Student Participation and Representation Game

Strengthening Student Politics and Representation in Higher Education. Future Lab-style Educational Materials for a Play-based Approach to Student University Governance

Prof. Dr. Eva Maria Hinterhuber, Melkon Nazaretyan, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences 

With the aim of strengthening Student Politics and Representation in Higher Education Melkon Nazaretyan and Eva Maria Hinterhuber developed educational materials for a play-based (scenario technique-based) approach to student university governance. 

Tackling the current crises of democracy demands the participation of the younger generations, not least students. In this context, the student body is seen not only as an essential element of academic self-governance, but as inherent part of democratic structures, as it offers the possibility to articulate and represent students’ interests, to take part in decision making and thus to shape their possible futures (cf. Luescher-Mamashela 2013). Against this background, the steadily declining student participation in elections for the student government bodies, as well as the low willingness to run for office, is a cause for concern. 

Given this context and drawing on the argument that gamification enables a learning environment conducive to innovative thinking, heightened engagement and imaginative ideas (cf. Kapp 2012), we developed a game on student university governance, oriented on the future-lab style model by the Education Innovation Lab for the Futurium Berlin.

The game’s rationale is, after initially discussing “Impulse Cards” questions, to collectively design positive and negative scenarios of systems of student democracy with the help of “Trend Cards” (on “social values”, “participation and representation”, “decision-making rules”, “economic guiding principles” and “transparency and accountability safeguards”). The ideal scenario is tested through “Wild Cards” presenting realistic challenges. In the following, the scenarios are discussed in plenum. Finally, their results are compared with the actual system of student university governance on the ground. 

The game enables students to “live democracy” in the form of active discussions and to tolerate and, indeed, to value disagreement and dissent. Regarding social and radical imagination as the conditio sine qua non of democratic transformations, our game aims at giving space to it and empowering students to recognise the systems’ constructed – and thus changeable – nature. 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The concept was inspired by the Zukunftsboxen created by the Education Innovation Lab for the Futurium Berlin.

Grateful acknowledgment is given to Christine Buchwald, Elliot Vojacek, Jorina Sendel and Vanda Kleštincová for their contributions and inspiration.

Student Politics and Representation in Higher Education © 2025 by Eva Maria Hinterhuber and Melkon Nazaretyan is licensed under CC BY 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

 

REFERENCE LIST  

Council of Europe. 2023. Review of the Implementation of the Council of Europe Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) 2023. Strasbourg Cedex. 

Giroux, Henry A. 2015. “Democracy in Crisis, the Specter of Authoritarianism, and the Future of Higher Education.” Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs 1(1).