Game-based Learning in Nonproliferation at Argonne National Laboratory and Texas A&M University

Our international nuclear safeguards community is a dynamic one which benefits from individuals with a wide array of backgrounds. Due to our community’s successful engagement into higher learning institutions, the number of university students choosing to pursue careers in nuclear nonproliferation after attaining an advanced degree in a relevant area grows each year. Many of these students, having spent years in a workforce already before they graduate with a masters or doctoral degree, can be categorized as adult learners and, hence, benefit from a more nuanced educational approach than traditional grade school education methods. A commonly understood principle of adult learning is to employ various learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning) to enhance the learning experience. This is especially true in the field of nuclear nonproliferation and, specifically, international safeguards, where the understanding of concepts takes place by reading relevant textbooks and/or through discussion in classrooms which can further benefit from the incorporation of an experiential component via kinesthetic learning. Leading to this endeavor, researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have been employing gamebased, simulated projects to enhance the experiential learning approach for graduate students hoping to advance their understanding of concepts relevant to the nuclear nonproliferation field of work. Since 2017, Argonne staff members have been collaborating closely with the faculty members at Texas A&M University on their graduate-level Introduction to Nuclear Nonproliferation course which is open to nuclear engineering graduate students as well as international relations and foreign policy graduate students. In this course, students learn the history and fundamentals of the nuclear nonproliferation regime ranging from the birth of the nuclear age, proliferation activities among states, the Cold War, the nuclear fuel cycle, the establishment of nonproliferation institutions, and the international safeguards regime. Complementing this conceptual understanding, students obtain from competent and knowledgeable faculty is the completion of four simulated game-based projects that serve to congeal the myriad of topics students learn throughout their semester. This presentation will discuss the evolution of this game-based approach for enhanced educational endeavors as well as the projects themselves, their learning objectives, their management campaigns, and the observed results from students completing such simulations.