Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-26
Source: The Conversation – in French– By David Moroz, Associate professor, EM Normandie
Can geopolitics be learned by playing with Lego? An experiment conducted with students at a management school explores the use of the Lego Serious Play method to teach this discipline.
Geopolitical tensions and conflicts occupy a central place in our society. A full understanding of the mechanisms underlying them is essential for political and economic decision-makers, but also for citizens, both as voters and as consumers. Achieving this, however, is not easy, mainly for two reasons.
First, the study of geopolitics requires the student to mobilize knowledge from a variety of fields – history, economics, geography, and international relations – which they have encountered separately throughout their academic journey. When these fields are suddenly combined in a single course, the exercise can become confusing for a student accustomed to thinking in disciplinary silos.
Then, it is necessary to integrate the fact that a student is also a young citizen. Geopolitical issues — conflicts, power rivalries, international tensions — can resonate with the political, ideological, or moral convictions that they are still in the process of forming. For the teacher, the exercise can prove delicate because it involves teaching tools for objective analysis where the student may be tempted to engage in heated debates reduced to deaf clashes of convictions.
Faced with these educational challenges, many teachers are experimenting with more active learning methods to help students objectively grasp the complexity of geopolitical situations. It is with this perspective that we conducted aoriginal experiment within our geopolitics courses, using the Lego Serious Play method, a 3D problem-solving method based on manipulating the famous Danish bricks.
Building geopolitical stakes with bricks
The principle of the Lego Serious Play method consists of having all the participants in a Lego workshop build constructions with Lego bricks to represent their ideas, then having them explain the meaning of their constructions to the other participants. This approach thus promotes a form of listening, respect, and a collaborative approach to problem-solving.
The teaching of geopolitics seemed to us to be a domain particularly suited to this method. Indeed, understanding a geopolitical situation involves identifying a diversity of actors, territories, resources, or representations and, above all, understanding how these variables interact with each other while considering a heterogeneity of scales of analysis.
Based on this observation, we hypothesized that allowing students to physically construct a geopolitical landscape could help them better understand these interactions.
To test this approach, we conducted an experiment with 139 third-year students at a business school. They all took the same geopolitics course in terms of educational objectives, case studies, and duration.
The students were divided into two groups. In the first, some students studied geopolitical issues by participating in a Lego Serious Play workshop. In the second, the control group, the students analyzed the same issues but without using the method.
At the end of the course, we evaluated two dimensions, namely, on the one hand, the experience lived by the students during the workshops and, on the other hand, their understanding of the concepts of geopolitical analysis.
Students involved in the activity
An initial observation: the Lego Serious Play workshops generate strong engagement from the students. The participants reported being deeply immersed in the activity and experiencing a sense of control and well-being during the workshop.
In other words, the experience was perceived as stimulating, enjoyable, and motivating.
These results corroborate the results ofprevious research that showed that game-based teaching methods, the handling of objects can encourage learner engagement and make learning more enjoyable.
On the other hand, when we compare the results of students from both groups on knowledge tests, we observe that students who participated in the workshops do not systematically achieve better scores than those in the control group. While students who participated in the workshops do seem to better understand certain aspects of geopolitical analysis, notably the subjective, cultural representations of geopolitical actors, in other aspects, the results are slightly lower.
Another interesting observation: the distribution of results is more dispersed in the group that experimented with the method. Some students achieve very good results, while others face more difficulties.
The result may seem paradoxical. Indeed, how can an activity perceived as engaging produce such nuanced effects on learning?
The role of the “wow effect” in learning
One possible explanation lies in the way the method was used in this experiment. In this case, the Lego Serious Play method can employ up to six different construction techniques. In our experiment, only three of these could be implemented, due to logistical constraints.
The techniques that were not used in the experiment might have played a critical role in understanding the dynamics of complex situations, as they involve building connections, systems, and simulating scenarios by moving the constructs according to a defined protocol.
In our experiment, the students built what can be called “geopolitical landscapes,” but not geopolitical systems. In other words, they constructed the different variables of a geopolitical situation but not the interactions between them, and above all, they did not make these variables move by moving the blocks once connections were established between them.
This limitation could explain the absence of what practitioners of the method sometimes describe as a “wow effect,” a moment when visualizing a complex system of moving bricks causes an awareness through a form of wonder, a specific emotion linked to seeing the bricks and constructions come to life.
What this experiment teaches us
This experiment does not allow for definitive conclusions to be drawn about the interest of the Lego Serious Play method as a teaching tool. Our sample remains relatively limited and further research is necessary to better understand the educational effects of the method, as work on the subject is still limited in number.
That being said, our experiment allowed us to observe the interest of the Lego Serious Play method, even when partially applied, to analyze the complexity of geopolitical situations. Our results lead us to assume that the method must be used in its entirety to enable students to understand the systemic dynamics characterizing geopolitical relations.
At a time when geopolitical issues occupy a central place in economic, social, and political debate, identifying effective ways to teach geopolitics to our future — indeed current — decision-makers constitutes more than ever a major challenge for education.
The authors do not work for, do not advise, do not hold shares in, do not receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and have declared no affiliations other than their research institution.
–ref. Teaching geopolitics through games: what educational benefit?https://theconversation.com/teaching-geopolitics-through-games-what-pedagogical-interest-278282