Mark A. Boyer

Designing In-Class Simulations.

think and speak on their feet, a valuable skill that comes naturally to few, but is of benefit to everyone. Since you can assess their comprehension of the reading assignments on an ongoing basis, you can freely assign written assignments of greater interest to you and the students-because a full series of written tests on the material is less important. In courses beyond the introductory level, for example, neither of us have final exams. Instead, students do more independent research, like an extra short paper or a more in-depth term paper. The ongoing feedback from class participation also lets professors know more quickly and effectively than weekly quizzes if students are comprehending the material. Because you help them through the material, you can assign more sophisticated readings. Finally, we have found that this method leads to much more satisfying interaction with students. It challenges both the students and us. Class is less predictable, less scripted, more spontaneous; and students have, by virtue of their responses, often caused us to view an issue taught many times before in a new light. They have taught us in turn. The method also requires the instructor to learn all student names; this personalizes classroom interactions and helps to create a greater sense of community and common

Gender, Violence, and International Crisis

Women work for peace, and men wage war—cooperative women, conflictual men. These images pervade conventional wisdom about the efficacy of women in leadership roles and decision-making environments, but imagery is not always grounded in reality. Feminist international relations literature is examined to understand how domestic gender equality may help predict a states international crisis behavior. The authors use the record of female leaders as primary decision makers during international crises and then test the relationship between domestic gender equality and a states use of violence internationally. The International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and multinomial logistic regression are used to test the level of violence exhibited during international crises by states with varying levels of domestic gender equality. Results show that the severity of violence in crisis decreases as domestic gender equality increases.

Maintaining System Stability

This article examines the ways and degrees to which nation-states participate in and financially support United Nations peacekeeping operations (UN PKOs). The authors contend that UN PKOs are impure public goods whose provision conforms to expectations from public goods theory that deals with the provision of impure public goods and club goods, and much less to the hegemonic stability variant of the public goods approach. Conceptual arguments are followed by an examination of general patterns of UN PKOs, personnel and financial contributions to them, and the U.S. role in them. The authors conclude that the post-cold war period has seen a notable increase in the volume of provision of peacekeeping and in the quantity and diversity of contributors and beneficiaries. They recognize the difficulties posed by recent U.S. nonpayments and suggest the possibility of adjustments that will reestablish the financial basis that continuing substantial provision will require.

Trading Public Goods in the Western Alliance System

This article seeks to broaden the scope of analyses of security burden sharing within the Western alliance system beyond the narrow military approach taken by past work in the economic theory of alliances. In contrast to that work, which has shown that the Western allies have been persistently free riding on the military efforts of the United States, an illustrative model is presented that posits the existence of burden sharing across issue areas among the Western allies. The model yields significantly different conclusions regarding (1) the nature of alliance burden sharing, (2) the optimality of alliance security provision, and (3) the future of cooperation in the Western alliance system in the face of declining American hegemony. On a theoretical level, this article begins to formulate a new economic theory of alliances that focuses on “trade” in public goods and adheres closely to the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage. I hypothesize that nations will specialize in the production of those alliance goods (economic, political, and military) for which they possess comparative advantages. This hypothesis is given preliminary support through an examination of allied expenditures on the military and foreign aid.

Negotiating from Mars to Venus: gender in simulated international negotiations

Gender analysis has emerged as an important conceptual approach to the study of decision making and conflict resolution in the international arena. Although scholars and practitioners within the field of international relations have debated the effect of gender on the negotiation and decision-making process, little systematic evidence to support their assertions has taken place. This article examines a set of data from the GLOBALED PROJECT that provides insights into the different ways men and women perceive world affairs and interact in a negotiation setting. In particular, the authors examine differences in the negotiation styles of all-female, all-male, and mixed-gender groups when negotiating over international or global issues. Findings from the GLOBALED PROJECT, a computer-mediated study of gender differences in decision-making and negotiation skills, show that there are indeed significant differences between the approaches used by various gender groupings. Although much work remains to be done in this area, this research indicates that some of the impressionistic and anecdotal characterizations of the different ways men and women approach negotiations and decision making are indeed well-grounded when examined through systemic evidence.

