Beyond the engineering pedagogy: engineering the pedagogy, the game of experiential learning

Modern constructivist pedagogical research emphasizes developing studentcentred educational practices. This requires students to do extra effort and they should be equipped with the motivation to conduct such extra work load. However, the situation is dilemmatic since many students (in particular, undergraduates) tend to do their studies with the minimum effort needed to reach their goals. In this paper we analyse this dilemma from the game theory perspective, where we try to find conditions where students are willing to voluntarily take extra course work. We model the strategic interaction between the student and the teacher by a 2x2 non cooperative game. We suggest a mechanism for transferring the game equilibrium into the desired one, i.e. experiential learning equilibrium. We also show an experiment for identifying the energy needed to shift the equilibrium towards the desired one. The paper presents one of the very few game theoretical models that were developed in pedagogical research.