The impact of a simulation game on operations management education

This study presents a new simulation game and analyzes its impact on operations management education. The proposed simulation was empirically tested by comparing the number of mistakes during the first and second halves of the game. Data were gathered from 100 teams of four or five undergraduate students in business administration, taking their first course in operations management. To assess learning, instead of relying solely on an overall performance measurement, as is usually done in the skill-based learning literature, we analyzed the evolution of different types of mistakes that were made by students in successive rounds of play. Our results show that although simple decision-making skills can be acquired with traditional teaching methods, simulation games are more effective when students have to develop decision-making abilities for managing complex and dynamic situations.     

Digital Game-Based Learning in high school Computer Science education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation

The aim of this study was to assess the learning effectiveness and motivational appeal of a computer game for learning computer memory concepts, which was designed according to the curricular objectives and the subject matter of the Greek high school Computer Science (CS) curriculum, as compared to a similar application, encompassing identical learning objectives and content but lacking the gaming aspect. The study also investigated potential gender differences in the game’s learning effectiveness and motivational appeal. The sample was 88 students, who were randomly assigned to two groups, one of which used the gaming application (Group A, N = 47) and the other one the non-gaming one (Group B, N = 41). A Computer Memory Knowledge Test (CMKT) was used as the pretest and posttest. Students were also observed during the interventions. Furthermore, after the interventions, students’ views on the application they had used were elicited through a feedback questionnaire. Data analyses showed that the gaming approach was both more effective in promoting students’ knowledge of computer memory concepts and more motivational than the non-gaming approach. Despite boys’ greater involvement with, liking of and experience in computer gaming, and their greater initial computer memory knowledge, the learning gains that boys and girls achieved through the use of the game did not differ significantly, and the game was found to be equally motivational for boys and girls. The results suggest that within high school CS, educational computer games can be exploited as effective and motivational learning environments, regardless of students’ gender.     

(A)Social reputation: Exploring the relationship between online video game involvement and social competence

Affordable and accessible Internet has changed the way video games are played, allowing individuals to connect worldwide in shared gaming spaces. On the surface participation within these environments may seem socially beneficial, as these highly social, playful spaces allow players to connect, interact with, and learn from others. However, there is a growing concern that increased participation within online gaming environments comes with a wide variety of social consequences, contributing to numerous losses in ‘offline’ sociability. While considerable research has examined these claims, consistent relationships between social competence and online video game involvement have yet to be established. The current work (N = 515) aimed to examine the extent to which online video game involvement may support, or undermine, the development and maintenance of traditional social skills. The results indicate that there are unique relationships between social skills and video game involvement within online gaming populations. However, among online video game players, these links were not as negative or broad as hypothesized. The results of this assessment dispute the anecdotal attribution of a global level of social ineptitude amongst online video game players and provide insight into the potential effects of online video game play on skill development and maintenance.     

Exploring students' flow experiences in business simulation games

Business simulation games are a motivational and engaging tool for teaching business management. However, relatively little is known about what factors contribute to their success. This study explores the role of flow experienced while using business simulation games. Specifically, this research investigates the influence of challenge, skills, feedback, and goal clarity on students' flow experience. It also explores the impact of flow on generic skills development, perceived learning, and satisfaction. Based on a survey of 167 undergraduate students who used a classroom‐based business simulation game, the findings show that the challenge provided by the game, students' skills to meet the challenge, and instant feedback positively influenced students' flow. Conversely, goal clarity did not foster the optimal experience. Flow positively impacted generic skills development, perceived learning, and satisfaction.     

Serious games and learning effectiveness: The case of It’s a Deal!

