Predictive Power of Role-play Simulations in Political Science:
Experience of an
e-Learning tool
Roni Linser
ronil@simplay.net
Fablusi
P/L
Melbourne,
Australia
Keywords: Role Play, Simulations,
E-Learning,
Authoring Tool, Pedagogy, Fablusi, CASCON.
The scientific method has been accepted and valued
as contributing to knowledge, to say the least, because it has offered a way by
which to minimize uncertainty and enhance our predictive capacity in the
domains in which it was successfully applied. Political Science which sought to
integrate these methods to its field, and theories of International Relations
in particular, have generally failed in providing much guidance in predicting
the course of events of their chosen domain of the political – despite clearly
serious, committed, consistent and imaginative scholarship. Political Science,
it seems has contributed more to understanding the past than the future.
Analysts in these domains can usually do no more
than provide historical, comparative, statistical and rational argument to
support certain predictions, but unlike the physical sciences few can test
these predictions with experiments of physical variables like in chemistry that
help reduce uncertainty, and must wait for the course of events to prove them
right or wrong. At most what can be achieved are thought experiments of various
types and it is the aim of this paper to discuss one of these – the
collaborative e-Learning thought experiment that ensues from web-based
role-play simulations.
The lack of predictive power in International
Relations theories has always been used as a weapon to discount or attack the
utility of these theories. Still, the project of devising and improving
analytical and empirical ways of understanding continues, as does the induction
of young researchers into the field. At the Political Science Department at the
university of Melbourne web-based role-play simulations have been used, as a
teaching tool in some of its undergraduate courses in international politics
and this paper will discuss these simulations, examine their potential as a
tool for collaborative thought experiments and evaluate their predictive value.
The predictive power of simulations in political
science arose for this writer as an issue in 1993 when simulations in Middle
East Politics ran by Dr. Andrew Vincent at the University of Melbourne produced
what seemed unrealistic outcomes, predicting specific events that were later
proven to have been very realistic (assassination of Meir Khana, The
Gaza-Jericho first agreement). Subsequent experience of creating and running
simulations in courses on the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, politics
of the Asia Pacific, Australian foreign policy, Russian politics and world
politics have also seemed to produce similarly surprising and sometimes uncanny
results.
This paper examines these simulations and evaluates
some of these results attempting to understand how and why they were produced.
Is it simply coincidence, noise in the discourse of political commentary or
does this simulation tool have more utility than just pedagogy? The paper
places these simulations in the context of the ICT revolution and compares the
use of a web-based role play with some other ways in which ICT have been put
into service for the prediction of future political events. In particular it
compares the use of the role-play web-based simulations produced with the
Fablusi software with rule-based software like CASCON produced by Bloomfield
and Moulton from MIT and other rule based simulations used for pedagogy and
prediction.
The paper concludes with recommending the use of
simulations for both pedagogical and research in political science because as
the simulations discussed in this paper seem to suggest, only when
relinquishing the quest for realism in politics that one begins to catch a
glimpse of political reality.
The latter half of the 20th century, as
we all now know, has exponentially transformed the landscape of knowledge and
practice. The tools that have been made
available to Political Science, however, made little impact outside
statistically based research and making access to information and collaboration
quicker and easier. Both teaching and research (or learning in a wider sense)
are mostly conducted using a bricolage strategy combining social,
historical, economic, and sometimes psychological texts. These are cast in a
web of empirical, analytical, normative, literary and statistical methods to
construct more or less meaningful narrative interpretations of the political
and instruct students in researching and producing such knowledge.
Clearly public information enabled by the tools is
now instantaneous, vast and beneficial. Clearly also, such volume of
information and search capabilities are useful. But it is also clearly
problematic. It is not simply a problem of information overload or information
distribution. For research, education and training the problem is how to
evaluate, understand and organize information in meaningful ways that have
implications for practice and more specifically pedagogical practice.
Pedagogical practice in the realm of the political
has been slow in adopting the technology, though statistical and search tools
for research have been incorporated. But even when doing so to varying degrees
of effectiveness, it has mostly attempted to use the new tools in old ways and
CASCON will provide us with one such example.
Unlike the hard sciences which have used the tools
enabled by ICT to better model the objects of their study, Political Science
has mostly used them to create, retrieve and disseminate information about the
objects of their study - and with good
reason. The objects for study and analysis are contested abstractions. Unlike the physical sciences, the researcher
cannot physically manipulate the reality of the political. He cannot bombard it
with electrons or bounce radio waves of its surface – indeed it is absurd to
even wonder what such a surface would look like?
