American children are losing touch with our American history, perilously lacking the context required to understand the world around them.  At the same time, their basic understanding of civic responsibilities is diminishing in the face of education driven by standardized testing requirements.  Both history and civics require immersive, ingraining experiences in order to move beyond abstraction, a particular challenge given the growing, even overwhelming demands on instructors and instructional time.

Cicero is a new online gaming platform that uses the excitement of elections to engage and educate students in grades 7-12 about history and civic engagement.   In the online game, students play the role of candidates in elections set in the past, present, or future in which issues, not states, hold the electoral votes.  Students seek to gain an electoral vote majority (and win the game) through their knowledge of enduring principles of U.S. government and/or the issues of the day.  Repeat play is motivated by allowing students to accumulate votes from session to session, and by providing recognition to them for their increasing vote totals in a variety of ways.   As they become fully engaged, players can also start their own political parties, which accumulate the votes of their members, and gain access to a variety of tools to run virtual campaigns on their parties’ behalf.

In the Cicero game application, educators are provided with a variety of tools as well, in order to help them integrate the game into their curricula, create and manage classroom accounts, track student use and performance, and communicate with other teachers as well as online Cicero staff. 

Cicero Pilot Tests show great promise

Research with over 150 students shows the following: 

• More than 80% of teachers who have seen Cicero say they would be “extremely” or “very” likely to recommend it to their colleagues.
• More than 80% of students who have played the game rate it superior to the education they normally receive in school, and more than 60% say they'd be likely to play it even if they didn't need it to help with school.