Although the value of serious games in education is undeniable and the potential benefits of using video games as ideal companions to classroom instruction is unquestionable, there is still little consensus on the game features supporting learning effectiveness, the process by which games engage learners, and the types of learning outcomes that can be achieved through game play. Our aim in this discussion is precisely to advance in this direction by providing evidence of some of the factors influencing the learning effectiveness of a serious game called It’s a Deal! This serious game was created for the purpose of teaching intercultural business communication between Spaniards and Britons in business settings in which English is used as the lingua franca. This paper hypothesizes that the immersive, all-embracing and interactive learning environment provided by the video game to its users may contribute to develop and enhance their intercultural communicative competence. The study attempts to answer three main research questions: (a) after playing It’s a Deal!, did the students sampled improve their intercultural awareness, intercultural knowledge and intercultural communicative competence in business English? (b) If they improved their intercultural learning, what are the factors influencing such improvement? And (c) if they did not improve their intercultural learning, what are the factors influencing such failure? The game participants who volunteered to take part in the study were all students of English Studies at the University of Alicante in the academic year 2010-2011. One hundred and six students completed both the pre-test and the post-test questionnaires, and played It’s a Deal! A sample of fifty students was selected randomly for the empirical study. The results obtained in the tests performed were compared and contrasted intra-group, both qualitatively and quantitatively, for the purpose of finding any statistically significant difference that may confirm whether or not there was an improvement in the students’ intercultural communicative competence in business English as a result of the implementation of the It’s a Deal! serious game. Findings of this study demonstrate that the video game is an effective learning tool for the teaching of intercultural communication between Spaniards and Britons in business settings in which English is used as the lingua franca. In particular, whereas the game had a small learning effect on intercultural awareness and a medium learning effect on intercultural knowledge, it had a large learning effect on intercultural communicative competence. The study also documents correlating factors that make serious games effective, since it shows that the learning effectiveness of It’s a Deal! stems from the correct balance of the different dimensions involved in the creation of serious games, specifically instructional content, game dimensions, game cycle, debriefing, perceived educational value, transfer of learnt skills and intrinsic motivation.     

The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning

Generally, high-school students have been characterized as bored and disengaged from the learning process. However, certain educational designs promote excitement and engagement. Game-based learning is assumed to be such a design. In this study, the concept of flow is used as a framework to investigate student engagement in the process of gaming and to explain effects on game performance and student learning outcome. Frequency 1550, a game about medieval Amsterdam merging digital and urban play spaces, has been examined as an exemplar of game-based learning. This 1-day game was played in teams by 216 students of three schools for secondary education in Amsterdam. Generally, these students show flow with their game activities, although they were distracted by solving problems in technology and navigation. Flow was shown to have an effect on their game performance, but not on their learning outcome. Distractive activities and being occupied with competition between teams did show an effect on the learning outcome of students: the fewer students were distracted from the game and the more they were engaged in group competition, the more students learned about the medieval history of Amsterdam. Consequences for the design of game-based learning in secondary education are discussed.     

On the utility of experiential cross-training for team decision making under time stress

This study investigated the effectiveness of experiential cross-training in a team context for team decision-making under time stress in a simulated naval surveillance task. It was hypothesized that teams whose members explicitly experience all team positions will perform better under time pressure due to a better shared Team Interaction Model (Cannon-Bowers et al. 1993). In addition, it was posited that experiential cross-training would reduce the negative effect of member reconfiguration that can occur in certain military situations. Three groups of teams participated in this study (cross-trained, reconfigured and control). The experiment involved three team training sessions, followed by three time-stressed exercise sessions. During training, one group of teams was cross-trained (CT) by asking each member to perform an entire session at each of the three team positions. Member reconfiguration (where each member was shifted to another's position) was unexpectedly introduced at the first of the exercise sessions for the CT group and for another group (reconfigured) that had not been cross-trained. A third (control) group was neither cross-trained nor reconfigured. During training, the performance of non-CT teams improved more quickly than that of CT teams. During the exercise, the CT group did not achieve the level of performance of the control teams. The immediate effect of team member reconfiguration was to degrade performance significantly for the non-CT teams, but not for the CT teams. The findings are discussed in terms of the multiple mental models' view of team performance (Cannon-Bowers et al. 1993) and the authors discuss the relative utility of crosstraining when overall training time is fixed.     