From a pedagogical perspective, ICT tools are mostly
used in Political Science to provide information for the user – data bases,
electronic texts, etc. - though it is abundantly clear to everyone that simply
putting up information to read is not a particularly effective teaching
strategy. It is however cheap and easy to do requiring little effort. This
‘shovelling information’ technique using higher or lowers levels of
sophistication is what Clark Aldrich recently describes as the presentation of
linear content as opposed to cyclical and open ended ways of handling it [1].
In the following section a comparative contrast is
drawn between the CASCON and Fablusi platforms with regard to their predictive
potential and the pedagogy they entail.
CASCON developed by Bloomfield and Moulton at MIT is
one of the few tools enabled by the new ICT that has been created specifically
for Political Science for both research and pedagogy. In essence it provides a
historical case-based approach that enables researchers and students to study
variables that lead to, or decrease, international conflict. Based on the
Bloomfield-Leiss Dynamic Phase conflict model [2] it provides means by which to
code, organize and compare historical examples of International Conflicts, it
puts the researcher and student in a position to analyse and draw conclusion
about similar cases current in the real world.
CASCON was of course never intended as a predictive
tool but rather an analytical one. As the authors of this tool remind us it is
only a supplement to the professional’s judgement, experience, understanding
and skills [3]. It is historically based and clearly a very creative way of
handling and organizing the information of empirical case studies. As such it
can perhaps be generalized to other areas of research and pedagogy. Any
predictive value it has lies in the user’s ability to organize information,
compare the factors of different cases using the software and make educated
judgements.
However, though not intended as a predictive tool,
in the background, the motive for using CASCON is to be able to learn which
steps can be taken to prevent conflict from escalating into open hostilities.
The authors recommend this tool to policy makers because it provides a systemic
method for organizing information about specific cases so that recommendations
can be made about current cases and their future development. The software
itself may have no predictive power, but the analytical results generated by
its use are aimed at not only predicting the course of events in a particular
case but also to provide educated suggestions to alter the course of their
trajectory.
By contrast the Fablusi platform was specifically
developed for pedagogy in Political Science rather than as a research tool. At
the basis of the approach lies the dictum that experience is the best teacher
and the guiding abstraction about the object of study that communication is the
organizing process of a community, including the communities of practice
concerned with political practice, governance, administration, or research.
The aim was to get students to become familiar with
current International realities by having them play the roles of different
actors in that arena and thus have them experience facing dilemmas and
potential courses of action that may be taken by such actors. In the course of
researching these roles students inevitably gather relevant historical
information to help them play their role in character.
Following in the footsteps of Andrew Vincent and
John Sheppard [4] and based on Roger Schank’s goal-based scenarios [5], an
approach we call ‘dynamic goal-based learning’ was developed [6] in which the
actions taken by the roles feeds back into the learning space created by the
platform and thus dynamically generating new scenarios necessitating further
action. In other words testing a course of action leads to consequences that
need to be addressed both analytically and practically in a dynamically
changing environment.
CASCON enables the user to manipulate texts
according to rules embedded in the software with linear outputs. Fablusi, by
contrast, enables linear, cyclical and open-ended collaborative creation of
texts within subject related communicative contexts.
The user of CASCON is presented with linear
information, acts upon it by adding, subtracting and coding information and the
output is reconfigured and presented in linear form. Thus it remains a
‘shovelling technique’ albeit a sophisticated one. Fablusi on the other hand
distributes information unevenly between the roles, initial scenario,
interaction spaces and resources [7], creating information gaps between users.
On this basis users, as roles, input information they create and distribute it
to the roles and interaction spaces in accordance with their objectives.
Further they must then respond to the output effects their input had on other
players’ activities. The choices as to which information they respond and which
information they input remains open-ended as it depends on the objectives to be
achieved by the role.
Because CASCON handles information on the basis of
rules derived from a specific theoretical model of understanding the political
there is no scope within the system for organizing the information and
comparing it to different theoretical perspectives. Fablusi, by contrast, uses
a generalized model of communication to study the political and therefore users
can interact with one another on the basis of different and even opposing
theoretical models of the political. Isn’t this what politics is all about?
In the first case the model of the world is
determined by a theory that is embedded in the software, which in turn
determines how information can be manipulated. In the second, the model of the
world is partially determined by specific communication contexts provided by the
creator and partially determined by the user’s creation, manipulation and
distribution of information within these contexts. Thus the creator and user
jointly construct what that world would look like – even if the theoretical
abstractions of the user may be different from the creators.
