Hello Community!
Do you have to facilitate a business simulation of serious game soon? Are you simply thinking about taking the task on and want to know some tips? Great! We can help with that. Whether you're a seasoned corporate training and development manager or a rookie, these tips should apply no matter what. Some you might already know, especially if you have been doing a lot of management training. Even if you do, a little reminder never hurts.
Tips to Facilitating a Business Simulation and/or Serious Game
Tip 1: Practice! Really get to know your game and/or simulation very well. Preferably, if you can assist with the development, this will be a huge help. You should play your serious game or business simulation many times before you even begin to facilitate it.
Tip 2: Be a student. What we mean by this is: Attend one of the corporate training sessions that uses the business simulation and/or serious game. This will help you live a day in the life of a participant. From this, you'll know what works and doesn't work. Make sure to take notes at the end for yourself.
Tip 3: Entertain! This isn't new, but its worth repeating. We have seen many time a strange seriousness that covers facilitators when they work with business simulations or serious games. They suddenly become very serious. Why? You don't need to! These are forms and games. Have a great time with it and your participants will too.
Tip 4: Know Your Stuff. If this the topic of this business simulation or serious game is unfamiliar to you, proceed with caution! You should know the topic(s) very well. Better than your participants. Otherwise, you risk losing credibility and thus, the participant's confidence.
Tip 5: Have fun! Remember, whether this is a business simulation or a serious game, it is a form of business game. Have a good time with this. Bring your great experience and sense of humor. This will help keep engagement high and learning even higher.
We hope these help!
Hello SimDevGroup Community-
So, you're interested in creating your own business simulation and/or serious game for corporate learning and development. Great! We often see the biggest stumbling block to computer based solutions being the complex development tools. If you're looking to create basic solutions, there are many tools out there. Here are some basic tools that can get you up and running.
Basic tools for business simulation and/or serious games:
1. X-Code from Apple- This is an object oriented development platform for iOS devices. This has great visual tools and is totally object oriented which makes developing solutions easier.
2. Hype by Tumult- This is an HTML/Javascript development tool that is completely visual with very very little programming required. This is a totally cross platform HTML 5 development environment which makes for great online development.
3. iTunes U from Apple (iTunes)- We know, this isn't an actual development tool, but its an absolutely amazing resource for development assistance. If you're new to programming, applied mathematics, or application architecture, this is an incredibly valuable resource for simulations and serious games.
These are great places to get started for business simulations or serious games within corporate training and development. Programming isn't easy, but these resources can help make it easier for you.
We hope this helps and have a super week!
Hello SimDevGroup Community-
This article will share some common practices we see in training and development assessment when using a Business Simulation and/or Serious Game. This how to is not rocket science, and will not require any statistics to complete. This is a common sense guide and/or suggestions from what we've seen succeed in the past.
How-To: Business Simulations and Serious Game Program Assessment
Step 1: Write down the 3 learning objectives from your training and development program(s).
Step 2: Before participants engage in the business simulation or serious game, give them a set of 5-10 questions that measure their knowledge of the learning objectives. For example, if you are trying to teach them how to read and income statement, provide and income statement and ask 5 questions about it. This is now your baseline for comparison.
Step 3: Run the participants through your training program which includes either the business simulation or serious game. Just run the training and development program as you normally would.
Step 4: As part of the ending exercise, have the participants complete the same set of questions from step 2. This will act as your variable to compare to the baseline.
Step 5: Compare the scores. You should see an increase. If you want to get fancy, enter the scores into Excel (or SPSS) and run a statistical significance test. This is especially useful for training program sustainability.
We told you, this is designed to be a fundamental How-To Measure Success in a Business Simulation and/or Serious Game within your corporate training and development program. We know this is common sense, but usually its best to use the basics.
We hope this helps and Happy Valentines Day! (smooch!)
Hello SimDevGroup Community- Hope the week is treating you well.
When we setup a business simulation or serious game for play, we've noticed that we're often carefully watched how we setup the computers. Granted, our setup is a little more advanced than most. We use private networks (VPN), secondary routers, etc. But this is not needed. "How about some tips to a successful business simulation or serious game setup?" you may be asking. Ok, no problem here they are:
Top 5 Technical Tips to Setting Up a Business Simulation and/or Serious Game
- Tip 1: KiSS!!! Keep It Simple (Sam/Samantha ;^): Go with the most basic setup that works. This is always the best solution. It may not look like it, but we always default to this. Since you'll be working on your own network, you won't need the setup we use. Just go simple and you'll be happy!
- Tip 2: Question Technology: Take a step back and make certain your goals can't be achieved with paper and pen. Don't let the sizzle get in the way of learning and development.
- Tip 3: Practice, Practice, Practice: Setup your entire room days before the event. Do as many run throughs as feasible. We know its a lot of time, but its worth it in the end, trust us!
- Tip 4: Start Small and Grow: If this is one of your first solutions, go small! Do not try to boil the business simulation and/or serious game ocean! The best solutions we've seen are the smallest!
- Tip 5: Double check auto updates: Some computers (especially IT setup computers) are set to automatically update and then restart. The last thing you want is to have this happen during a business simulation and/or serious game training and development program. Call your IT dept or look at the auto update settings on your computer and see if you can turn them off.
That's the 5 tips. They are fundamental and sort of common knowledge, but we thought these would help you get off the ground. Even though they are common sense, its good to repeat them. Its usually the basics that are overlooked.
Have a great week!
Hello SimDevGroup Community-
We decided to take a step back, take a breath, and help you ask a simple question, "Do I really even need a business simulation or serious game within my corporate training and development program?" - This is actually a great question! We have 5 tips to help you decide if a business simulation or serious game is really needed.
5 Tips To Assessing Usefulness of a Business Simulations or Serious Game
1. Do you have clearly defined outcomes from your training program- If you don't have learning objectives, a simulation or game will not help very much.
2. Are there budget or resource constraints within your training program- You need to ensure you have all the necessary skills and resources to ensure you can handle a sim/game development project. Just check ahead of time.
3. Do you have organization buy-in- Its important that the correct people within your organization are bought into the idea of a business simulation or serious game BEFORE you start development. This will help greatly!
4. First, invest in the content and the people, then invest in the simulation or serious game- This is important! We firmly believe that investing in your developers or trainers should be job number 1! This will help preserve sustainability and great training.
5. Look back at how the idea of a simulation or game came about- Sometimes, it helps to see where the idea of business simulation and/or serious game came from. If it was brought up on a whim, you might want to ensure its a good idea in the first place.
There are many other things to look at, but this is a good start. Taking on a business simulation and/or serious game can be a daunting task. Make sure it's useful before you take the plunge.
hope this helps!
Hello SimDevGroup Community!
Apologies for the terribly long time between posts. Its been a much busier 2013 than we had anticipated. But we're back.
Ok, we often get the question, "What is the difference between Business Simulations and Serious Games?" We have a pretty strong opinion and I doubt its very popular: Very little. In our opinion, they are both game based. It seems as though serious games is popular from a marketing position. Its a lot easier to sell something that feels very trendy. Ever since the TED talk about gamification, serious games has become very sexy to talk about. There is nothing special in this except it sells.
As we suggested, this is going to be a very unpopular opinion. But in the end, action learning, simulations, business games, war games, and serious games all describe 95%+ the same things. We will admit that the terms gamification and serious games sounds a lot more interesting and exciting, but don't fall victim to marketing. They are all basically the same thing.
Have a great day!
