Incorporating a simulation into your course can help maximize the impact of key concepts and solidify them in students’ minds.
Most of our customers are university instructors looking to make the concepts they’re teaching “click” with their students with real world experience. Simulations allow the students to play the role of manager of a department, depending upon the sim (we have sims in three major areas: marketing, management, and strategy) and they must make decisions in those areas. The simulation model then generates outcomes of their decisions, and the students learn how those work.
As an instructor, your goal for your students upon completing your course likely includes not just their ability to repeat back the information they’ve learned, but also their capacity to deeply understand and apply the core principles of lecture concepts in a wider context. This is where simulations can play a key role, providing a hands-on learning experience that connects to topics covered in your lectures and helping cement those ideas in students’ minds through practical application and opportunities for robust class discussion.
Our simulations are developed with other aspects of your class in mind, to supplement and build upon the foundation you’ve laid through lectures and other materials. Professor Jim Kitchen, who uses our simulation, Entrepreneur, in his course at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, shares, “I am always looking for alternative ways to teach the fundamentals of entrepreneurship…’The market is the wisest teacher’ is an adage that is emphasized in my course, and the simulation enables students to learn multiple lessons from this simulated marketplace much more effectively than I could teach in a textbook or from a series of lectures.”
Instructors also often find that adding a simulation to their course increases the level of participation, discussion, and interest in course topics by framing them in real-world terms and scenarios, which in turn helps students more deeply process and engage with those ideas.
This was Dr. Marina Field’s experience when using the HRManagement simulation in her course at Teacher’s College, Columbia University: “I initially thought the simulation would be a fantastic learning opportunity, but I never imagined how much it would influence the level of student learning, the depth of class conversations, and lead students to demand more time be devoted to discussing the simulation.” Simulations are a great tool for encouraging this kind of engagement and driving home the key lessons that you want to stick with your students going forward.
Interpretive will be running a 3 day HR Management simulation during the conference, starting with an explanatory session at 10:30am/Ja time on Thursday September 16th. It will be led by Dr. Hyacinth Guy