The effect of simulation games on the learning of computational problem solving

Simulation games are now increasingly applied to many subject domains as they allow students to engage in discovery processes, and may facilitate a flow learning experience. However, the relationship between learning experiences and problem solving strategies in simulation games still remains unclear in the literature. This study, thus, analyzed the feedback and problem solving behaviors of 117 students in a simulation game, designed to assist them to learn computational problem solving. It was found that students when learning computational problem solving with the game were more likely to perceive a flow learning experience than in traditional lectures. The students’ intrinsic motivation was also enhanced when they learned with the simulation game. In particular, the results of the study found a close association between the students’ learning experience states and their problem solving strategies. The students who perceived a flow experience state frequently applied trial-and-error, learning-by-example, and analytical reasoning strategies to learn the computational problem solving skills. However, a certain portion of students who experienced states of boredom and anxiety did not demonstrate in-depth problem solving strategies. For instance, the students who felt anxious in the simulation game did not apply the learning-by-example strategy as frequently as those in the flow state. In addition, the students who felt bored in the simulation game only learned to solve the problem at a superficial level.     

Adaptive leadership in trauma resuscitation teams: a grounded theory approach to video analysis

The detailed analysis of team interactions can be a source of insight into team processes and how teams interact with technology. Video recordings afford an exciting medium for such analysis. We describe a study of team leadership in the highly dynamic, high-stakes environment of trauma resuscitation. The study was conducted through video recording team activities in actual work settings and analysing the video data using a grounded theory approach. The primary research questions were: what are the functions of team leadership and how do they vary according to task situations? A corpus of 152 video segments from 18 trauma patient resuscitation cases was compiled to address these research questions. A catalog of team leadership functions was developed, along with a categorisation of the task situations in which team leadership occurred. The implications of this catalog and the mapping between leadership and task situations are discussed in relation to the findings from an interview study and a survey study on team leadership. The methodological advantages of a grounded theory approach for in-context video analysis for studying work are also discussed.     

Tracking precursors of learning analytics over serious game team performance ranking

ABSTRACT

The use of serious games to improve collaborative skill transfer and retention has received considerable attention from scholars, web marketing practitioners and business consultants. Team rankings and learning progress in game learning analytics, however, have yet to be empirically examined. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to study the performance of competing teams in a web marketing serious game (Simbound), we highlight a combination of causal conditions (engagement, reach and profitability) affecting team rankings. This paper proposes a conceptual architecture of the forces that influence learning progress within a collaborative learning environment. This learning environment is studied for web marketing boot camps powered by Simbound at three European universities: Grenoble Alpes University (France), University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) and Dunarea de Jos University of Galati (Romania). Gaining knowledge of cases through game learning analytics is valuable for two reasons: It emphasises the instructor’s role in mobilising players’ engagement, and it tests variability across cases, offering precursors of team performance rankings. This approach to collective skill retention highlights the moderating factors of team performance rankings, whilst purposely calibrating a gameable learning environment. This paper enriches our knowledge of how active experimentation in learning analytics metrics can develop skills for real business competition.     

Team knowledge with motivation in a successful MMORPG game team: A case study

We studied the content of the team mental model with a case study about a successful online game team. This team was formed by high-ranking managers in a large raid guild to conduct a raid in War of Worldcraft. They were interviewed with a set of 5-W questions developed according to the conceptualizations of team mental model (Levine & Moreland, 1991). Toward the interview protocol, a content analysis was conducted with two-cycle coding method from exploratory to explanatory and a hierarchical framework from code, category, theme, to theory were generated to describe the team mental model. In the first cycle, 17 codes were extracted from participants' own wording for concepts that were shared by whom controlled various gaming characters. These codes are knowledge convergence about the problem at-hand, actors, events, affects and outcomes – what the core gamers have experienced through the collaborative gaming process. In the second cycle, coding was guided by learning theories. Six categories, mingled from 17 codes, showed collective knowledge of co-work process, leaders' works, work under supervision, seeking joint fun, relationship oriented, and balance between extrinsic-intrinsic motivations. From 6 categories, two themes were synthesized: the team (1) performed “joint hard work” for (2) seeking “joint hard fun.” The first theme comprised declarative and procedural knowledge representations and we consider it to be the commonality between this game team and ordinary work/learning teams. The second theme was composed of affective and cognitive evaluation components about intrinsic motivation which is in accordance with Self-determination theory (SDT, Deci & Ryan, 2000). In general, “Jointly hard work for hard fun” is the gist content of the team mental model. We found ample evidences that members explicitly recall shared motivational beliefs of team mates and emotional–motivational events in gaming. Based on the results of this study, several implications have been addressed for teachers to enhance students' intrinsic motivation in conducting quality Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. Future studies are needed to further explore the relationship between the quality of team mental models and team-level performance.     

