In recent years, wargaming has become prominent again. It is valuable both as a cost-effective analytical tool and a component in Professional Military Education (PME). But increased popularity has created challenges, including finding the most effective way to use wargaming within education.
Based on a short study by RAND Europe, there are several areas of good practice that can help practitioners achieve the full benefits of gaming for education and learning in PME.
Educational Wargames Must Have a Clear Purpose
There is no point in wedging a game into a course for fashion’s sake. Wargaming for the sake of wargaming is likely to waste resources and could even lead to negative learning. Before deciding to use gaming in education, it is necessary to first ask: is a game the right tool? Number of students, available time, learning objectives, and other relevant factors should be considered.
A wargame must be part of a holistic learning ecosystem, with a clear purpose connected to learning objectives. It is good practice to use wargaming to support other ways of teaching such as seminars, lectures, and reading. As wargaming offers an immersive experience, it can be used to test and reinforce the knowledge that students acquire in the classroom.
As wargaming offers an immersive experience, it can be used to test and reinforce the knowledge that students acquire in the classroom.
Connect Wargames to Learning Objectives
It is essential for games to be deeply connected to a course’s specific learning objectives. First select the learning objectives and then identify or design a game that will be suitable for pursuing these objectives. Less success will be achieved by choosing to run a game, then reverse-engineering its relation to objectives. Next, define clear outcomes for the game, ensuring these support the selected learning objectives.
Consider the Player’s Needs in Wargame Design
To achieve the full benefits from the immersive experience and accessible participation that wargames can offer, you must know your audience. Consider the players’ various needs as part of the game design. For example, if there are international students on the course, consider cultural and language aspects of the game. It may be advisable to adapt the design to avoid topics which might be sensitive or controversial for students from different cultural backgrounds. Facilitation can also be adapted to encourage active participation and creative thinking.
Some students may not be interested in gaming or display negative attitudes towards it. Picking the right game mechanics and game material may incentivize them to get involved. For example, if students find more game-like mechanics offputting, then adjudication may be more acceptable than rolling dice.
Use Aid and Materials Purposefully
Digital aids are becoming more popular in wargaming for PME, as they are in leisure board gaming. They enable players to focus more on real-time decisionmaking, compared to a more traditional turn-based approach. Digital systems can provide students with greater situational awareness and a more dynamic overview of the battlespace, proving useful at the tactical level. However, instructors should be ready to override simulation results or otherwise intervene when necessary to enable a stronger learning effect.
Since bespoke wargames can be very resource-demanding, some experts argue for much wider use of commercial off-the-shelf games in PME. These games, including “mini games (PDF)”, can be cheap and easy to set up. They do, however, need to be carefully selected to ensure they can support the desired learning objectives and be adjusted to students’ needs.
A Passionate Instructor Is Key
A great game delivered by an inexperienced or unenthusiastic instructor can be worse than a bad game delivered by a great instructor. Most experts agree that having a suitable instructor is key for the successful use of gaming in PME.
A good instructor must not only be trained in how to facilitate and evaluate a game, but they should also be passionate about wargaming themselves. Since gaming is an immersive experience, it is easy for students to internalize the wrong lessons if the game is facilitated poorly. Similarly, students might not engage fully in a badly facilitated game. This wastes resources and can even cause students to form negative opinions about wargaming, making them less likely to engage with it in future.
Take the Time and Effort to Reflect
Debriefing and reflection are a crucial part of learning and should be treated as an essential element of any wargame in PME. Enough time and effort must always be given to these post-game activities. If this is not possible, then alternative teaching tools may be more appropriate than gaming.
Time must be set aside to talk about:
- what happened;
- what decisions were made; and
- why were these decisions made?
Understanding the “why” is the crux of learning and should be discussed during and after the game. Discussing the results and reasoning can help students to distinguish between the construct of the game design and the results of the player’s actions. This ensures that the correct lessons are learned from the game, again aligning with learning objectives.
Post-game reflection is also an opportunity to manage the “losing” player’s disappointment and to reinforce that humans learn best from failing. If a safe-to-fail environment is established in a game and honest reflection is encouraged, then greater lessons can be drawn, regardless of the result.
Institutional Support Is Essential
Institutional support helps embed gaming in PME. It enables educators to secure sufficient resources and develops an appropriate gaming culture across the institution, instead of relying on a few passionate faculty members.
Wargaming requires earmarked resources for game development and design, from creating bespoke games to adapting off-the-shelf games, for training the game facilitators and to promote a wargaming culture internally.
Without institutional support, wargaming tends to fall on the shoulders of enthusiastic hobby gamers who happen to be on the staff. The practice of wargaming can then die when these individuals are rotated out of their teaching position.
Expose Students to Wargaming Early in Their Career
In some PME institutions, wargaming is not considered a serious practice. The word “game” brings childish play to the minds of some. To dispel these preconceived notions and biases, wargaming should be introduced early in military professionals’ careers and then be part of their education throughout. An early impression of wargaming as useful, and familiarity with different methods and types of games helps to demystify wargaming. It creates an acceptance culture for its use as an educational tool.
In the game environment, students can make decisions and experience consequences in a “safe-to-fail” manner.
Standardized tools and practices, such as a database of games available to instructors, can also help. Using the same game at different levels of education (tactical, operational, strategic) familiarizes it and saves students time in learning its mechanics. Playing the same game between institutions or between allied countries increases collaboration and creates a common culture.
When applied appropriately, wargaming in PME provides an immersive environment for students. It represents real-world friction, uncertainties, and “the fog of war,” all of which are difficult to convey through most other educational tools. In the game environment, students can make decisions and experience consequences in a “safe-to-fail” manner. Different strategies and courses of action can be tried in a wargame to test how they might evolve with no real-world potential risk to life. Through the lessons above, wargaming can be embedded in PME and provide significant benefit to students’ learning.
