Experiential eLearning

Publishing for Kindle, eReaders and eBooks: A Landscape Survey

It's an exciting time for consumers of digital content as a variety of eReader and eBook formats and channels are becoming available -- the market is clearly growing (although perhaps not yet cannibalizing print).  That makes it a challenging time for content providers and publishers since there is obviously no one standard or channel or device for reaching content consumers.  Here's a high-level snapshot overview of some of the key players at this time -- this will quickly change but hopefully the details should provide some insights that endure for a bit longer.

This post is divided into:

• Technical Formats
• Content Creation Tools
• Content Conversion Vendors
• Hardware Device-Based eReaders/Channels
• Software-Based eReaders/Channels
• Additional Resources

In reality these categories can quickly become blurred -- Kindle is simultaneously a device and a format and has its own channel.  So you'll see some names repeat across categories. But approaching it from this perspective is helpful and is one of the only ways you can maintain some clarity when exploring this complicated environment.

Teaching with Business Simulations: UK Workshop October 2009

I'm excited to be co-facilitating a workshop entitled "Teaching with Business Simulations" on Wednesday, October 28, at Imperial College Business School in London, UK.  David Lefevre, Senior Learning Technologist at Imperial, is the co-designer and host of the event which is geared toward business school faculty and educational technologists.  The cost of the workshop is US $400 and you can find more detailed information and register here. 

The seminar will cover the what, why and how of using simulations in business school teaching programs. Speakers will include representatives from Harvard Business Publishing's simulation product group, faculty experienced in the use of simulations, simulation developers and researchers. The full agenda is posted below.

Participants will become familiar with benefits that simulations provide for learning, the practicalities of using them and the range of options available for both using existing simulations and creating your own. Actual assessment data will be used to illustrate how to evaluate student learning.  Experienced users of simulations will share the knowledge they have gained through user presentations and group discussion. And the entire group will experience a simulation along with a subsequent debrief. To close the workshop, lessons learned and best practices will be reviewed and discussed with the group.

Looking to Adopt, Design, or Learn About Business Simulations?

Looking to adopt, design, or learn more about business simulations?  Below are links to our interview series on business sims. I'd like to thank all of the experts who took the time to provide interviews. Every single A-list vendor and researcher that we wanted agreed to be interviewed - this list of contributors to me represent the best minds associated with business simulations in the industry.  Here are the interviews (alphabetical by participant's last name):

Rommin Adl (Executive VP, BTS)

Clark Aldrich (author, simulation designer)

Bjorn Billhardt (CEO and co-founder, Enspire Learning)

Mark Chussil (founder, Advanced Competitive Strategies)

Stuart W. James (founder, Interpretive Simulations)

Jan H. G. Klabbers (author, researcher, simulation designer, and former Secretary General of ISAGA - International Simulation and Gaming Association)

Willy C. Kriz (author, researcher, simulation designer, and former President of ISAGA - International Simulation and Gaming Association)

Dan Smith (founder, Capsim)

Roger Smith (CTO, US Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation)

Joseph A. Sullivan (Director, MOVES Institute, Naval Postgraduate School)

Dick Teach (President, ABSEL - Association for Business Simulation and Experiential Learning)

Rémi Triolet (Chief Science and Financial Officer, StratX Simulations)

Greg Warman (co-founder, ExperiencePoint)

I would probably get fired if I did not mention that we also have a line of business simulations that we are producing at Harvard Business Publishing.  I've written many blog posts associated with our process and products, including:

• Overviews of many of our simulations including those on pricing, leadership and teams, operations management, strategic innovation, supply chain management, etc.
• General overviews of experiential learning environments for business education and a framework for assessing learning outcomes in business simulations
• An overview of our RolePlanner platform for negotiation role-plays
• And more - click on the Simulations & Games category to see all posts

Harvard University's Program on Teaching and Learning with Technology

Harvard University recently hosted its annual Program on Teaching and Learning with Technology forum.  The program is sponsored by the Harvard University Provost's Office and the Harvard Academic Computing Committee and is designed to bring together faculty and staff who support instruction so that they might share ideas, insights, and emerging thinking in technology and pedagogy.  There were some great speakers as well as a panel discussion with current students -- here's a recap.

