Welcome to my “Teaching with SimCity” website.
As a Political Science professor, I’m passionate about cultivating an interest in politics and policy among undergraduate students. Observing that students are fascinated with video games, I devised the SimCity classroom simulation to permit students to govern a virtual municipality and hone their skills in politics and policy. This hands-on learning experience has been a popular feature of my introductory American government class since 2003. With the debut of my article “Teaching with SimCity: Using Sophisticated Gaming Simulations to Teach Concepts in Introductory American Government” in the April 2015 edition of the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, I decided to construct this website to make the materials available to fellow instructors. Here you will find everything you’ll need to run a live SimCity governance exercise in class including…
- A video tutorial explaining my SimCity governance exercise.
- Supporting materials for running the simulation.
- A Guide to Building a Starter City.
- A forum to share thoughts on the simulation.
Please feel free to make suggestions on how to improve the simulation. I’ll endeavor to update the materials as the project evolves.
Enjoy running the game!
Sincerely,
Matthew Woessner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
Penn State University, Harrisburg
