Efficiency and effectiveness are derived from three specific advantages that simulations have over the experience based learning.
First, simulations eliminate risk and the painful consequences of poor decisions. Simulation has the ability to not just mitigate, but completely eliminate the costs of mistakes. By simplifying the world and focusing learners on understanding what makes for good decisions, simulation ensures that more managers are able to deliver superior results.
Second, simulations are able to condense time allowing years of experience to be conferred in hours. The concept of ‘time’ is flexible in the world of simulation. This approach is also highly effective –. unlike the real-world where the link between a decision and a long-awaited result becomes blurred by the passage of time, simulations make cause and effect crystal clear. Years of experience can be gained in mere hours. As a result, a manager’s “time-to-competency” is greatly reduced conferring a meaningful competitive advantage to the organization.
Third, another key advantage is simulation’s ability to limit the variables at play in a scenario thus focusing a learner’s attention on what really matters. Simulations focus the learner on what matters in the pursuit of an outcome and, just as importantly, mute out variables that don’t. In the experience based learning, risk aversion can lead to managers consistently making familiar choices. These aren’t necessarily the best choices (nor ironically the least risky!) but feel safe because the manager can comfortably divine the outcome. In simulations, ‘no risk’ equals the freedom to experiment. Managers can try new things, see the results, and build confidence for real world application.
These three advantages in combination – flexible time, limited variables, and eliminated risk – produce highly efficient and effective learning experiences that are simply impossible to duplicate in experience based learning.
The topic of simulations (what I consider a fusion of gaming technology and learning strategy) is mostly unknown to me. However, I’ve found the topic to be quite interesting over time and wanted to bring this to the systematicHR readership.
This article was adapted with permission from a whitepaper written by Experience Point.
7 responses to “Learning and Gaming Technology: The Advantage of Simulations”
Simulations are, of course, useful as a way of understand scenarios and as such can be used to understand the environment better. I’m not sure technology is necessary though. Game theory is useful if you’re looking at a multi-participant scenario where one’s action is likely to prompt a reaction. Learning, surely, is all about understanding how to do things better in the future.
Scenario planning is these day a core teaching. In terms of simulations two aspects I find useful are around process modelling & systems dynamics.
Process modelling is pretty straightforward. Model your process, assign time and resource implications & run some different scenarios. “What would happen if sales increase 50%” – you could simulate this and see where the bottleneck is. (Of course you can then look at resource implications and plan for these).
System dynamics is a bit more interesting as you can add in the effects of intangibles into your planning. “What would be the effect on motivation of X and how would this impact the final result”. By considering these elements you’re likely to get a better picture.
Whilst technology is useful, my personal take is that most of the value comes from developing a model for developing a better understanding of cause-effect. Simulation learning – yes, but don’t let your training department own it.
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Learning and gaming. Here is a topic that is gaining much attention from the learning community.
There are even groups that meet within Second Life to discuss learning (see http://blog.loaz.com/timwang/index.php/2006/07/13/my_second_life)
This is an interesting trend and I am eager to see who will be coming first with business solutions linked to Second Life such as recruiting or assessment.
More to come I guess…
Andrew: I honestly don’t know how to approach gaming in corporate learning situations. I think your examples of simulations make a lot of sense, and is probably in the spirit of the article I pointed to. What intrigues me as well is how gaming is clearly shaping the way gamers think about problems both creatively and from multidimensional paths. Can we create these technologies that effectively work in the business setting?
OK, sorry if I misunderstood the question. I’m not a gamer so can only take a guess of this. The playing of certain types of games could, I suppose, change the way gamers frame and tackle problems. There are two elements that I suspect L&D folk would need to tackle:
1) Are these ways of problem framing ‘better’, or in what environments are they effective?
2) What time does one need to spend playing such games to naturally assume these new behaviours?
A way of studying these effects could be using a large pool of relatively constantly qualified folks – eg the graduate hire population of a large firm. If you capture at the start date who was a gamer you could measure performance and then identify whether gaming was a criteria which influenced performance.
My guess is that other factors, such as numerical reasoning ability, would be a much more significant factor.
Well- Imagine the state of air safety today without the extensive use of flight sims- they are utterly central to the training and ongoing proficiancy of pilots. The same is becoming true in medical training, and of course, in warfighting.
In each of those cases, the value of the skills justifies extensive development of simulations that reflect reality. Those roles are also amenable to rigid standards of success and performance.
In jobs that are very creative and symbolic, those standards are much more flexible and relative, and simulation is a different animal.
I think most meta-studies of employment practices have concluded that the combo of mental aptitude and simulation has the highest correlation to end-success than any other method.
But even the best flight sim can’t really compress years of expereince into hours- some problems are so subtle, and some conditions arise in such unlikley arrays, that only the actual doing can reproduce.
Nonetheless, simualtion is a key technology and will be a large growth area for the foreseeable future.
To follow up on my comment yesterday, TMP has now a TMP island on Second Life
http://www.onrec.com/content2/news.asp?ID=15339