Module & Simulation

For the 2018-2021 European Commission Erasmus+ granting cycle, European Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will carry out a Jean Monnet Action Module which will equip students and young professionals with knowledge of EU subjects relevant for their academic and professional lives and enhance their civic skills.  Module instructors will achieve three objectives:

  1. Upgrade and update pre-existing EU simulation modules to meet the specific needs of students.
  2. Provide short and targeted teaching opportunities for our doctoral students, targeting business and public policy graduate students, undergraduates in the International Studies major, and the K-14 constituency in the State of Wisconsin.
  3. Provide updated content to existing EU specific teaching portfolios, encompassing new developments in the EU politics and process, new economic developments, and equipping graduate students early in their professional careers with advanced knowledge of practical matters relating to the EU in its global context.

Elizabeth Covington, Executive Director of European Studies and Faculty Associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will lead this initiative, in partnership with the Jean Monnet Chair, Professor Nils Ringe, and recent doctoral recipients. Output will include:

  1. “Blended learning” formats which combine online teaching with traditional classroom modules, replacing portions of lecturing with online tasks which develop skills-based knowledge and active participation. Covington has revised courses for the International Studies major, where she teaches a seminar each spring (Spring 2019 Syllabus IS 602 “Regional Development and Trade as Tools of Foreign Policy,” Fall-Spring 2018-19 Independent Study The Balkans: Frontier or Fault Line? Evaluating potential EU accession of the Western Balkans states with Zoe Dittmann). The simulation combines traditional interdisciplinary subject matters (i.e. political science, history, political economy) with a practical exercise in EU simulated decision-making.
  2. Specialized short workshops for professional students and K-14 professionals:
  3. Covington devised two new courses. The first course, “Liberalism, Socialism, Nationalism: Re-readings for the Twenty-First Century” takes advanced undergraduates from the Enlightenment legacy of individual potential through contemporary debates about democratic norms in liberal and illiberal governments, tracing the historical origins of liberal democracy including socialism and nationalism from the late eighteenth century through 2020. The second, “Capitalism in the Age of Divided Government”, focuses on capitalism, as understood in advanced industrial nations of today’s European Union (January 2021) and the U.S., where those ideologies first developed in the late eighteenth century. This course will also include brief discussions of newer variants of capitalism in China and Russia.
Simulations

Module & Simulation 2015-2018 information