in Washington, D.C., male. Too young to fight in World War II, but raised to be very passionate about defending America. Poor eyesight keeps you from joining the military service. Have a good ear for languages. Father worked for the government. Oldest of four children. 5 in 1945. Male. Born in 1940. Appointed Under-Secretary of State to Europe during the Nixon administration in return for your hard work on the Nixon campaign for president. Birthday is VJ Day. White, male. Father is prep-school and Ivy-League educated, mother was a debutante. Live in Boston with a summer home on the Cape. Two older brothers. Interested in science and physics. Birthday is VJ Day. Black, male. Father is a reverend. Home a 3-room house without running water in small-town Mississippi, about an hour from the nearest big city. Youngest of 6 children (the oldest is 10), and the only boy. Female, born in 1949 to a Catholic family in Baltimore. Go to Catholic school. Strict parents talk incessantly about the erosion of morality in todays youth. Your older brother plans to be a priest. You love music and dancing. Born in 1953. Female. Father is a professor of English at U.C. Berkley. You love poetry and music, and have a rebellious streak. Hate injustice and being forced to do things. Strong sense of commitment, honor, and right and wrong. Male. Born in 1960. Daddy was in the army but had to retire when his legs got blown off in Vietnam in 1972. You want to go into the military and cant understand why he doesnt support youyou want to see the world and fight for your country like he did. You plan to join the Marines. Male. Born in 1961; spend 19681973 in Canada with your parents. You became great at ice hockey while you were there and hope to compete in the Olympics someday. You are fascinated by politics and go to the Soviet Union on a school trip in 1977. Female, born 1963. Live on a commune in California with your unmarried parents. Your father is an artist, your mother, a writer. They are active in the antiwar movement and think the government is destroying the hope of tomorrow by wasting a generation in a pointless war. You are an only child but feel like part of a big extended family, with the other children of the commune as your brothers and sisters.

Notes
1. The questions are fairly traditional, asking about instructor preparation, presentation of course objectives and instructional material, use of relevant tests and assignments, allowing freedom to express ideas or opinions, increasing critical thinking skills, encouraging learning through instructor interest, challenging students by presenting new viewpoints, and availability for additional assistance. 2. The course ended in May 2004. The survey response rate was 94%. 3. Another option would be to administer a pre- and post- test, which I did not think of doing until it was too late. One potential problem with such a test is that it is likely to focus on concrete knowledge, rather than some of the broader, less-easily measured learning objectives. For a broader examination of the problems inherent in assessing pedagogical techniques, see E.D. Hirsch, Jr., 2002. 4. For a cautionary discussion on relying only on perceptions of cognitive learning to assess the learning experience, see J. W. Gentry, S. F. Commuri, A. C. Burns, and J. R. Dickenson, 1998.

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References
Bonwell, Charles and James Eison. 1991. Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1. Washington, D.C.: George Washington University School of Education and Human Development. Cooke, Ernest F. 1986. The Dilemma in Evaluating Classroom Innovations. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Association for Business Simulations and Experiential Learning 13: 110114. Dougherty, Beth K. 2003. Byzantine Politics: Using Simulations to Make Sense of the Middle East. PS: Political Science and Politics 36(April): 240241. Gosen, Jerry and John Washbush. 2004. A Review of Scholarship on Assessing Experiential Learning Effectiveness. Simulation and Gaming 35: 270293. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. 2002. Classroom Research and Cargo Cults. Policy Review (October). www.policyreview.org=oct02=hisrch print.html (August 2, 2005). Jefferson, Kurt W. 1999. The Bosnian War Crimes Trial Simulation: Teaching Students about the Fuzziness of World Politics and International Law. PS: Political Science & Politics 32(September): 589592. Josefson, Jim and Kelly Casey. 2000. Simulating Issue Networks in Small Classes Using the World Wide Web. PS: Political Science & Politics 33(December): 843846. Larson, Stephanie Greco. 2004. We the People: Diversifying Role Playing in Undergraduate American Politics Courses. PS: Political Science & Politics 37: 303306. Newmann, William W. and Judyth L. Twigg. 2000. Active Engagement of the Intro IR Student: A Simulation Approach. PS Online 33: 835842. http:==www.apsanet.org= imgtest=ActiveEngagementIRStudent.pdf. (July 30, 2005). Smith, Elizabeth T. and Mark A. Boyer. 1996. Designing In-Class Simulations. PS: Political Science and Politics 29(December): 690694. van Ments, Morry. 1989. The Effective Use of Role-Play: A Handbook for Teachers and Trainers. New York: London=Nichols Publishing.