Question

A new simulation game, StateArt, is designed to simulate diplomatic, military, and trade relations among countries. Thr instructor of an international relations (IR) course would like to find out wherher StateArt is an effective learning tool. he wonders will playing state art cause my students to acquire a better understanding of our subject matter? The instructor does not make state art a course requirement but he encourages voluntary participation. This volunteer group plays StateArt throughtout the semester. At the end of the semester, the instructor, the instructor found, compared with nonplayers, StateArt players had performed better in the course. They had a better grasp of all covered topics, including international, diplomatic, miltary, and trade relations. The instructor concludes: Yes, StateArt caused my students to acquire a better understanding of IR subject matter.

question A. Because of the design of his study, the instructor's conclusion is not supported. (i) Write down two rival causes that could explain why students who played StateArt performed better in the Course than Students who did not play StateArt. (ii) Describe how each rival cause could account for the State-Art student performance relationship.

part B. Suppose the instructor would like to improve his procedure for determining whether StateArt causes better performance in achieving course objectives. Suppose further that you are asked to recommend three methodological steps that would greatly improve the instructor's study. (i) What three steps would you recommend? (ii) Explain why these procedures would help isolate the effect of the simulation on class learning.

Answer 1

A. i. Only those Students who knew could grasp the concepts or were top performers chose state-art game course, others did not since this was voluntary. Second, students who had interest in playing video games chose this..

ii. For the first cause, naturally the student performed better since these group were brighter even without the game. The game may or may not have increased their ability to perform better. For the second case, it is highly likely that the gamers who played state art probably learned something beneficial in the course of playing state art since they are doing this out of natural interest.

B. We can recommend these 3 steps to make the study more relevant:-

1. Divide all students randomly into test and control group and make the state art game mandatory for test group while control group do not play.  So that we get best possible sampling units and remove bias.

2. The comparison of performance improvement should be between test and control group so that the true benefit is established between players(test) and non players( control)

3. While analyzing the results he should segment based on gamer and non- gamers and study the benefit in each segment separately to remove any pre- existing bias