An Evaluation of a Civic Engagement Course Using Behavioral Games

This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a civic engagement class and signature assignment that is part of our university’s general education curriculum. Second, it evaluates the course using original data from behavioral game experiments. Does the class on civic engagement lead to more pro-social behaviors? The experimental data show a significant increase in students’ cooperative behaviors. Compared to a control class, students in the civic engagement course increased overall earnings from cooperative experiments by 10.3%. This paper describes the course, signature assignment, experimental design, and results.