Learning Technology

Games & Learning: A presentation by Katie Salen

In late April I attended Northeastern University's Teaching with Technology mini-conference.  The event was sponsored by Northeastern's Ed Tech Center, run by director Alicia Russell.  Alicia has always been generous with her time and her staff to help inform the development of educational technology both in Boston and beyond and this conference was no exception.  In addition to some great faculty overviews of technology usage and some great poster sessions by faculty and staff, the conference hi-light was the keynote by author and educator Katie Salen, renowned expert on games and learning.

New business sim: 'Everest' Leadership & Teams Simulation

We continue to develop and rollout our new web-based simulations here at Harvard Business Publishing (recently the name changed from Harvard Business School Publishing).  I already posted a writeup on our pricing simulation so today I'd like to give some info on our second simulation, a leadership & teams simulation called Everest.  As with all of our sims, this one is designed primarily for business school students but can also be used with undergraduates, executive education, etc.  Unlike the pricing simulation, this simulation is team-based.

Immersive Education and Virtual Worlds: Croquet and MPK20/Wonderland/Darkstar

My colleague Nicole and I recently attended the Boston Digital Media Summit, an event sponsored by the Grid Institute, the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College, and Federation of American Scientists (FAS) with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.  The event was organized by the Grid Intitute's Immersive Education Initiative and coordinated by Grid Institute Director Aaron Walsh of Boston College.   The summit's goal was "enabling the age of immersive education" and it attempted to mitigate technology challenges associated with appropriating cutting edge virtual world platforms for educational use.  I've attempted to summarize the key presentations of day 1 of the summit, hi-lighting the overviews of the Croquet and Wonderland virtual world platforms.

New business sim: 'Universal Rental Car' Pricing Simulation

As discussed in earlier posts, we've been developing a new line of online business simulation games here at Harvard Business School Publishing.  Our first two simulations have launched and I'd like to give short overviews of them and provide information for interested folks to explore them in greater detail.  The first simulation is Universal Rental Car and it's a pricing simulation designed for use across a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and executive education courses, including marketing management, pricing, business strategy, operations management, game theory, and microeconomics.

A Framework for Assessing Learning Outcomes in Online Business Simulations

Like the last entry, this entry is also derived from a paper I wrote for my master's work in the Technology, Innovation, and Education program at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.  My advisor on this project was noted knowledge networks researcher Barry Fishman, visiting Harvard from the University of Michigan.  Harvard Business School Publishing is about to launch the first two products in our new series of online business simulations and I wanted to investigate how we can ensure that this product line produces effective learning for our customers.  This paper explores a framework for assessing effectiveness in online business simulations.

Experiential Learning Environments for Business Education

This entry is taken from the first half of a paper I wrote for my master's work in the Technology, Innovation, and Education program at Harvard's Graduate School of Education.  With guidance from my advisor on this project, David Kahle, I researched experiential learning theory and developed the beginnings of a design framework for experiential learning environments.  I then applied the design framework to an experiential learning platform being developed by our new product development team at Harvard Business School Publishing.  This first half provides an overview of experiential learning and that is the focus of this entry.  I'll review the design vision and principles as well as our product plans in a future entry.

Business Simulations and Assessment

I recently attend the Faculty Conference on Learning sponsored by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), an entity "of educational institutions, corporations and other organizations devoted to the promotion and improvement of higher education in business administration and management."  AACSB sets the accreditation standards by which business schools are measured. The conference had a track on business games, so it was only natural that the issue of simulation efficacy and assessment was discussed.  These discussions affect simulation design and use, especially for those of us developing business game/simulations for higher education.

Learning from Expert Innovators

I recently attended a presentation given by Harvard Business School professor Rob Austin as part of Harvard's Computer Science Colloquium Series.  Professor Austin was reviewing his continued collaboration with Swarthmore College's professor of theater emeritus, Lee Devin, on the processes, principles, and practices of innovation shared by business and artist innovators.  This work is the extension of the work in their co-authored text, Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work. 

The Laws of Simplicity

My co-worker Sam encouraged those of us working in product design to check out a new book on simplicity in design: “The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life.” John Maeda is graphic artist, visual artist, and computer scientist. Simplicity is a personal mission for him – the first chapter is entitled “Simplicity = Sanity”. In 2004 he founded the MIT SIMPLICITY Consortium at MIT's Media Lab. The consortium consists of roughly ten corporate partners including AARP, Lego, Toshiba, and Time. The mission is “to define the business value of simplicity in communication, healthcare, and play.”

Simulations & the Future of Learning

We recently hosted a workshop at Harvard Business School Publishing to help refine our strategy for developing business simulations.  During the course of that workshop we held a panel discussion with our staff and the subject matter expert workshop guests.  This discussion focused on how simulations can help us think about education and learning in new ways critical to understand as we create effective learning technology products. What can simulations and strategy games tell us about how people learn?  About the socialization aspect of learning?  About how to capture, retain, and disemminate knowledge gained during the simulation experience?  We had some of the best simulation experts in the world join us to brainstorm on these questions and more.