A few weeks ago my AP Gov classes wrapped up our four-week election simulation. This is a big project, with many moving parts, that takes up a good amount of class time. 

Before starting the project, Phil Miller relayed an anecdote to me that had me worried. Phil told me about a neighbor’s teenage daughter who had just wrapped up a school project, something related to economics and the mafia (?). The young woman was super excited about the project, explaining how much fun it was. When Phil asked her what she had learned from the simulation, she responded, “I don’t know.”

What concerned me was whether the election simulation would actually teach my students about how elections work and help them to achieve the learning outcomes I desired. 

Now that the simulation is done, I feel quite confident that the project achieved the desired results. I surveyed my AP Gov students at the end of the unit and asked them two questions related to the simulation. First, I asked them to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 their response to the question, “I learned a lot from the election simulation.” 65% of my students said they “strongly agreed” with the statement, while another 20% mostly agreed (4 out 5).

I then asked them to rate their response to the question, “The tasks in the election simulation were closely aligned with the content I learned from the textbook and from class.” 55% of my students said they “strongly agreed,” while another 34% mostly agreed. 

Based on the responses from students, it seems that the election simulation was a good use of class time.

One of the keys to the success, I think, was that I frequently asked students to reflect on what they were doing during the simulation. I explicitly asked the students to connect the tasks of the project with concepts we learned in class or read about in the textbook. I think this helped ground the project in the content, helping the students keep sight of why we were pretending to run presidential campaigns. 

Finally, I think the simulation was a good use of time because it filled in a lack of real world experience for the students. When I look at the elections material in AP Gov, it’s easy for me to understand the concepts, because I have many real-world examples to draw from. The students, on the other hand, were not full cognizant of past elections they lived through, and their bank of examples to draw from is much, much smaller. The simulation actually allowed them to fill up that bank with simulated examples. If I want to talk about polarization, for example, I can point to the candidates that they played in the simulation, and the students have an example that makes sense to them. 

In the end, I think it was an excellent use of our time.