Richardson, AnthonyBowell, TracyPepperell, NicoleRichardson, AnthonyCorino, Maria-Teresa2026-04-282026-04-282024-05Richardson, A. (2024). PeaceMaker: Using an online educational game on Middle East politics as an ‘Object To Think With’ (OTTW) in a Masters-level public policy course. In Bowell, T., Pepperell, N., Richardson, A., & Corino, M. -T. (Eds.), Revitalising Higher Education: Insights from Te Puna Aurei LearnFest 2022 (pp. 63-70). Cardiff University Press. https://doi.org/10.18573/conf2.h978-1-9116-5350-9https://hdl.handle.net/10289/18236Teaching tertiary students about causality in complex adaptive systems can be challenging for two primary reasons. The first challenge is to present and explore the relevant concepts (such as tipping points, emergence, nonlinearity, path dependency and feedback). But the second challenge is often harder: helping students unpack the implications of the radical uncertainty, in terms of policy, decision making and management that such concepts imply. In the words of one student: “Ok, this is all very interesting… but what does it mean for me in my department, trying to make and implement policy? What am I meant to actually do?” At the same time, while there is a growing acceptance in the academic literature that games and simulations are educationally valuable, there is there is still no solid consensus around the learning theories or game design principles that underpin this value. For example, a ‘behaviorist’ approach to educational gaming (building competency through repetition) does not deal well with the nonlinearity and emergence found in complex systems. Instead, a more constructivist approach to games theory and design, and in particular a focus on games as “objects-to-think-with” (OTTWs) (Holbert & Wilensky, 2019), seems a better fit. I taught a Masters-level Public Policy course on policy evaluation at an Australian university in 2019 and used the online game Peacemaker (an interactive digital game from Israel designed to introduce the complexity of Israeli/Palestinian politics to high school students from both communities) in class as an OTTW: exploring some of the challenges and implications of policy design and implementation within complex adaptive systems (such as dynamic public policy environments). Holbert, N. & Wilensky, U. (2019) ‘Designing Educational Video Games to Be Objects-to-Think-With’, Journal of the Learning Sciences, 28:1, pp. 32-72, DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2018.1487302enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Chapter in Book10.18573/conf2.h39 Education4408 Political Science44 Human Society4 Quality Education