Features

Member offices

Each student creates a legislative office. This office serves as the repository for all legislative activities and is the best place to track the progress of legislation. Other legislators visit the office to learn about a member’s constituency, priorities, and legislative activities.

Caucuses and Parties

Students create and join caucuses and political parties. These groups become important gathering points for communicating and strategizing with like-minded colleagues.

Bill drafting and feedback

Students draft legislation and invite others to provide comments before introducing the legislation to the chamber. The chamber leader then refers this legislation to the appropriate committee.

Cosponsorship and amendments

Members can signal their support for legislation that other members sponsor. They can also propose amendments at the committee and floor stages of the process. 

Standing Committees

Members request committee positions. The chamber leader assigns members to committees and appoints committee leaders. The committee leader controls the committee agenda, scheduling hearings, votes, and reports bills to the floor. Committee members debate, amend and decide whether to table or report legislation.

Floor

Reported (or discharged) legislation goes to the leader’s desk. The leader manages the legislative calendar, including scheduling floor debates and voting.

Communication

Members communicate with other lawmakers via ‘dear colleague’ letters (e-mails) and on-line discussion and debate forums.

RSS feeds

Students are automatically notified of developments related to their legislative interests and responsibilities.

 Assignments and Grading

 The instructor can post and grade assignments on-line and download a grade spreadsheet. Students  submit their responses in a variety of formats (word, pdf, ppt etc). LegSim also tracks different forms of participation.

Resources and Model Assignments

We provide resources to help students become more effective legislators. We provide instructors with teaching resources, sample assignments, and samples of student responses to those assignment