Recommended
01:48
Learning From Games
Sean
By : Associate Professor Yeo Gee Kin, President of The Society of Simulation and Gaming of Singapore.
More Companies are using management games as an interactive learning platform for training employees.
There are many forms of simulation games ranging from centuries-old board games like chess, Go and Snakes and Ladders, to modern video and computer games like The World of Warcraft.
A game incorporates rules and instills a mood of rivalry. A simulation represents an actual dynamic situation drawn from real-life or an imaginative world and is operational, developing into different consequences upon the interaction between players and the built-in simulation mechanism.
Simulation generates scenarios to challenge players to drive the game forward. Such games are usually played in a number of consecutive periods.
E-learning simulation games include technical, business and situational gaming scenarios for training. They take learners through the simulated process they will fact in specific real-life work or social situations so that they may experience dealing with the problems and learn the consequences of their actions.
Among the many E-learning simulation games, business and management games perhaps enjoy the most sustained interest and widespread academic discussions. The first widely known computerised management game, called Top Management, was developed in 1956 by he American Management Association.
Sine then, many game teaching entrepreneurial skills, inventory management, and specific job skills such as personnel administrtion, collective bargaining, and financial concepts and general leadership skills have been developed and used by Companies to train their staff.
Education institutes are also using games to supplement lessons in their undergraduate and postgraduate management courses.
Management games can be broadly categorised into total enterprise games or functional games. Total enterprise games cover a wider scope of the business planning and decision- making-process. They represent the firm as a whole and the decision variables cover the major functions of the Company, namely, sales, finance, production, and human resource. Players are required to make decisions at the top management level. The majority of educational management games are of this type.
In functional management games, the emphasis is on a smaller scope and the decisions normally demand a more in-depth undeerstandeing or specialised knowledge of certain functions of a Company, for instance, marketing.
Studies published in research journals point to the effectiveness of teaching with management games. The type of learning through participation in such a game can be categorised as cognitive, when basic concepts are learned; affective, when participants reflect a positive attitude in what they have learnt; and behavioural, when participants formulate or apply corrective actions at new but similar decision situations.
Although the degree of success in using such games varies and a number of factors have been identified as vital towards this success, these games are nevertheless recognised as a powerful teaching tool.
Objective scoring methods and ease of administration are usually built into the gaming systems, making it simple for instructors to assess learners.
With computerisation and internet technologies, some management games have also advanced together with the development of new business operating concepts introduced into the modern training curriculum. The use of business intelligence, including powerful data visualisation and decision support models, and the emphasis on instant access of knowledge, are built into demanding management games to provide practice in making informed or knowledge-based decisions.
Management games provide a dramatic, interactive way of learning as opposeed to the passive, narrative mode of teaching employed in traditional classrooms.
Enriched with multimedia scenarios delivered over infocommunications networks, they allow trainers to engage students in hands-on, discovery learning on their own.
More Companies are using management games as an interactive learning platform for training employees.
There are many forms of simulation games ranging from centuries-old board games like chess, Go and Snakes and Ladders, to modern video and computer games like The World of Warcraft.
A game incorporates rules and instills a mood of rivalry. A simulation represents an actual dynamic situation drawn from real-life or an imaginative world and is operational, developing into different consequences upon the interaction between players and the built-in simulation mechanism.
Simulation generates scenarios to challenge players to drive the game forward. Such games are usually played in a number of consecutive periods.
E-learning simulation games include technical, business and situational gaming scenarios for training. They take learners through the simulated process they will fact in specific real-life work or social situations so that they may experience dealing with the problems and learn the consequences of their actions.
Among the many E-learning simulation games, business and management games perhaps enjoy the most sustained interest and widespread academic discussions. The first widely known computerised management game, called Top Management, was developed in 1956 by he American Management Association.
Sine then, many game teaching entrepreneurial skills, inventory management, and specific job skills such as personnel administrtion, collective bargaining, and financial concepts and general leadership skills have been developed and used by Companies to train their staff.
Education institutes are also using games to supplement lessons in their undergraduate and postgraduate management courses.
Management games can be broadly categorised into total enterprise games or functional games. Total enterprise games cover a wider scope of the business planning and decision- making-process. They represent the firm as a whole and the decision variables cover the major functions of the Company, namely, sales, finance, production, and human resource. Players are required to make decisions at the top management level. The majority of educational management games are of this type.
In functional management games, the emphasis is on a smaller scope and the decisions normally demand a more in-depth undeerstandeing or specialised knowledge of certain functions of a Company, for instance, marketing.
Studies published in research journals point to the effectiveness of teaching with management games. The type of learning through participation in such a game can be categorised as cognitive, when basic concepts are learned; affective, when participants reflect a positive attitude in what they have learnt; and behavioural, when participants formulate or apply corrective actions at new but similar decision situations.
Although the degree of success in using such games varies and a number of factors have been identified as vital towards this success, these games are nevertheless recognised as a powerful teaching tool.
Objective scoring methods and ease of administration are usually built into the gaming systems, making it simple for instructors to assess learners.
With computerisation and internet technologies, some management games have also advanced together with the development of new business operating concepts introduced into the modern training curriculum. The use of business intelligence, including powerful data visualisation and decision support models, and the emphasis on instant access of knowledge, are built into demanding management games to provide practice in making informed or knowledge-based decisions.
Management games provide a dramatic, interactive way of learning as opposeed to the passive, narrative mode of teaching employed in traditional classrooms.
Enriched with multimedia scenarios delivered over infocommunications networks, they allow trainers to engage students in hands-on, discovery learning on their own.