Teaching / Open the question
The world is complicated.
The worksheet should know that.
Simulations, visual arguments, syllabi, and things to try in a room full of people. Built to make ideas do some work.
Use something. Tell me what happened.
Frontiers Simulations8
Whose Terms?318 resources
States, regimes, institutions, and the inconvenient business of governing.
01Simulation / Three resumable acts · timing needs a classroom pilot
Same election. Same crisis. Three sets of rules. Build, disrupt and repair governments under parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems. Compare real-country variations, weigh institutional tradeoffs, and turn a pattern into a testable research hypothesis.
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02
Simulation
A commission hears strong support for democracy and predicts that citizens will defend its institutions. You investigate that inference in fictional Bellmere. Two studies help you distinguish institutional support, democratic understanding and candidate choice, while showing why a convenient scale can lose important content. Follow linked respondents through exact comparisons, interpret a separate numerical exercise, and build a usable instrument within a twelve-slot budget. Then develop your own account in a new public-media case and design a comparison that could distinguish it from a rival. Your conclusions must respect legal powers, missing observations and the distance between hypothetical choices and actual votes. Created by Yoav Duman.
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03Simulation
A supplier offers a chatbot for a public transit consultation, backed by a certificate showing that stored demographic profiles are disconnected. As an adviser to Bridgehaven’s Civic Technology Commission, you must decide what evidence a license needs. Read two recent AI-persuasion studies, check six sentences against official notices, reconstruct a proposed causal process and defend an enforceable rule within a limited audit budget. Then apply your reasoning to a fresh public-service case. Keep experimental comparisons, factual reliability, citizen access and political judgment distinct while making them inform one decision. Bridgehaven and its local records are fictional. Created by Yoav Duman.
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04Simulation
A flood-recovery office promises decisions within ten days. Its responsibilities grow, files wait at different stages, and warnings struggle to reach the people controlling resources. You investigate this fictional office through two research lenses: the relationship between implementation work and administrative capacity, and the effects of procedures, expertise and political pressure. Build an explanation, test a credible rival, and choose one constrained pilot while preserving lawful eligibility and appeals. Then transfer your reasoning to a water authority with different tasks and powers. The challenge is to connect an institutional action to a public outcome without inventing a reform effect. Created by Yoav Duman.
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05Simulation
Bellara's election dashboard and democracy report tell different stories. As an independent analyst, audit the fictional documents before deciding what the public should hear. Read a real scholarly dispute about democratic backsliding, then trace authority, decisions and access through dated records. Build a transparent measurement charter with three indicators and two different rules for combining them. Compare country and population weighting, choose a verification project under a staff-hour limit, and test your rule in an unfamiliar municipal dossier. The challenge is to defend a specific warning with evidence, keep unknowns visible and explain which observation could make you revise it. Created by Yoav Duman.
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06Simulation
Larkhaven needs a transit decision. Residents submit priorities, an AI produces a shared statement, and the council must decide what that statement authorizes. As an independent reviewer, follow a fictional consultation through dated documents, competing explanations and exact response counts. Two real studies examine AI mediation and persuasion, helping you ask what was tested and which institutional claims remain open. Construct possible response tables, defend a route and process under a budget and access rule, then investigate a different institution. Agreement is the beginning of your inquiry. Your task is to make a precise finding and explain what could change it. Created by Yoav Duman.
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07Simulation / 30–35-minute guided core; optional frontier +10–15
A university is accused of manufacturing voters. Some political differences began before enrollment; others developed around classes, new friends, and a housing crisis. Choose an explanation, predict what evidence could distinguish it, then inspect a record and face a challenge to its timing. Two articles help separate field, attendance, policy outlook, and engagement. Play For class with a saved research brief or For fun with open browsing. An optional frontier changes the party choices while keeping preferences fixed: could a different ballot produce a different vote without changing anyone’s beliefs? Created by Yoav Duman.
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08Simulation / 9 map levels · 12 stories · country comparisons
Bilingual in English and Spanish (Español). A map is only the beginning. Find your bearings, read evidence, and build the skills to ask bigger questions in social science and the humanities. Each geography level offers a learning guide and varied practice questions. Follow stories about borders, inequality, gender, and belonging, or compare countries with real data. Keep your discoveries to print or bring to class.
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09Simulation / One-file lesson · plan 50 minutes
Answer the question. Show what the evidence supports. In The Complaints Department, audit a department’s reply to a resident: check the question, pin relevant values, retain supported findings, and request suitable evidence for what remains open. Assign earnings, women’s representation, opinion of Congress, or the housing source audit as an individual file, or follow a selected sequence. First responses remain visible beside later replies; optional fresh cases test the same reasoning in invented settings. Created by Yoav Duman.
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10Simulation / 45–60 minutes · optional +10
Your advice arrives before hindsight. Two envelopes take you to Canada in 1992 and India in 1956, when the next arrangement was still contested. In Reply Across, recommend a proposal, preserve what you expect, answer an objection and later reopen your prediction beside the historical record. Compare federal powers, internal minorities and the categories used to count people—then decide which parts of your explanation can travel. A narrative simulation for students with a basic introduction to nationalism. About 45–60 minutes, with an optional ten-minute Spain postscript comparing Catalonia and the Basque Country. Save and print your addressed reply. Created by Yoav Duman.
