Teaching with SimVenture – Business Decision Making
Hi everyone, well there’s been a little break after the Virtual Enterprise Conference, but now I’m back and ready to blog!
This week I want to talk about SimVenture and the recent experiences I’ve had teaching business decision making using the simulation; I suppose this is a bit of prep for the ICE Conference next week, where I am presenting on simulation gaming and its applications in education *plug* … Anyway after that shameless aside I hope this post will help those of you thinking about using the simulation by providing you with a practical of example of how you can structure a short course that will have lots of impact.
The brief for this engagement with the software was to help a group of computing students (Games Design Ba(Hons)) learn about the complexities of business decision making as an assessed element of their course…however this had to fit in a short period of time; four, two hour lessons over three weeks.
In week one myself and their tutor, Nathan began by providing a context for the students, discussing business decision making in the class and testing their prior knowledge of the subject with a quick post-it note exercise before presenting SimVenture as the vehicle for their learning.
To get the students started we used the new Apprentice Scenarios, these seemed to work really well providing the students with enough structure to grasp the core game mechanics while allowing those whose skills grew more quickly a degree of freedom to poke around and explore; best of all they only took around one and half hours to complete!
In session two we started to let the students explore a game and by extension the topic at their own pace. To facilitate this I created an easy scenario with key elements already in place; research, finance, credit control etc. We put the students into small teams and spent the lesson supporting these groups as they found their feet. It became evident quickly that the students were not only highly engaged but that their understanding of the topic was growing rapidly with many building very successful enterprises. At the end of the session we collected these games for further review.
In session three we increased the difficulty by presenting a moderate game, with similar elements already completed but with a more realistic market that closely mirrored the current UK economy. Again we put the students in small teams (pairs as much as possible) and while providing support we asked them to try and think more strategically about their companies, focusing on what they need to do to help them develop before key events happened. At first the students found this prior preparation hard to grasp…but as the simulation made their short-termism difficult the students again learnt and adapted with remarkable speed to build pospering businesses even in hard times. Again these games were then collected for a final review.
In session four (week three) the students were faced with their final challenge, a moderate game, with similar conditions to those previously described but with no prior set-up. As this element would be assessed the students were offered limited support; while some found it challenging…many applied the learning they had already gained and some even completed the full three years of the game early, presenting successful companies with strong growth. At the end of this session we again tested their knowledge using post-it notes and found the change in comprehension amazing, the students now had a firm grasp of the complex business decisions and how they worked together to help a company grow…a great end result for three weeks work!
So if you’re thinking about structuring a short SimVenture course here are a few quick rules of thumb:
1. Initial context is key, as this secures buy-in from the students
2. Tie the learning to assessment where possible
3. Use the apprentice scenarios for quick introductions
4. Scale the challenge each week to keep it engaging
5. Give constant feedback and support
I hope this helps…any questions, just ask!
Peace
Matt