International Crisis Decisionmaking as a Two-Level Process

The primary focus of this article is to break the ties to examining democracies to the exclusion of other regime types. Inspired by work in the two-level games approach to the larger question of foreign policy behavior, we broaden the two-level approach by examining the impact of domestic factors on decisionmaking across regime types and how they relate to the use and extent of violence in international crisis. Our analysis is bounded substantively and conceptually, however, by our exclusive focus in this article on decisionmaking in international crises. We use the 895 foreign policy crisis cases of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) dataset for our analysis, which entails an examination of process and decisionmaking structural variables using cross-tabulations and a series of logistic regression models. We find that democracies exhibit many behaviors similar to non-democracies in crisis. The prevalent effects of action-reaction processes that result from the initial impact of the crisis-trigger suppress cross-regime type differences, at least in the initial stages of a crisis. Differences across regime types manifest themselves when looking at the entire crisis time period.

Vital interests: cultivating global competence in the international studies classroom

Are students being prepared for the challenges they will face in a globalising world? We investigated whether middle school students were interested in global issues, had knowledge of global issues and possessed the skills needed for competence as a citizen in a globalising world in the context of participating in a five-week, web-based international negotiation simulation conducted by the GlobalEd Project. A repeated measures ANOVA on a pre- and post-test scores and a chi square analysis on qualitative data indicated significant pre- to post-increases in knowledge and skills from this educational programme. Potential implications of these findings with regard to global education are discussed.

Promoting Positive Academic Dispositions Using a Web-Based PBL Environment: The GlobalEd 2 Project.

Abstract Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional design approach for promoting student learning, understanding and knowledge development in context rich settings. Previous PBL research has primarily focused on face-to-face learning environments, but current technologies afford PBL designers the opportunities to create online, virtual, PBL envi-ronments. The GlobalEd 2 Project is an example of a PBL environment that combines the positive characteristics of both face-to-face and online environments in a 14-week simu -lation of international negotiations of science advisors on global water resource issues. The GlobalEd 2 PBL environment is described examining the impact it has had on middle school students’ interest in future science education experiences, self-efficacy related to writing in science and self-efficacy related to technology use for academic purposes using a pre-test post-test design. Analyses using ANOVAs of gain scores and ANCOVAs of sub-group differences demonstrate a positive impact on the science interest and self-efficacy of 208 middle-grade students from urban and suburban schools.Keywords: problem-based learning, self-efficacy, writing, science interest, global education

Can Multimedia Make Kids Care about Social Studies? The GlobalEd Problem-Based Learning Simulation

This study investigated whether using multimedia-based instructional material in a problem-based social studies simulation enhances student learning about world issues, increases interest in social studies, and generates positive attitudes toward the instruction. The GlobalEd Project, a Web-based international negotiation simulation embedded in the middle school social studies curriculum, was used in this investigation. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with a multimedia group (MG) and a text group (TG). A total of 190 students participated in the study. Results indicated that students in the MG had marginally larger gains in knowledge and interest than their counterparts in the TG. In addition, students in the MG used the Web site more extensively than students in the TG. Directions for future research and multimedia developers are discussed.

At the Movies: A Continuing Dialogue on the Challenges of Teaching with Film

As part of ISP’s ongoing effort to provide a scholarly venue for the exchange of ideas on a variety of topics, this issue’s ISP Forum presents one set of reactions to the February 2001 article by Lynn Kuzma and Patrick Haney titled “And Action . . . ! Using Film to Learn About Foreign Policy” (February 2001:33‐50). Vincent Pollard’s comments represent what we hope will be the first in a series of comments on teaching international studies with film. Profs. Kuzma and Haney in their rejoinder urge for an ongoing discussion of the topic, as they see the use of film growing in the field. More broadly, the Editors of ISP invite readers to submit their own comments and reactions on this and other pieces that appear within the pages of ISP. Please note that all submissions undergo a peer review process.