Game Theory

UCLA professor Peter Nonacs teaches behavioral theory by letting students “cheat” in his “insanely hard” exams by letting them use whatever resources they want, including the web and working together. His objective is to have his students learn game theory by actually practicing it:

Much of evolution and natural selection can be summarized in three short words: “Life is games.” In any game, the object is to win—be that defined as leaving the most genes in the next generation, getting the best grade on a midterm, or successfully inculcating critical thinking into your students. An entire field of study, Game Theory, is devoted to mathematically describing the games that nature plays. Games can determine why ant colonies do what they do, how viruses evolve to exploit hosts, or how human societies organize and function.

— Nonacs (2013): Why I Let My Students Cheat On Their Game Theory Exam on PopSci.com.

My Environmental Science students are facing a similar problem with their final project. It’s a group project — their objective is to revamp the recycling system at school to make it work better — and I’ve been trying to get out of their way as much as possible. Not only do they have to figure out how to solve an environmental problem (they have an outline of how to do so in their text, but they have to figure out how to put it into practice), but they also have to figure out how to work together as a group to get the project done and write up a final report. The latter problem tends to be the harder, but in having to figure out how to lead, follow, and work as a team, it’s probably the more important lesson in the long term.