One of my favorite classes this semester is Research Design and Methods. It is a required course for my political science major and the class reviews topics such as how to conduct research and write a thorough research paper. My professor for this class is fantastic and his PowerPoint presentations always use humor.
At the beginning of the semester, everyone in the class ranked a seemingly random assortment of topics ranging from “urban planning” to “national defense” on a scale of one to three. This Monday, our professor pulled out a huge bag of board games and revealed that those rankings were used to assign everyone a specific board game.
I was paired with three other people to play the board game Suburbia. We will give a presentation next week about how this game is a simulation in order to connect it to the current topic of creating simulations in research. This assignment epitomizes the creativity that McDaniel professors use in the classroom- we are assessing the game’s strong and weak aspects as a simulation, and we are playing a board game (in class!)
Unfortunately, Suburbia is not an easy game. Our group met and spent a full hour trying to set up the game. We did not even get to the actual playing section. We are meeting several other times, and I hope that we eventually master the game. Maybe I can even win. Maybe?
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