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11Simulation / 45–60 minutes · optional +10
A household has three destinations. A train arrives after the shift begins. A jurisdiction line does not tell you who needs a service. In Manytide, you follow a public-systems mission through five stops in a fictional country, making choices about records, work, rivers, authority and money. Read the evidence, predict what your arrangement will change, then return to the people and obligations it leaves behind. Explore nationalism, federalism and belonging through a story that gives your explanations something to answer for. About 45–60 minutes, with an optional ten-minute coastal detour. No prior theory knowledge needed. Save, revisit and print your field journal. Created by Yoav Duman.
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12Simulation / 10 stages · Core or Full guidance
Name a pattern. Defend what deserves attention. In Name the Problem, you join a citizens’ assembly, compare two views of representation or democracy, and develop a public interpretation. Make the political value or benchmark behind your priority explicit, respond to a challenge, and defend action, further inquiry, or monitoring. Leave with a poster that states your final interpretation and a report that separately explains your revision.
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Simulation / About 55 minutes of active work
A Door That Says Open is a single-player democracy investigation in Novara. Follow a worker trying to vote, an opposition volunteer trying to reach voters, and residents questioning power after an election. At a public hearing, test a hypothesis against records and ask for a timely response; then replay one changed rule. Apply the reasoning to Belora, a real comparative case, and a flood-plan hearing in Teren. Your explanations, revisions, and evidence appear in a printable report. Created by Yoav Duman.
Explore simulationSimulation / Solo 85–110 minutes · estimate
Three regions. One shared future. Every rule draws a line. Write Greenovia’s promise and flag, then follow language, citizenship, schools, religious access, immigration, voting and national symbols through eight council files. Explain who your rules include, exclude or burden. A new family case and a comparison lab test what you can explain. Solo take-home activity with browser saving, portable JSON backups, and PDF or HTML reports. Created by Yoav Duman.
Explore simulationInstructor guide · charter decisions and assessment
Simulation / Four rehearsals · plan 45–55 minutes with discussion
Twenty citizens want the same reform. Will enough of them act? Play Citizen B1 in four rehearsals of a collective decision, forecast the other nineteen citizens, and weigh personal payoffs against a shared goal. Compare local communication, a national coordination proposal, and participant-only incentives. Each reveal exposes pivotality and the programmed intervention effect with conditions held fixed. Explain the mechanisms in a printable or downloadable reasoning record. Created by Yoav Duman.
Explore simulationStudent and instructor guide · rules, debrief, assessment
Simulation / Solo 45–55 minutes · estimate
A headline can travel faster than the evidence. Run a newsroom, question a public-service claim, and spend two reporting slots on an unfinished bridge. Explain why you chose your records, which claims they support or contradict, and what remains unknown. Preserve your first answers, revise your analysis, and leave with a report you can submit. Created by Yoav Duman.
Explore simulationInstructor guide · evidence and assessment
Simulation / Solo 45–55 minutes · estimate
A captain offers protection. Which terms survive the captain? Bargain for your community, confront a replacement leader, and compare the same arrangement under different payment rules and enforcement. Investigate what continuing records, collectors, and guard command can establish—and what payment alone cannot tell you about legitimacy. Created by Yoav Duman.
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Simulation / Core 30–40 min · Full 45–60 min · plus discussion
A good story is only the beginning. Investigate a suspicious café claim, an accused navigation app, and a final battery-saver headline. Compare rival explanations, request evidence that separates them, and defend what the records support. Core teaches fair comparisons and event order; Full also asks students to design their own mystery and investigate public power. First checked responses, later revisions, and opened hints remain visible in a printable reasoning record. Created by Yoav Duman.
Explore simulationInstructor guide · case map and assessment
MUSE / AI & education
A little help getting from “I read it” to “I understand it.”
These learning bots help students read difficult texts, apply concepts, test arguments, and revise their thinking. Start with the source. Keep your judgment switched on.
Before You Begin Watch these three testimony videos before starting The Signal Room: 1. Police testimony: Aquilino Gonell, Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges, and Harry Dunn https://youtu.be/a8WU8MRC2M8 2. Shaye Moss’s testimony, including recorded testimony from Ruby Freeman https://youtu.be/6dn48fcHkFw 3. Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony https://www.pbs.org/video/the-january-6th-hearings-day-6-9racyj/ As you watch, note a few specific moments: what each witness personally experienced, what they learned from others, and what questions their account raises. Bring those observations to your conversation with Alex. Prefer to read? You can use the hearing transcripts instead: Police testimony: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-117hhrg45472/html/CHRG-117hhrg45472.htm Shaye Moss: https://www.gov
Bots open in ChatGPT or Gemini. You may need an account. For classwork, follow your course’s instructions about AI.
For educators
I also build activities that happen between people.
My workshops start with decisions, bargaining, uncertainty, and competing priorities. Then we use theory to make sense of what just happened.
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