Experiential eLearning

Understanding Information Architecture

I recently attended a presentation at Harvard Business School by information architecture (IA) guru Peter Morville.  Peter is creator of the findability.org blog, founder of IA and user experience (UX) consulting firm Semantic Studios, and author of several O’Reilly books on IA including Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (with Louis Rosenfeld), Search Patterns (with Jeffery Callender), and Ambient Findability.  He is currently consulting with Harvard Business School’s Baker Library and has done work for everyone from Ford and the Discovery Channel to the Library of Congress and the International Monetary Fund.

Here’s a link to Peter’s Prezi on the subject, which was a small part of the presentation he gave.  Good stuff.

Designing and Building a Platform for eLearning Delivery

For years, Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) has offered online courses on a number of management topics such as Finance, Financial Accounting, Quantitative Methods, Spreadsheet Modeling, etc, for sale to academic customers.  This eProduct line has been very successful and has been deployed to thousands of users annually, both for educational institutions (many of whom use the courses for program prematriculation gating or benchmarking) and for individual managers who can purchase the courses via the Harvard Business Review website.  The platform on which the courses were hosted was a proprietary application built by the Harvard Business School (HBS) Educational Technology Group, since many of the courses were offered both to HBS students and to academic customers via HBP.  After years of successful delivery, a decision was made to phase out this original platform and consider adopting a more robust and modern delivery platform.  This blog provides an overview of the considerations and ultimate design and development plan for this new platform.

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.

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

War Games and Simulations: An Interview with the U.S. Army’s Roger Smith

As stated in the last interview, no exploration of simulations and gaming would be complete without an examination of the work that the military is doing in these areas.   That last entry focused on work at the Navy’s Postgraduate School so for a different perspective we now turn to the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, & Instrumentation (PEO STRI).  This program office is a series of military, government civilian, and contractor teams that jointly develop, acquire, field and sustain simulation, training and testing solutions.  We were fortunate to speak with Roger Smith, CTO of PEO STRI, to learn more about the Army’s use of gaming and simulation for training.

Military Simulations and Training: An Interview with the MOVES Institute’s CDR Joseph A. Sullivan

No exploration of simulations and game-based learning would be complete without including the groundbreaking work that the U.S. military does in this area.  The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California is a graduate university attended by all the United States Armed Services, the Department of Homeland Security and numerous international allies. It specializes in education and research focused on national security issues. Within it is housed the The MOVES Institute (Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulations), a center for learning and development whose mission is “to enhance the operational effectiveness of our joint forces and our allies by providing superior training and analysis products, education, and exemplary research in the field of modeling and simulation.”  We were thrilled to discuss their work with Commander Joseph A. Sullivan, USN, the Institute’s Director.

Business Simulations: An Interview with ExperiencePoint's Greg Warman

Continuing the interview series on business simulations brings us to ExperiencePoint.  We've been fans of their work for some time and we constantly come across both corporate and educational customers who have used (and are happy with) their simulations.  The company is founded on the premise that "excellence in any field requires a disciplined approach to improving performance."  We were happy to sit down with co-founder and principal Greg Warman to find out how ExperiencePoint simulations provide that disciplined approach to performance improvement.

Business Simulations: An Interview with StratX’s Rémi Triolet

Markstrat is one of the best known business simulations in the world.  Created by Jean-Claude Larréché and Hubert Gatignon over 30 years ago and developed by StratX since 1984, this sim now comprises just part of a robust product line of three dozen simulation offerings.  Their simulations are now used at the top business schools and most influential corporations in the world. The company was founded by Jean-Claude Larréché, a professor specializing in strategic marketing at Insead.  With him since 1991 has been Rémi Triolet, partner and Chief Science and Financial Officer at StratX.  We were delighted that Rémi agreed to sit down with us to discuss the history, products, and future of this seminal simulation enterprise.

Business Simulations: An Interview with Interpretive Simulations’ Stuart W. James

For many of us, PharmaSim was one of the first sims we ever used.  That enduring and iconic simulation is still available, though now browser-based, and Interpretive Simulations continues to evolve and expand its simulation offerings to this day.  Many of its brands are immediately recognizable: PharmaSim, StratSim Marketing, NewShoes, Airline, CountryManager, Entrepreneur.  The company sets the bar for features, distribution, support, and marketing of its products. So we were very excited when founder and President Stu James agreed to discuss his company and craft with us.

Transforming Knowledge Into Action Through Simulation and Gaming: An Interview with Dr. Willy Kriz

In addition to interviewing the founders and designers of successful simulation companies, I also wanted to ensure that the best recent research into simulation, gaming, and learning was also part of the series.  Anyone who has followed research in this area over the last several years has likely seen the name of Dr. Willy Christian Kriz pop up again and again.  In addition to numerous teaching posts, journal editorial board appointments, and a prolific publishing record, Dr. Kriz was also past president of the International Simulation and Gaming Association (ISAGA).  But it was last month that I was reminded of his research when he served as guest editor for an issue of the journal Simulation and Gaming.  The issue's focus was "Bridging the Gap: Transforming Knowledge Into Action Through Gaming and Simulation".  This seemed like a great reason to reach out to Dr. Kriz and ask for his insights on the topics of his research.