Teaching with Online Business Simulations

Michael Roberto, professor of management at Bryant University, has a great article in the recent issue of Chief Learning Officer magazine called Leadership Lessons From the Sims.  I've had the good fortune of working with Mike when he was co-author (with HBS Professor Amy Edmondson) of our "Everest" Teams & Leadership simulation, where students adopt roles of teammates on an expedition to climb Mount Everest (see former blog entry on Everest).  Mike and Amy also authored (with HBS Professor Richard Bohmer) the popular HBS multimedia case Columbia's Final Mission, where students play the roles of the managers responsible for making the decision to allow the space shuttle Columbia to re-enter the atmosphere even after knowing of damage incurred to the vessel during launch (see online demo of Columbia).  And Mike has created other great interactive courseware activities such as the Decision-Making Exercise (with HBS Professor David Garvin).

Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business

Here's a short introduction to the new book Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business (FT Press), by David Edery and Ethan Mollick.  The jacket reveals that "companies of all shapes and sizes have begun to use games to revolutionize the way they interact with customers and employees, becoming more competitive and more profitable as a result. The book details how video games are being used for marketing and for talent recruitment, how they can be used to elicit customer-driven product development, and  how  they foster a sense of  unique problem-solving amongst their users.

The Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning

This past week I presented on our online business simulations at the 2008 Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning (conference website; presentation).  The Sloan Consortium is "an institutional and professional leadership organization dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education, helping institutions and individual educators improve the quality, scale, and breadth of online education."  It was a great conference and I've assembled just a few hi-lights below.

New business sim: 'Back Bay Battery' Strategic Innovation Simulation

Our fourth Harvard Business Publishing business simulation is the Back Bay Battery Strategic Innovation simulation (see earlier posts for descriptions of our Pricing, Leadership and Operations Management simulations).  This tool simulates the challenges around innovation and risk that face product development managers who need to balance financial goals against the need to innovate, capitalize on new product/market opportunities, and guard against disruptive technologies. Students must evaluate resource requirements, product performance, investment timing, and end-market opportunities for new technology in the context of nebulous market information and constraining financial performance criteria.

Negotiation Role Play Simulations & the RolePlanner Platform

Much of our work developing new eProducts at Harvard Business Publishing has focused on our web-based business simulations.  But we also have a catalog of paper-based role plays in the areas of negotiation, organizational behavior, etc.  These are face-to-face activities where students are paired up, allowing them to experiment with negotiation and decision-making skills under the guidance of an instructor and their peers. We knew that these role plays were also powerful examples of experiential learning that extended the power of the case method of teaching.  But these paper-based, face-to-face role play simulations are hard to administer -- they require breaking the class into the appropriate roles ("landlord" and "tenant", for instance), segmenting the class into teams or pairs (landlord 1 vs. tenant 1, landlord 2 vs. tenant 2), then organizing the distribution of role-specific and step-specific instructions (step 1 - landlords read their unique, confidential instructions and tentants read their unique, confidential instructions; step 2 - pairs negotiate; step 3 - class debrief).  We developed the RolePlanner online platform to facilitate the administration of these multi-step, multi-role activities.

The Innovation Generation -- Gary Hamel on Management and Education

The AACSB's (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) magazine BizEd just published an article on Harvard Business School and London Business School visiting professor Gary Hamel entitled "The Innovation Generation".  In the article Hamel argues that "business educators must become inventors, innovators, and experimenters to help business meet the challenges that lie ahead."  In addition to having co-authored (with C.K. Prahalad) the management classic Competing for the Future and numerous other books and articles, Hamel is also author of the new book The Future of Management (published by Harvard Business Publishing). He is the founder of the consulting firm Strategos and the Management Innovation Lab and was recently named the #1 most influential business thinker in the world by the Wall Street Journal.  This blog entry will give an overview of the BizEd article.