2
Assuming Identities, Enhancing Understanding:
Applying Simulation Principles to Research Projects
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 quasi-experiential 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.
I am an assistant professor at Alvernia College, a private college in Reading,
Pennsylvania with an undergraduate enrollment of about 1800 students. In addition to
being the political scientist on campus, I am also the Director of the Honors Program. 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.
1
I wanted to encourage
class discussion, force students to do research that required using primary source
material, and enable students to emerge with an in-depth appreciation of the subject. The
course was offered at the 200-level, and presumed only elementary background
1
See Appendix A for syllabus.
Convention