interactive spreadsheets: they are wonk-ariffic!

An educational simulation Genre in which students typically try to impact three or four critical metrics (see primary variables) indirectly by allocating finite resources along competing categories over a series of turns/intervals.

Students get feedback on their decisions through graphs and charts after each interval. The entire sim might continue for between 3 and 20 intervals.

For example, the head of a non-profit organization might try to optimize the variables of funding and impact to community by allocating his or her time during the course of each week between:

• fund-raising;
• creating new services;
• doing menial tasks;
• doing paper-work; and
• evaluating existing services.

This is often done in a multi-player or team-based environment, with significant competition between learners, and often with a coach/facilitator. Interactive spreadsheets are often the cornerstones of multi-day programs to align a fractured department or organization by building shared knowledge and understanding.

Two Forio interactive spreadsheet examples: [here] and [here].

Interactive spreadsheets typically focus on business school issues such as policy, supply chain management [McDonald's game], product life-cycle, accounting, and general cross-functional business acumen. Despite the genre name, spreadsheets are not a platform for deploying these models, although may be used in the design document. The subtlety, unpredictability, and variability make them appropriate for training b-school students and high-potential supervisors through the direct reports to the CEO. They require, and are a pure introduction to, dynamic systems.

A more complicated interactive spreadsheet example on [global warming].

Some interactive spreadsheets also use cut scenes to set up a scenario and provide feedback.

Compare costs in costs for simulations.

Also called business acumen simulations or systems dynamic simulations.

Contrast with branching story and mini games.

See also tycoon games: what schools would teach if influenced more by Will Wright than Noah Webster and download [Virtual University].