Grant recipient: Joel Blit, Department of Economics
(Completed. Project timeline: September 2013-August 2014)
Description
Traditional game theory courses are math intensive and focus on the theory while providing no experiential learning component. This is largely because the creation of exercises where students can play against each other necessitates the development of specialized software that can interact with students and simulate the games.
This project developed exercises and a software platform for experiential learning in Game theory. The software collected student strategies, played them off against each other, generated the results, provided feedback to students, and generated a mark.
A combined approach where students learn through both lectures and practical experience is crucial in game theory because the theory and practice do not always reconcile and students need to learn the limitations of the theory as it applies to practice.
Findings/Insight
The software I developed allowed students to submit their strategies and played them off against each other. I was thus able to collect a large amount of data on the behavior of students in these games. While difficult to interpret in a conclusive manner, the data suggests that students did indeed learn not to always use the Nash Equilibrium Strategy (which theory suggests would be the best strategy to employ) in a practical setting. For instance, in the first exercise, 37% of students employed the Nash Equilibrium strategy (which was suboptimal) while by exercise 5 only 27% of students employed the Nash Equilibrium strategy. The data suggests that students indeed learned both to use the theory (they mostly used strictly and weakly dominant strategies when these existed), but through experiential learning, they also learned to understand the limitations of the theory and to use more pragmatic strategies that were more likely to succeed in the practical exercise setting.
Dissemination and Impact
- At the individual level: Students loved the course, and the exercises in particular. Numerous students wrote in their year-end evaluation that this was the best course they’d taken at UW.
- At the Department/School and/or Faculty/Unit levels: I have discussed the success of these exercises with numerous colleagues informally.