Business Simulation - The Simulation Gaming Process

The Simulation Gaming Process

Business simulation game developers regard their artefacts to be learning environments. When arguing for this, they most often refer to David A. Kolb's influential work in the field of experiential learning. During the last decades also ideas from constructivism have influenced the learning discussion within the simulation gaming field. The activities carried out during a simulation game training session are:

• Theoretical instruction: the teacher goes through certain relevant aspects of a theory and participants can intervene with questions and comments.
• Introduction to the game: the participants are told how to operate the computer and how to play the game.
• Playing the game: participants get the opportunity to practice their knowledge and skills by changing different parameters of the game and reflecting on the possible consequences of these changes. Permanent contact with the participants is advisable, as well as keeping the training going to maintain a positive atmosphere and to secure that the participants feel engaged.
• Group discussions: Each of the participants is given a possibility to present and compare their results from the game with the results of others. The participants are encouraged to present their results to others. The teacher should continually look for new ways of enriching the discussions and to help the participants to find the connection between the game results and the problems in real world. The quality of this group discussion plays a relevant role in the training as it will affect the participants’ transfer of knowledge and skills into the real world.

The last phase in the list above is usually called debriefing. Debriefing is the most important part of the simulation/gaming experience. We all learn from experience, but without reflecting on this experience the learning potential may be lost. Simulation gaming needs to be seen as contrived experiences in the learning cycle, which require special attention at the stages of reflection and generalization.

Thiagarajan lists six phases of debriefing, presented as a flexible suggestion and not as rigid requirements:

1. How do you feel? Gives the participants an opportunity to get some of their strong feelings about the simulation game off their chest.
2. What happened? Makes it possible for the participants to compare and to contrast participant recollections and to draw some general conclusions during the next phase.
3. What did you learn? Encourage the generation and testing of different hypotheses. Ask the participants to come up with general principles based on their experiences from the game and to offer evidence to support or to reject the principles.
4. How does this relate to the real world? Encourage a discussion of the relevance of the game to the participants’ real world workplace.
5. What if…? Encourage the participants to apply their insights to new contexts.
6. What next? Participants use their insights to come up with strategies for the simulation game and for the workplace.

Van Ments notes that the aim of debriefing is to: deal with factual errors and to tie up loose ends (including scoring); draw out general conclusions about the session; and deduce general lessons which can be extrapolated to the real world. Furthermore, the participants should not be allowed to conclude what was learned without receiving feedback (Gentry, 1990). The participants need to articulate their perception of what was learned, and the instructor needs to put things into a broader perspective. Gentry also expresses that process feedback is much more valuable than outcome feedback. As games are less-than-perfect representations of the real world, it should be the decision process used that needs to be applauded or critiqued, not the gaming outcome.