Active Learning and Education 4.0: Insights from an International Relations Simulation

This article examines the integration of international organization simulations with Education 4.0 tools as a strategy to innovate teaching in International Relations. Higher education faces declining engagement and a growing demand for active learning methods. Simulations of international organizations, such as the Organization of American States (OAS), have proven effective in fostering student participation and critical thinking skills. This study reports on a hybrid pedagogical project conducted in Brazil in 2024, which combined preparatory workshops, a mock simulation, the main OAS General Assembly simulation, and a structured debriefing. Data collection included pre- and post-simulation self-assessment questionnaires, reflective reports, and text analysis (term frequency-inverse TF-IDF and cosine similarity) of the Official Position Papers (OPPs) and final documents. The findings indicate significant gains in conceptual mastery, methodological preference, and motivation to continue studies, with average self-assessment scores rising by 31.8%. Reflective reports highlighted skills such as negotiation, leadership, and collaborative writing. Text analysis revealed how students mobilized terms related to crisis management, cooperation, and institutional strengthening, while cosine similarity demonstrated that final documents were shaped more by negotiation dynamics than by initial OPPs. These results confirm the dual value of simulations as pedagogical tools and laboratories for consensus-building, aligning experiential learning with the competencies demanded by Education 4.0.