Increasing demands on instructors and pressure on tertiary Institutions to provide work-ready graduates, instructors are looking for new ways to engage their students as a means of ensuring success.

What is action learning?

Action learning is not one specific teaching method, but rather a philosophy and an approach which encourages action within a team environment where learning is every participant’s job. All action learning approaches are philosophically rooted in theories of learning from experience, as practiced collaboratively with others through some form of action research.

Education scholars agree upon three principles that form the foundation of any action learning course:

1. Learning is acquired through action and dedication to the task at hand.
2. Knowledge creation and utilization are collective activities, wherein, learning becomes everyone’s job.
3. Users demonstrate a learning-to-learn aptitude, allowing them to question the underlying assumptions of practice.

Why action learning?

In the modern teaching environment, more is needed from teaching faculty in communicating and delivering course content. Socratic and other traditional teaching methods are not engaging students as effectively as they once did. Students now need to be actively involved in their learning, rather than passively participating.

Employing action learning principles within a course enables students to resolve and take action on real problems in real time, and learning while doing so. Participants become engaged within the learning process and learn transferrable skills in the process. Further, by encouraging learning through doing within and among groups, an individual participant realises that their viewpoint is just that – it is no more than a hypothesis. Through this learning outcome, the participant reaches a reflective state. These reflective states are arguably where significant learning is achieved through challenging assumptions and preconceptions about business.

It is thought that action learning also increases an individual’s capacity to collaborate. By being stimulated intellectually by their peers within this environment, they gain access to other people’s worldviews, therefore, enabling them to challenge their own views and behaviours, providing further opportunities for growth. The team-based nature of action learning often encourages new theories or ideas which may not have been reached through traditional teaching methods.

The outcomes from action learning produce greater self-efficacy along with heightened states of autonomy, meaning and responsibility. Authors agree that action learning is the first step for participants in a journey toward greater self-insight, greater capacity to learn from experience, and greater awareness of the political and cultural dimensions of an organization. For organizations, it is often a first step toward linking individual learning with systemic learning and change (Marsick & O’Neil, 1999).

What does action learning look like?

A typical action learning program covers aspects of traditional learning models, where a series of presentations might be given on a specific theory or topic, and then builds on this through applying prior and new knowledge to a live project. This environment then provides intrinsic feedback from the work itself, rather than from an external authority (e.g. graded assignments).

Throughout the course, participants continue to work on the project with assistance from other participants, as well as from qualified facilitators, who help foster an understanding of the work as well as the theories taught. The facilitator in each team is critical to change agency. It is important for them to observe teams during meetings and provide feedback to individual members and/or the team. However, the facilitator in this scenario should not become a supervisor, rather, only to encourage free discussion, reflection, thought and critical analysis.

Assessing action learning

Measurement may require key performance indicators that are not typically used within traditional teaching methods, since individuals and teams create their own workplace reality through ongoing reflection. However, conventional methods for assessment (survey and evaluation/examination) can still be employed based on the learning outcomes of the training or course. Inman and Vernon (1997)  suggest the use of narratives and dialogical approaches to assessments, such as scenarios, to embed learning through consensus-building processes.

What forms can action learning take?

One of the more common forms of action learning within higher education is business simulators. These are employed alongside traditional lectures as a teaching or learning resource where students form a management team to run their own virtual company. To succeed in action learning participants must apply their learned knowledge to a live and responsive project (their simulated company). This environment poses multiple different situations and problems that students must address over the course of the simulation.

As the simulation progresses participants receive both intrinsic and extrinsic feedback from the simulation itself, for example Shareholder Value (in MikesBikes Intro & MikesBikes Advanced) and Marketing Contribution (in Music2Go Marketing & AdSim Advertising), and from their group. Business simulations also provide the perfect opportunity to integrate reflective assignments to explore the scenario and identify what students take away from the action learning exercise.

Throughout this process, instructors and professors (which under this philosophy are the learning facilitators), work alongside students to facilitate group discussion. This can be done in class, workshops or group meetings.

Contact us if you would like more information on simulations and action learning, or access to a free demo account for one of our simulations.

The term gamification is a relatively recent addition to the scholarly vernacular. In fact, the first documented use of the term doesn’t appear until 2008 (Detering, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011). While there have been a number of definitions put forward, most publications agree on a general definition being the use of game elements and design in a non-game setting (Seaborn & Fels, 2015). The broad use of games among members of the millennial generation creates an opportunity for increasing student engagement and motivation in traditionally non-game environments, such as a business school. Given this, educators are increasingly using gamification techniques to increase student engagement (Seaborn & Fels, 2015). These include the use of advanced business simulations. Gamification applied to these kinds of simulations can increase engagement, motivation, targeted learning outcomes, critical thinking skills and cognitive reasoning.