The upshot is that pedagogically users of CASCON
remain within the traditional information provider, or linear, paradigm of
pedagogy despite using the new ICT, whereas users of Fablusi study their
objects using a combination of linear, cyclical and open-ended processes in a
collaborative and constructivist paradigm.
Even if the communicative contexts are provided, as
a multi-user and open-ended environment, the Fablusi platform would be expected
to generate some unpredictable models of the world and indeed many specific
events and situations that were generated were fanciful and unlikely to say the
least. But at the same time every simulation run has also produced events and
situations that not only have similarities to the real, but sometimes uncanny
results that seem to predict these events.
Eight simulations run between the 2000 and 2002
academic years at the university of Melbourne and one run at the University of
Wales in Swansea have generated the data that we will now examine. All
together, over 600 students were involved in playing some 300 roles generating
over 22,600 messages.
Given
this enormous volume of data it will be obviously impossible to present here a
detailed picture. Indeed we are only at the beginning of this research. The
examples here were selected out of only part of the data (the internal News
reports of the simulations) after the first scan of the material. But it was so
compelling that it clearly required some thought. Given space limitations this
paper presents and discusses only one or two events abstracted from each of the
different simulations and compares them to subsequent real world events adding
a few observations for each.
1.
In
early April of 2000, two courses – Australian Foreign Relations and Theories of
Power - played a joint simulation (97
students playing 52 roles). The scenario included the death of an Australian
soldier in East Timor. The reason for this was that we wanted a dramatic event
to which all roles would have to respond – the kick-start episode [8] – and
given we were focusing on Australian Foreign relations (specifically with
Indonesia and the UN) such an incident, we reasoned, would have to raise
questions about these relations and policy. At the time, UNTAED forces were
replacing InterFET forces as part of the transition to independence of East
Timor under the guidance of the UN. On the 5th of April 2000 given
our scenario, SBS (Sim World – hereafter SW) appropriately reported that an
Australian soldier was killed in an ambush by militia gunfire near the border
with West Timor. On the 24th of July 2000 the BBC (Real world –
hereafter RW) reported the death of the first peacekeeper (from NZ), killed in
an exchange of gunfire with Timorese rebels near the border with West Timor
[U1]*. One could argue that this could have
been foreseen given the volatile situation. While this may be true, given the
bravado in government statements that usually accompanies such deployments,
this possibility was muted in public discourse. In hindsight it is easy to say
that this was probably going to happen – the reality is that nobody actually
said it at the time. In the same simulation on the 19th of April
2000, after a week long of reported tensions and the deployment of Australian
led international peacekeeping force, the BBC (SW) reported that the Malaitan
Eagle Force (MEF) staged a coup killing the PM of the Solomon Islands, Mr
Bartholomew Ulufa’alu with riots and sporadic gunfire on the streets of the
capital Honiara. Just over 4 weeks later in June 2000 the MEF (RW) staged an
attempted coup taking PM Ulufa'alu hostage and in October 2000 unarmed
peacekeepers from Australia and New Zealand are deployed to supervise a
negotiated peace deal [U2]. Again, at the time no analyst actually expected or
publicly outlined such a scenario despite the tense situation in the Solomon
Islands. Was it likely to happen?
2.
In
early May of 2000 we ran a simulation in a Worlds Politics in Transition Course
(86 students playing 40 roles) focusing on China/Taiwan, India/Pakistan and
Israel/Palestine issues. On the 11th
of May 2000 the BBC (SW) reported that General Musharraf, who less than a year
earlier seized power in Pakistan, declared that a return to a constitutional
government would follow fresh election on the 14th of August
(Pakistan’s independence day.) During Independence Day on the 14th
of August 2001, the Guardian Newspaper (RW) reported that Musharraf
surprisingly announced that elections will be held in October to return the
nation to democracy [U3]. Both the role playing Musharraf and the real leader
obviously understood the symbolic significance of the 14th of August
as an appropriate time for such an event. Was this a lucky guess?
3.
