Jon Aleckson and I discuss Acton Business School simulations. Check out the launch page here: http://www.webcourseworks.com/blog/acton-mba-sims-games-discussion-clark-aldrich, or take a look here:
If you want a preview of some of the material that will be covered in my upcoming two books, and you are just beginning the journey (i.e. this is a beginner level program), join me for a Training Magazine webinar, called The Unifying View of Highly Interactive Virtual Environment (HIVE) Learning.
All the information about the webinar and registration link are here:
(If you’re not already a member of TrainingMagNetwork.com, the free registration only takes about 30 seconds.)
Click here to join the discussion group:
Here's the description:
Many practitioners have been struck by a paradox. They have sensed an overlap between virtual worlds, games, and educational simulations on one hand, and yet they know that one does not equal the other.
This emerging, unifying view of HIVE learning is the future of education. It represents, finally, the practical convergence of best practices and technologies, leveraging and building upon what we already know for better results for all involved. The critical trick, however, is knowing when to look at virtual worlds, games, and educational simulations as part of a greater whole, and when not to let this holistic view obscure the critical differences between them.
You will learn:
Obviously, feel free to preorder either book in the meantime. Both the publisher and Amazon track pre-orders carefully in determining how much to promote the books, so ordering early helps spread the word about the importance of Simulations and Serious Games even more than later orders, as well as earns my eternal gratitude!
The point of this blog is to get more people creating, deploying, and using sims. One of the most intuitive place to start with non-linear content is a branching story format.
So it is really great that Chris Klimas has created and released for free and in open-source a marvelous, visual, and easy to use branching story authoring environment called Twine. Get it at:
He has also put up a lot of help, in the form of both videos and text, to get started. This is a helpful modeling tool for developers such as myself to test out content, even content that will eventually be more dynamic than pure branching. More importantly, I can imagine instructors at all levels, from middle school to college, asking students to use Twine to create branching stories for homework or deeper reports.
Authoring tools are the most obvious bottleneck for simulation development. Chris Klimas has made a powerful and intuitive tool that allows anyone who wants to create branching stories to be able to do it now.
The new models of simulations and serious games are filling that razor edge of opportunity and necessity for people responsible for organizational or community learning. In about an hour, these new sims develop business-critical concepts and drive long lasting behavioral changes in a way that is engaging for the user, reinforced by a deeper understanding of the material, and can meet certification requirements and other external measurements for the sponsor. Multiple sims can be chained together for greater depth and breadth. And their visual and kinesthetic nature make them the perfect choice for global audiences.
Army Influence Trainer, for which I am the lead designer, is the second part of a series of mini-game style simulations designed to teach soldiers the use of specific influencing techniques. AIT uses first person avatars generated through motion capture, interspersed with fast-paced games, all delivered via pure Adobe Flash for maximum portability.
is the award-winning textbook to soft-skills simulation genres, widely considered as the indstry standard reference for corporations, academics, and militaries.
is an award-winning, detailed, first person case study of the creation of Virtual Leader, a concept car for the future of education that has since been proven to develop Leadership as determined by rigorous outside research, and awarded a patent and the title "The Best Online Training Product of the Year."
