Abstract
Education today faces a huge challenge: How to adapt educational methods and content to the opportunities of the online world while keeping the strengths of face-to-face interaction? And what does this mean for simulation games? In our view, blended formats – i.e. the combination of online and on-site phases of a simulation game – provide the most promising answer. They integrate and combine the strengths and at the same time balance the weaknesses of both worlds, digital and analogue. Based on our own practical experience, we outline the benefits and some of the key challenges in adapting analogue simulation games to the online world. We then present our understanding of how to use simulation games in blended learning contexts. In sum, we argue that blended formats are a valuable and promising addition to traditional, analogue simulation games. More research is necessary to empirically measure the positive learning effects.
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Notes
- 1.
http://www.icons.umd.edu/policy/home, accessed: 8 December 2016.
- 2.
http://info.legsim.org/, accessed: 8 December 2016.
- 3.
The authors have developed a platform for online simulation games that provides a variety of game content and scenarios. The platform is in a constant state of development. At the time of writing (December 2016), over 80 simulation games have been played at schools and universities in Germany and abroad, involving more than 1500 participants. Further activity is in planning.
- 4.
The Khan Academy’s free videos have received over 1 billion plays on YouTube. (http://vidstatsx.com/khanacademy/youtube-channel, accessed: 16 January 2017).
- 5.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/massive-open-online/courses-market-2014-2018/prweb12018014.htm, accessed: 08 December 2016.
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Raiser, S., Warkalla, B., Schneider, A., Kaiser, K. (2018). “Will It Blend?” Combining Online and On-Site Elements in Simulation Games. In: Bursens, P., Donche, V., Gijbels, D., Spooren, P. (eds) Simulations of Decision-Making as Active Learning Tools. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74147-5_7
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