Designing a Program For Training and Development Simulations

Hello SimDev Community-

We hope your new year is starting well. The topic this week: What to keep in mind when designing a training program that utilizes a business training simulation.

The most important thing to remember when thinking about a program that includes a training and development simulation is: Content first, business simulation second. We can't emphasize this enough. There is a tendency in the industry to build a training and development program around a flashy component (the business simulation). We urge you, please resist the temptation and try to recognize it if it creeps into your design thinking.

There tends to be pressure to excite and engage. This is good, but needs to be recognized and controlled. There is a saying by pilots: recognize and avoid "get there-itis. This suggests to avoid hurting yourself in an effort to get to what you think is your end goal. This can cause a loss of fuel and the rest is self explanatory. Build your rock solid and digestible training and development content first, and then build a simulation around that.

The training and development simulation should take your training content and let people apply it. This is a substantial pedagogical difference from assuming the simulation will do the training. To be clear here: Simulation Development companies should not and are usually not very good at making simulations that deliver YOUR training content. You are the expert at developing training content. You are the expert at what your organization needs. You are the expert of modern training and development trends. Why let a software company give you training content? This simply doesn't make sense.

To effectively create a program with a training and development simulation, there should be a highly integrated partnership. When you write a training and development simulation (or hire someone), you should be ready to work very closely at integrating your content with the delivery method of a business simulation.

In summary, it is best to create a training and development business simulation with content that is provided by you. You are the expert in this field and its up to the business simulation developers to effectively apply that content to reinforce and enable participants to apply your content to real world scenarios. This requires an effective and trusting partnership.

Have a great new year and we hope to hear from you soon.
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