Adapting a Governmental Training Platform to Simulate Peace Operations in the Classroom

Scholars have developed original pedagogical approaches to impart the knowledge and skills required for professional life in the area of peace and development. Experience-based learning, simulations, games, and role-plays have been used with positive results. Yet most efforts tend to overly simplify and narrow down the learning experience in contrast to the complexity of contemporary post-conflict societies. At the same time, governments and international organizations have developed complex multidimensional and multifunctional training platforms to prepare individuals and organizations to work more effectively in contemporary peace operations. Drawing on elements of the Viking training platform developed by the Swedish government to organize the world's largest peace operations exercises, this article outlines an original type of classroom simulation designed to address the educational and training needs of future peacekeepers and peacebuilders. Contrary to short simulations and rule-bound games that tend to focus on strategic decision making, it describes a simulation played at the operational and tactical levels and sufficiently long and complex to mimic reality and enable learning across the peace operations spectrum of staff categories and activities.