In
early October 2000, the Asia Pacific International Relations course ran a
simulation (72 students playing 37 roles) focusing on the Korean Peninsula with
a kick-start episode that has G.W. Bush as President and North Korea launching
a second test missile over Japan. At the time this was unlikely as evidenced in
the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control update in October 2000 where it
reported that a “State Department official said the Clinton administration did
not expect North Korea to break its pledge” [made in 1999 to freeze missile
tests] and North Korea extended its ban on missile testing just a few months
earlier in June 2000 [U4]. We took a gamble and went with the unlikely scenario
to see how the region would react to another missile test and perhaps the less
contentious possibility that a bellicose Bush would be the next President of
the United States. A month later in November 2000 Bush was elected and a year
and four months later, March 1993, North Korea tested another missile (both
RW). In that same simulation and in the context of discussions between players
on US military moves and the North Korean missile test, on the 18th
of October 2000 CNN (SW) reported that Russia and China have formed a military
alliance in response to US attempts to undermine them in the region. Seven
months later and in the context of US upgrade to its national missile defence,
the ABC in July 2001 (RW) reported on an agreement signed between Russia and
China aimed at building stronger ties to counterbalance the ongoing use of US
power against both countries. “The Presidents of both countries have now signed
a treaty that stresses economic and military cooperation, based, in the words
of the document, on 'mutual efforts to support the global strategic balance and
stability.” [U5]
4.
In
May 2001 the simulation in the Australian Foreign Relations course (75 students
playing 36 roles) focused on Australian relations with Indonesia and events in
Aceh, East Timor and the PNG. One element in the kick-start episode referred to
sources in Jakarta who were eagre to negotiate a new treaty with Australia and
East Timor to manage oil resources in the region. On the 25th of May
2001 the Jakarta Post (SW) reported that an agreement has been reached between
Australia and East Timor, over the issue of the Timor Gap with the majority of
the profits from the Timor Gap site going to East Timor, while Australia will
be entitled to 12.5 per cent of the revenue. On July 5th 2001,
slightly more than a month later the BBC (RW) reported that Australia and East
Timor have signed a 30 year agreement whereby “East Timor should receive 90% of
royalties from Australian mining operations for liquid petroleum and gas oil
under the Timor sea between the two countries” [U6]. Our students were off by
2.5%.
5.
In
a simulation run in May 2001 for a Russian Politics Course (19 students playing
14 roles) the main focus was on the power relations between Moscow and the
regions given President Putin’s creation of seven new federal districts, headed
by 'presidential envoys'. To show the regions that they are dependent on
Moscow, on the 23 of May 2001 our Putin (SW) decided that a sever earthquake in
one of the regions, particularly one that occurred near a nuclear power
station, and thus could possibly involve international aid from donor
countries, would make the point clear. ITAR TASS (SW) ran the article and thus
‘created’ the event with 6000 people affected in Archangelsk. Five months later
on the on the 10th of January 2002 PRAVDA (RW) reported an earthquake in
Tajikistan that according to Russia's Ministry of Emergency and Calamity Relief
killed and injured 1500-1600 people and that the International Committee of the
Red Cross, UNICEF, and the United Nations Children's Fund were responding with
assistance. [U7] Though not exactly the same place, nor the amount of
casualties or the correct aid agencies, the means, the earthquake, Putin (SW)
tried to use to demonstrate the power of the centre, had occurred in the real
world to which international elements responded as expected. By the way, on the
day of the real quake a bus overturned injuring 50 in Archangelsk [U7]. From a
pedagogical and predictive point of view natural events can hardly be said to
be political, the response to them, however, and how they may be used, is the
point at issue here.
6.
In
October 2000, one month after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, and
therefore not surprising, the Global Politics Course (124 students playing 56
roles) ran a simulation on the effects of terrorism in world politics as a
central issue though not excluding other issues. On the 15th of
October 2001 CNN (SW) reported a number of bombings targeting US businesses in
Jakarta. The source was the Indonesian Defence Minister (SW) whose agenda was
to increase, perhaps justify, the use of the military against the ‘terrorists’
in Aceh. In December of 2001 (RW) Al Qaeda cells who were allegedly planning to
blow up US, British and Australian targets in Singapore were arrested. [U8] In
October of 2002 The Bali bombing and the Marriot hotel bombing in Jakarta
continued the trend. Two days after the Bali bombing on the 14th of
October 2002 the SMH (RW) reported in a headline that US ambassador to
Indonesia “saw the writing on the wall.” Mr Boyce, it said, warned of a
terrorist threat being hatched in Indonesia a month before the bombing, a
warning that has seen him repeatedly attacked by religious leaders and a host
of leading politicians, including Indonesia's Vice-President, Hamzah Haz. [9].
