Many students have provided excellent feedback for improving the course. The single most requested ‘tweak’ was, surprisingly, to include more games like Defiant Russia. The old-school boardgame with its dice, hex maps and counters seemed to encourage a thoughtful, collaborative (at least among the players on each team) learning experience.
In addition, the idea of replaying history was clearly appealing to many of the students. Only one of the students had played anything similar prior to this class and it was unclear if any would voluntarily play something like Defiant Russia again but the overwhelmingly positive response to the game in the feedback suggests that there is still a place for these types of games in educational environments.
Another goal, however, was to lock in knowledge important to the practice of strategic intelligence. This kind of learning requires reflection and reflection takes time. Clearly, the right answer lies in properly balancing these competing goals. How to do that in the context of a specific syllabus is the real question and one that I will spend the next several months pondering.
Wrapping it up