Storification in History education: A mobile game in and about medieval Amsterdam

A mobile and multimedia game designed for History education was analyzed in terms of how it is designed and how it was applied as a narrative learning environment. In History education, narrative can be argued to be very useful to overcome fragmentation of the knowledge of historical characters and events, by relating these with meaningful connections of temporality and sequence (storification). In the game studied, students explore the history of Amsterdam by walking in the city, experiencing characters, buildings, and events, while using UMTS/GPS phones for communication and exchange of information. The History game was played during one day by 216 students, spread over 10 secondary school classes, in groups of four or five students. All information exchanged during the games was collected, and the game play and introduction of the game was observed by team coaches and researchers. The design of the game as well as the actual gaming process was analyzed with respect to how it evoked three types of storification: receiving (spectator), constructing (director) and participating in (actor) the story. Results show that the game evoked a mixture of these three types of storification. Moreover, these types of storification processes differently affected students’ engagement. Participating in the story evoked high activity in the game but less awareness of the whole story, whereas constructing the story triggered awareness of the whole story. Compared to receiving the story, both these types positively affected the engagement of the students being active and motivated during the game.     

Virtual teamwork in very large undergraduate classes

Collaborative work is an important part of tertiary education but it is very difficult to arrange and supervise for extremely large classes of students in their first year. The possibility that computer-mediated communication can be used to facilitate this type of learning is appealing from a pragmatic organisational point of view. This paper explains in detail what a ‘virtual team’ is in the educational context. It reports on an interpretive field study where students taking an introductory course were allowed to choose where and when they did the required collaborative work. The paper discusses the factors that should be taken into account when offering students the option of working as a virtual team. These include factors that influence the students’ choice. The project cannot be considered to have been successful but indicates reasons for the lack of success and suggests contexts in which it would be valuable to repeat the project. The importance of extensive preparation in terms of teaching the students necessary social and technological skills cannot be over emphasised.     

Person-centered technology enhanced learning: Dimensions of added value

Extensive research has shown that person-centered learning aiming at students’ development on the levels of intellect, skills, and attitudes is effective in face-to-face education. More recently, advances in web-technology let us ask: Is humanistic, person-centered learning also effective along the application of modern technology? In this contribution we reflect 10 years of research at the University of Vienna, Austria. Essentially, we found that, given learners perceive the teacher’s or facilitator’s person-centered attitudes and courses employ a thoughtful blend of face-to-face and online elements, courses tend to be perceived by students as carrying value far beyond just cognitive gains: for example, students indicate that – more than with traditional instruction – they are motivated to engage in active, self-initiated learning. In particular, they improve their team skills, interpersonal relationships, and become better listeners. They learn significantly from the multiple perspectives they perceive.     

