Gaming Wears a Suit

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Ink and paper is so 20th century. New MBA and undergraduate business students are accustomed to living, working, and socializing online. Because they’ve grown up on computer games it’s a logical progression for business schools to incorporate computer-based simulations into the curriculum.

Business education is catching up with simulated business models where students get to apply classroom learning to a set of real world variables. With virtual workplace scenarios and computer-based simulations, students practice choices they’ll have to make in the real world. By some estimates, more than half the business schools accredited by AACSB are using online business simulations.

What’s a Business Simulation?

The case study has long been used in business school to simulate real business situations and illicit practical responses from students. Online simulations allow students to oversee operations management of a virtual factory and network with other executives. They apply theory to a virtual workplace. The game aspect of business simulations stimulate even more competition among students. And what’s B-School without some cutthrouat competition?

Samuel Wood left the Stanford Graduate School of Business to lead Responsive Learning Technologies, whose Littlefield Technologies creates for students virtual factory in which to practice business decisions. It’s all about getting practical experience.

“You can read about bicycles, but you won’t be a good cyclist until you start riding one,” said Wood.

Professors Embrace Biz Sims

Virtual business simulations engage students. They are more realistic than than lectures and theory. They force students to apply what they’ve learned in a textbook to a real life scenario.

Business decisions are monitored by professors who use students’ choices to calculate grades, fine tune instruction, and provide feedback on specific skills. Moves executed in the ‘game’ provide jumping off points for class discussion. Actual examples serve to motivate students. There their mistakes can be corrected and successes celebrated together, breeding cameraderie.

Simulations are highly variable and customizable. They can take up one class period, or comprise a semester long project. Alfred West Jr. Learning Lab is helping professors at Wharton create online simulations that are tailored to their specific courses. Professors can start from scratch, or turn an existing case study into a simulation. After using the simulation for a semester, they can adjust it for student needs or new information.

The Case Study Goes Virtual

Critics of the traditional case study argue it can be too tidy, effectively spoon feeding students answers before they’ve adequately struggled over possible solutions. Virtual business sims can incorporate far more variables. Not only that, but instructors are able to track student’s decision processes in real time as they work through the situations.

Critics of online business simulations complain that by having students work on a computer, they miss out of the interaction with other students, thereby miss learing key skills. Business simulations are also more expensive to develop compared to traditional paper case studies.

The solution may lie in new simuluations designed in conjuction with case studies that are used together with the more traditional method. Harvard Business School Publishing is getting in on the action with online simulations designed to compliment its best-selling case studies.

Business Simulations As Recuiting Tools

In the future, it’s possible that employers will be able to look at simulation performance to verify that MBA students can apply their classroom learning. Business simulations could become a powerful tools for recruiters who need to predict how a potential candidate will react to real world circumstances.

Will there come a day when the interview process will include ‘testing out’ of a complex scenario? Could business acumen be tested as accurately as typing is today? We’ll see. What we know is that online business simulations provide a new world of possibility for today’s business students.