Learning business skills through game-based experiential courses. In space!
Traditional business education relies largely on case-based pedagogy, often accompanied by lectures and traditional exercises (see our catalog of course syllabuses for an overview). The key objective associated with this traditional approach has been to put the students in the shoes of managers who face specific problems encapsulated in a written case to better understand the canonical problems in management.
Sarah Toms, Executive Director of Wharton Interactive, and Wharton Professor Ethan Mollick founded Wharton Interactive to try a different approach.They use games and simulations to create a simulated hyper-immersive environment for participants. Using story and gamified elements, participants take on starring roles in a story and interact with in-game characters, answer emails, create presentations, and make decisions that change the outcome of their story. These experiences give participants the opportunity to practice hard-to-practice skills as they experience running a high-growth tech startup, help an internal venture succeed, shape the data analytics strategy of an organization using machine learning, or lead a team through a crisis. The challenges and contexts vary. While many of the settings are realistic, in one experience (The Saturn Parable), participants, each with their own goals and agendas, take over a mission to Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, in 2087. Teams overcome a series of tests challenging their team, organizational, and strategic management skills.
Figure 1. Screenshot from the game “The Saturn Parable”
Each of these challenges requires specific expertise that can only be gained through practice. Experiential learning provides students with a chance to practice their problem-solving skills in an environment that mimics the stresses of the real world. After practice, participants receive automated personalized feedback that addresses their choices and shows a path to improvement.
Figure 2. Example of a personalized feedback
The interactive setting gives students a chance to apply what they know in a place where failure is not critical and where skills are developed through repeated practice. This approach gives learners a critical edge by reducing the gap between training (the game) and real life (when learners have to perform). The simulations can be integrated into any course as introductory exercises, mid-course experiences, or course capstones.
The current topics covered include not only strategy, but also entrepreneurship, marketing, decision-making, negotiations, and data science.
Overall, this approach highlights two important points about teaching business; first, learning by doing is a powerful complement to other forms of instruction, and second, challenges don’t need to be business related. In fact, many frameworks are absorbed faster when presented in different settings. Each of those points can be implemented independently in the classroom. There are many simulations available to educators through teaching platforms (see below) and instructors should consider trying to translate their business exercises into other settings. ChatGPT can be a powerful tool here to help create such assignments.
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