Treating the Classroom as a Commons: An Activity to Teach Collective Action Problems

This article presents an activity developed for an introductory United States Government course that engages students in applying course concepts related to collective action problems through a collaborative, practical, problem-solving exercise. The design requires students to engage with these concepts by embedding one collective action problem (group collaboration) inside another (developing solutions for a flipped-classroom structure). In the activity, students use course concepts to design strategies for overcoming the collective action problems that would emerge in such a course format by first creating an individual solution and then working in groups to produce a collective design, followed by structured reflection and peer evaluation. Drawing on two consecutive implementations of the activity in the same course (N = 32), the article outlines its theoretical foundations, explains the activity structure and implementation, and then describes the patterns observed in student submissions and reflections. The activity appeared to foster engagement, reflection, and transfer by helping students apply theoretical ideas to a classroom problem they have experienced directly. The activity provides a well-documented model for integrating content and practice in political science education and potentially in other fields.