Participant Resources: Debriefing Questions

With the conclusion of the exercise, you are entering a critical period of the simulation process. Debriefing is an essential component of simulation. During debriefing, the students are brought out of their simulated world and made to focus, again, on reality. The following are some questions you may want to raise in your class discussions:

l. Many students feel the need to talk about the process itself. They've gone through an intense period of activity; they need to "let off steam." What were their successes? Failures? Frustrations? Favorite aspects? Biggest dislikes?

2. Discuss the role of the other teams. Why did teams behave as they did? (Examples: Personality? Lack of information? Accurate portrayal of a country's character?) How would the real world have reacted to their proposals? How many of the frustrating characteristics of other teams were realistic? In what situations did teams play out of character? How did this affect the simulation?

3. How closely did the simulation reflect reality? In what respects did it mirror reality? In what respects did it fail to capture reality?

4. What were the foreign policy goals of your country? Did your goals change during the negotiations?

5. What particular negotiation skills or strategies did your team use to try to achieve its goals? How effective do you think that they were? What are some real world examples of these kinds of strategies (both from international relations and from your personal experience)?

6. What types of negotiation strategies did other teams use? Which negotiations were effective? On what issues were teams willing to compromise? On what issues were countries unwilling to compromise?

7. Who were your allies during the simulation? How did your country relate to your real world allies? Did other countries work with their real world allies?

8. How would the citizens of your country have reacted to your goals, your decisions, and your proposals? How do the citizens of a nation affect foreign policy?

9. How did time constraints affect the negotiations? Are there some issues on which the group might have achieved agreement if there had been more time in the simulation? On these issues, what questions remained to be addressed?

10. Discuss the role of the computer in the simulation. How did it hamper and/or facilitate negotiations?

11. How did your team work as a group? Was there conflict in the decision making process? How does this compare with real world decision-makers?

12. Discuss the flow of information. Was it difficult keeping up with the discussions? How did the students discern important messages from less important communications? Were certain communications automatically given priority or ignored? How does this compare with the flow of information in the real world?

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