Our Mahfoud (SW) already saw the writing on the wall a year earlier and almost
two years before the Marriott hotel in Jakarta. This simulation also
established the ICC which occurred only in July 2002 (RW) and our IMF (SW)
rescheduled debt to Pakistan that only occurred in Oct 2002 (RW).
7.
In
October 2002 we ran a Worlds Politics in Transition Course simulation (60
students playing 31 roles), aimed at examining the ‘New Wars’ and the War on
Terror. On October 15th 2001, the kick-start episode was published. It stated
that Knesset member Benny Eilon from the right wing Moledet Party was
assassinated - apparently by Palestinians - on his way home in the West Bank.
The aim of the kick-start scenario was to prompt the ME actors to examine their
position on terrorism – Israel has been assassinating Palestinian ‘terrorists’
commanders and leaders for some time and we wished to examine what would happen
if an Israeli political leader was assassinated by Palestinians. Two days
later, on the 17th of October 2001 the JERUSALEM POST (RW) reported
the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi in Jerusalem hotel at 7:00
a.m. that morning. [U10] Ze'evi was regarded as the most right-wing member of
the Israeli government. He entered politics in 1988 as the head of Moledet
Party. Spooky!!!
8.
Run in May 2002 in the Asia Pacific
International Politics Course (60 students playing 31 roles) the simulation was
aimed at exploring the disintegration and fragmentation caused by regional
conflicts in Southeast Asia, and in particular Indonesia and the Philippines.
On the 17th of May the Jakarta Post (SW) reported that President
Sukarnoputri declared a state of emergency in Indonesia as a response to the
upsurge of violence attributed to GAM in Aceh, and violence in the regions of
West Papua and Maluku. Emergency powers were given to the military to quell the
violence. Four months later in September 2002 TAPOL Bulletin Online 168 (RW) reported on the Indonesian government
raising the issue of declaring an emergency in Aceh. That Bulletin argued that
since July the government's move to raise the issue is more to do with the
political situation in Jakarta where the TNI headquarters is increasingly
calling the shots. [U11] By June/July
2003 the US, Australia and NZ have all declared travel alerts to Indonesia.
9.
The
final example comes from a ten day simulation that began on October 1st, 2002,
in a Social Development Planning and Management/ Development Management Course
at the University of Wales, Swansea (35 students playing 17 roles). The object
was to examine the relations between civil society and government in developing
countries. Venezuela was chosen because it exemplified a potentially rich
country with large poor population, where the government was at odds with the
middle classes. The kick-start episode opened with mass protests like the ones
that brought a failed coup four months earlier in April. On the 11th
of October, the day the simulation ended with Chavez still in power (SW),
Newsmax.com (RW) reported that “As many as a million protestors marched through
Caracas, Venezuela yesterday demanding that Castroite President Hugo Chavez
resign. The rally was the biggest show of opposition to President Chavez since
he survived a coup attempt in April.” [U12]
Perhaps separately each of the above examples is
easy to explain away - but taken together a creeping suspicion arises that
there may be more here than meets the eye.
As pedagogy it clearly demonstrates the utility of
this open-ended approach that deals not only with past cases (upon which many
scenarios were build) but also with possible future ones. Would such exercises
not help organizations represented at PISTA in preparing for future events?
We cannot say why or which particular events and
situations will arise in such simulations but we know that at least some will
have a certain measure of accuracy.
In some of these cases above the initial scenario
itself portrays events that actually occur not long afterwards (coup in
Venezuela, the Australian soldier killed on the border with West Timor, the
assassination of a leading Israeli political figure by Palestinians and
others.) This occurred in other simulations not discussed here as well. In
other cases the interaction between roles generates events that prove to be
‘prophetic’ like the Solomon Islands coup.
So how do we explain this? One possibility is that
given the scenario in all cases was based on real events, the action by
participants would, among other trajectories, also ‘incidentally’ generate ones
that eventuate – as a normal distribution of probabilities. This seems the most
likely explanation. But how exactly can we decide what a ‘normal distribution
of probabilities’ looks like for a complex strategic activity. Do we consider
each of the 22,000 messages an ‘action’ ?
A second line of explanation that perhaps expands on
the first is that given the pressures that are modelled in the simulations
participants enact solutions that real world actors eventually also enact.