Gamification includes a variety of methods, the most basic of which is the use of game elements to create a gamified experience. Game elements include:

1. immediate feedback on performance through the use of badges and icons,
2. leaderboards,
3. awards,
4. interaction with other players.

Research indicates that the use of these game elements can result in an increase in engagement and motivation (Thom, Millen, & DiMicco, 2012). Other implementations of gamification, such as business simulations, appear to have longer lasting positive effects on not only participation but more so on desired learning outcomes, especially within an educational setting.

The purpose of educational business simulations, at their core, is to create an experiential learning environment to improve the learning outcomes and student success. Through a gamification lens, business simulations do that. Each of Smartsims’ Business Simulations easily tick off those requirements:

1. Immediate Feedback on Performance through Icons

The above is a picture of MikesBikes Introduction interface.

2. Leaderboards

The above is a picture of Music2Go’s class specific leaderboard (note we also have a Hall of Fame tracking the performance of teams throughout the world).

3. Awards

Smartsims Business Simulations are strong believers in rewarding excellence. Every year the Smartsims team holds the MikesBikes World Championships to find the ‘best of the best’ and award the winning team. Further, the students who achieve top of their class or enter into the Hall of Fame are given notoriety within our website through an article/interview as well as the Worldwide Leaderboard.

4. Interaction with Other Players

MikesBikes encourage interaction with other plays both directly and indirectly. Often students can form the ‘management team’ of their firm where they interact directly with each other to enter the important decisions of their team. Students will also be competing directly against other teams within their course to achieve the highest Shareholder Value (one of the main KPIs within MikesBikes).

Gamification and Business Simulations

Gamification can be viewed as an instrument within the toolbox of experiential learning, and as such, can be used to enhance desired learning outcomes. These desired learning outcomes include the development of critical thinking skills, increased motivation, and greater cognitive ability (Lovelace, Eggers, & Dyck, 2016). Rousseau (2012) describes the critical thinking process as “involving questioning assumptions, evaluating evidence, and testing the logic of ideas, proposals and courses of actions” (p. 13). An advanced business simulation such as MikesBikes includes rounds of play in which assumptions are drawn, and data is analyzed before decisions are made. The start of each new round gives the student an opportunity to reflect on the outcomes of previous decisions, and use that knowledge to reanalyze data and make new inferences. Ultimately, through the use of simulation students must go through the various stages of critical thinking. Furthermore, they simulate problems that build over time and become more involved as the simulation advances. This increases student knowledge and cognitive reasoning (Collins & Halverson as cited in D.J., Beedle, & Rouse, 2014).

Gamification is a relatively new and continually evolving application and can range in impact. Educational business simulations, such as MikesBikes, can use a variety of gamification techniques to enhance the learning experience, as well as increasing student engagement and motivation. This is particularly important in the modern educational environment and the challenges of engaging the millennial generation. However, the most attractive outcome in the combination of gamification and simulation is the development of critical thinking skills and cognitive reasoning, both of which are very difficult to achieve in a typical learning environment.

References

Cadotte, E. (2016). Creating Value in Marketing and Business Simulations: An Author’s Viewpoint. Journal of Marketing Education , 38 (2), 119-129.

Cheong, C., Filippou, J., & Cheon, F. (2014). Towards the Gamification of Learning: Investigating Student Perceptions of Game Elements. Journal of Information Systems Education , 25 (3), 223 – 244.

D.J., F., Beedle, J., & Rouse, S. (2014). Gamification: A Study of Business Teacher Educators’ Knowledge of, Attitudes Towards and Experiences with the Gamification of Activities in the Classroom. The Journal of Research in Business Education , 56.1, 1-16.

Detering, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining “Gamification”. Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments (pp. 9-15). Tampere: ACM.

Lawley, E. (2012, July – August). Games as an Alternative Lens for Design. Interactions , 18 – 19.

Lovelace, K., Eggers, F., & Dyck, L. (2016). I Do and I Understand: Assessing the Utility of Web-Based Management Simulations to Develop Critical Thinking Skills. Academy of Management Learning and Education , 15 (1), 100-121.

Paharia, R. (2012, July – August). Gamification Means Amplifying Intrinsic Value. Interactions , 17.

Rousseau, D. (2012). Envisioning Evidence-Based Management. Oxford Handbook of Evidence Based Management , 3-24.

Seaborn, K., & Fels, D. (2015). Gamification in Theory and Action: A Survey. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies , 14-31.

Thom, J., Millen, D., & DiMicco, J. (2012). Removing Gamification from an Enterprise SNS. Proceedings of the acm 2012 conference on computer supported cooperative work. , 1067-1070.