Gaming addiction,definition and measurement: A large-scale empirical study

Although the general public appears to have embraced the term ‘videogame addiction’, the scientific debate as to whether ‘gaming addiction’ can actually be considered an addiction similar to substance addictions of DSM-IV is still unsettled. To date, research on gaming addiction has focused on problematic behavior from the gaming activity itself and there has been little empirical research related to pathological personality patterns that usually are associated with substance addictions. Therefore, the current study examined how game exposure and ‘problematic gaming behavior’ are related to personality patterns associated with addiction by means of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). A large-scale survey study was performed among 1004 adolescent boys (age-range 11–18, M = 14.18, SD = 1.36) measuring problematic gaming behavior, physical game-related symptoms, gaming behavior and three MMPI-2 subscales measuring personality patterns usually associated with substance addiction (MAC-R, APS, AAS). Results showed that problematic gaming and physical symptoms were positively related to all MMPI-2 subscales, while game exposure was not related to the indirect measures of addictive personality patterns (i.e., MAC-R, APS). Thus, problematic gaming should be clearly distinguished from high game exposure. High game exposure merely indicates enthusiasm for some although it may be psychopathological for others.     

The evaluation of different gaming modes and feedback types on game-based formative assessment in an online learning environment

This study proposed an online learning system for energy education, modifying the typical rules of tic-tac-toe and incorporating multiple choice tests into the game in order to develop a game-based formative assessment tool for an online learning course. In order to explore how different gaming modes and feedback types in this game-based formative assessment affect knowledge acquisition effectiveness and participation perceptions, a tic-tac-toe quiz game (TRIS-Q) with two gaming modes: single-player online game (SOG) and multi-player online game (MOG), and two feedback types: immediate elaborated feedback (IEF) and no immediate elaborated feedback (no IEF), were developed. A 2(SOG vs. MOG) × 2(IEF vs. no IEF) between-subject experiment was also conducted to investigate the effects on 109 ninth-grade students from four junior high school classes. The research findings indicated that different gaming modes of TRIS-Q did not affect the effectiveness of knowledge acquisition; providing IEF for each question answered in the game facilitated the enhancement of both energy knowledge acquisition and student tic-tac-toe ability when comparing it with the no IEF type. Additionally, the different gaming modes and feedback types did not affect participation perceptions.     

On the utility of experiential cross-training for team decision-making under time stress

This study investigated the effectiveness of experiential cross-training in a team context for team decision-making under time stress in a simulated naval surveillance task. It was hypothesized that teams whose members explicitly experience all team positions will perform better under time pressure due to a better shared Team Interaction Model (Cannon-Bowers et al. 1993). In addition, it was posited that experiential cross-training would reduce the negative effect of member reconfiguration that can occur in certain military situations. Three groups of teams participated in this study (cross-trained, reconfigured and control). The experiment involved three team training sessions, followed by three time-stressed exercise sessions. During training, one group of teams was cross-trained (CT) by asking each member to perform an entire session at each of the three team positions. Member reconfiguration (where each member was shifted to another's position) was unexpectedly introduced at the first of the exercise sessions for the CT group and for another group (reconfigured) that had not been cross-trained. A third (control) group was neither cross-trained nor reconfigured. During training, the performance of non-CT teams improved more quickly than that of CT teams. During the exercise, the CT group did not achieve the level of performance of the control teams. The immediate effect of team member reconfiguration was to degrade performance significantly for the non-CT teams, but not for CT teams. The findings are discussed in terms of the multiple mental models' view of team performance (Cannon-Bowers et al. 1993) and the authors discuss the relative utility of cross-training when overall training time is fixed.     

Student interactions in online discussion forums: their perception on learning with business simulation games

Digital technology offers new teaching methods with controversial results over learning. They allow students to develop a more active participation in their learning process although it does not always drive to unequivocal better learning outcomes. This study aims to offer additional evidence on the contribution of business simulation games to students’ learning outcomes, considering student interactions in online discussion forums. We conducted a qualitative research with the online discussion forums of 5 different courses at bachelor and master levels, which involves 41 students’ teams. The final sample was composed of 3681 messages posted by the students. The results reveal that some generic and specific managerial skills exert a positive influence on learning outcomes. Students mostly highlighted teamwork, decision-making, information processing, reaching agreements, and dealing with uncertainty as the most relevant contributions of the game towards their learning. These results have instructional and pedagogical implications for determining the best way to enhance students’ motivation and learning outcomes when using digital technology methods, which involves recommendations that affect their design and monitoring.