Teaching Ancient Roman History with Civilization IV

On the heels of my post about using Civilization for teaching history (which garnered a lot more hits than I expected … thanks GameCulture!), Dr. Shawn Graham contacted me about his personal experiences using Civilization IV in teaching his distant students in classical history online.

Graham crafted a scenario in Civ IV focusing on AD 69, the year after Nero’s assassination. This became known as The Year of the Four Emperors, as rivals across the empire made a lunge for power. Graham used the Ancient Mediterranean Mod map, then used the UN mod in place of the Roman Senate. Players can re-write history in the game by choosing a faction then leading their emperor to “victory” through defeating the other sides or forging an alliance.

Most interestingly, he documented the use of his scenario in his WebCT course with students spread across Canada. First, the game threw historically unrealistic curveballs, such as Vespasian consistently converting to Judaism. Another was the anachronism of the UN governing in Ancient Rome (this was modified with a hack shared with Graham by the members of the Civ modding community … the UN became the Roman Senate, in name at least, following the hack).

So, Graham threw out the idea to his students, suggesting they could optionally play through his scenario in lieu of writing an end of course essay:

Play a game, or write an essay? I figured it would be a no-brainer. Now of course, not everyone had a copy of the game, and I couldn’t force them to buy it. There were a number though who did have a copy, and they gave it a try. The response was…. well, you know that odd uncle you have, who turns up at family gatherings, and every one tries to humour him without causing too much disruption? It was something like that. “I enjoyed it Sir, it really made me think differently about what was going on in AD69… but if it’s alright with you, I’d rather write an essay” was a typical response.

The problem, Graham realized, was a lack of understanding what the expectations were for playing through a videogame for a grade versus writing the traditional essay. Expectations for essays were known factors … expectations for playing through a scenario in Civilization were not. For future endeavors, Graham plans to spell out expectations for the videogame option much more explicitly.

All told, Graham’s experiences are very interesting. You can download his scenario from PlanetCivilization here. You can follow his ongoing research on simulating Roman archaeology over at University of Manitoba here. Finally, his most excellent blog, covering online education, educational gaming, using Civ IV for educational purposes, and other interesting items, is here.

Civilization Mods for Teaching History

Want to use Sid Meier’s Civilization video game series for history and social studies in the classroom? Why reinvent the wheel when these two sites provide all you need for successfully incorporating a unit on history through playing Civilization.

The first site is called CivWorld, and is based over at U. Wisconsin. Kurt Squire’s dissertation centered on researching the uses of Civilization within educational environments. The site offers a host of mods for teaching from AD 100 to the Industrial Age, and comes complete with related curriculum.
URL: http://civworld.gameslearningsociety.org/

Our friends north of the border offer the History Canada Game. Here’s a site devoted to Civilization III mods that guide students in Canadian history from 1534 onwards. Players can choose from the British, French, Ojibwe, or Mi’kmaq perspectives. A slew of related resources are also available.
URL: http://www.historycanadagame.com/