Political activity in the world is clearly not a random affair. It has clear
trajectories based on the goals and interactions of actors and is couched
within historical forces shaping their context. Similarly in our simulations
the initial scenario that frames the interaction of roles, the interaction
spaces, the role-profiles and resources undoubtedly limit and provide clues as
to the sort of activities players can choose.
A third line of explanation accepts the first but in
contrast to the second focuses on the fact that the multi-user approach - the
collaborative thought experiment - allows possibilities that would simply not
occur to the individual analyst/ researcher. As such events and situations that
seem unrealistic at the time to an individual analyst, surface in the
collaborative context - “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of
ideas.” [9]
A
Fourth line focuses on the credibility stakes for analysts making predictions.
They do not particularly like giving precise predictions for particular events
as it may stretch their credibility when predictions do not prove correct.
Consequently we are unlikely to find such exact predictions in the public
domain though they may have actually been considered.
We cannot yet determine which of these answers
carries greater weight though all of them are probably involved. Nor can we be
certain that a combination of these answers is sufficient to explain the
phenomenon, or even some other answer.
A more detailed and systematic study needs to be
carried out in order to give better answers. What is clear is that this pedagogy
and platform does produce surprising results – some of which are fairly
accurate with regard to real world events.
Can we design simulations that would better focus on
specific events to be predicted? Can the dynamics in the production of political
events and situations be better understood using these kinds of simulations?
Can we assign levels of probability to some outcomes as opposed to others? Much
more research needs to be done to be able to answer these questions – we are
only at the beginning.
Today there is no theory or methodology to deal with
such phenomenon and that give us answers. Thus we are left at the gates of
might be a new field for the study of the political.
For this writer, the promise of better modelling
techniques using this sort of pedagogy that enables better prediction of
specific future events and situations is alluring and exciting. No doubt it’s a
promise which if fulfilled will revolutionize the way the political is
investigated by researchers, students and policy makers.
The ICT revolution has clearly impacted on the
collaborative enterprise we know as science. The capacity of the tools this
revolution has generated already made a significant impact on modelling objects
for scientific study.
The exploration detailed in this paper suggests that
we may be on the road of being able to better model the political using this
type of collaborative thought experiment. If this turns out to be true, one can
certainly wager that the political world as we know it will itself be
transformed by the actions taken on the basis of such simulations.
Dr. Andrew Vincent at Macquarie University who
introduced me to e-mail based role-play simulations, Dr. Peter Shearman and Dr.
Derek McDougall of the Political Science Department at the University of
Melbourne for using these simulations in their courses and Dr. Mat Sussex and
Ali Jarman who moderated many of these simulations.
[1] C. Aldrich Simulations and the Future of
Learning, John Wiley & Sons, San Francisco, 2004, pp. 23-29.
[2] L.P. Bloomfield & A. Moulton, Managing
International Conflict, From Theory To Policy: A Teaching Tool Using CASCON,
St. Martin Press, New York, 1997, pp. 98-114.
[3] As [2] pp.127-129.
[4] R. C Schank, & C. Cleary, Engines for
Education, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Hillsdale, New Jersey.
("hyper-book") 1995
[5] A. Vincent, & J. Shepherd, "Experiences
in Teaching Middle East Politics via Internet-based Role-Play
Simulations". Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 1998 (11)
(online: www-jime.open.ac.uk/98/11
[6] R. Linser, S. Naidu, & A. Ip, “Pedagogical
Foundations of Web-based Simulations in Political Science”, ASCILITE
Conference Proceedings, QUT, Brisbane, 5-8 Dec. 1999.
[7] R. Linser, & A. Ip, “Creating Learning
Opportunities Using an RPS Authoring Tool” AUSWEB04 Conference Proceedings
Surfers Paradise, Brisbane, 3-7 July 2004
[8] As [7]
[9]
Dr. Linus Pauling quoted in [1] pp. 46.
‘REAL WORLD NEWS’ URL LIST:
For
a full text comparison of the examples above and others see www.simplay.net/papers/data/ .
U1.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/874941.stm
U2
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1249397.stm
U3.
www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,536856,00.html
U4. www.wisconsinproject.org/countries/nkorea/missile2000.htm
U5. www.abc.net.au/correspondents/s333300.htm
U6.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1423233.stm
U7.
english.pravda.ru/accidents/2002/01/10/25258.html
U8. www.abc.net.au/lateline/s475521.htm
U9. www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/14/1034222685369.html
U10.
www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/10/17/News/News.36383.html
U11. tapol.gn.apc.org/168head.htm
U12.
www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/10/11/125033.shtml