The Business Simulation Blog

9 Things You Need to Know About Business Simulation Games

Posted by Cesim Finland on Monday, September 26, 2011 | Reading time: 5 min.

know the facts of business simulation gamesAre you exploring e-learning or educational technology tools to improve the quality of teaching and learning? Are you interested to find out more about business simulations? There are a lot of great facts about business simulation games, how they work and their benefits to educators, trainers and students alike.

But if you are like us and have little time to browse through all the information available out there, then here are the 9 things that you need to know about this form of experiential learning solution.

 

Business Simulations (are):


1. A form of experiential or active learning

Collaboration, risk free business decision making, strategizing, and problem solving all form the building blocks of business simulator games, and they belong to the realm of experiential and active learning. The underlying principle of these, according to the Learning Pyramid, is that 'learning by doing' is one of the most effective ways of retaining knowledge as it stimulate a real experience through an activity of practicing with coaching, comparing to other learning methods like reading, listening to a lecture, looking at visuals, watching live demonstrations, and completing written exercises.

Learning by doing

2. Educate better business decision makers and holistic thinkers

The ultimate goal of business strategy games is to help participants understand and practice the interconnectedness of various business disciplines and functions, and how their actions affect the bottom line performance. It is of pivotal importance to us that participants learn to think and strategize holistically, by discovering that no functional area in a company operates in a silo.

See what Jarmo Toivanen from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences says about the importance of understanding the connections among different subjects and how students need to take into account of the factors that make they think of the big picture of running a big company. 

Further reading: 
Why Use Business Simulations in STEM Education

3. Complimentary to theoretical education

As important as practical decision-making skills are, business games are meant to be complimentary to the theories taught by educators.

What they enable instructors to do is to exemplify various business concepts in a risk free collaborative learning environment, where participants can connect them to the scenarios in their virtual companies.

Further reading:
12 Business Concepts To Practice With Cesim Global Challenge
15 Marketing Concepts To Practice With Cesim SimBrand
6 Concepts to Practice with Cesim Hospitality Simulation
10 Banking Concepts to Practice with the Cesim Bank Simulation

4. Easy to integrate into business courses

Cesim simulations cover an array of business concepts in a number of different disciplines with the goal of developing participants' business acumen. The selection ranges from international business and strategy, marketing management, small service business management to hospitality management and more (see our full simulation portfolio), making it easy to integrate these experiential learning tools into many business courses and training dealing with these topics.

A flexible schedule editor also ensures that educators have complete freedom over the length and intensity of their simulation based courses.

Cesim business simulations offer customizable options and modules, such as creating a custom case or delivering tailor-made simulations to suit the needs of your institution and course.

Further reading:
How To Integrate a Marketing Simulation Game Into Your Course

5. Work well in all learning formats

Because we understand the importance of mobility and the ubiquity of interconnectedness, all Cesim business simulators are online, require no more than a browser to operate, and therefore accommodate well all traditional classroom, blended or online learning formats.

Although we provide an integrated messaging system and all the required materials to get started with and play the simulation games (making an entirely online learning format possible), you may find that discussing the progress of the simulations in the classroom adds a great value to your course.

6. Require no IT knowledge or software installation from the educator

One of the commodities educators have little of is time, so we want to make sure that none of it is wasted on software installation and tedious set-up processes.

The Cesim simulation platform enables instructors to create a course in less than 5 minutes and run it on any computer's browser with an internet connection. The IT department of your institution will be relieved!

7. Have the power to bring participants together from around the world

Have you ever wished if you could create a truly international class competition amongst participants from different higher education institutions around the world?

Cesim business simulations have been used by over 300,000 participants worldwide to improve their practical business decision making skills, many of them which partook in cross-border join courses organized by their institutions.

It is a fantastic way to expose participants to a genuinely international competitive environment, and foster relationships with partner universities globally.

8. Provide the best practical way for participants to learn the interconnectedness of business decisions

Before students embark on their career journey of actually doing an internship or getting employed in a managerial position, business games are the best way to learn the complex nature of business functions, the interconnectedness of the functions, and how participants' own decisions contribute to the success or failure of the firm.

What is the value of business simulations? "If you think of a normal business student, they don't get a chance to practice decision making in a company, nobody will give them a possibility to practice decision making in that magnitude. So I think simulation is the place where students really can see and experience themselves what it actually means to make 'big' business decisions." Watch more from Cesim's interview with Eija Lipasti, Senior Lecturer, Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

9. Built on sound economic theories

A learning tool is only as good as the algorithm and theories it is built on, and this is especially true for business games which aim to simulate plausible real life market conditions and scenarios to improve the business acumen of participants.

At Cesim, we have poured over 20 years of collective economic and financial knowledge into making sure that our simulations are utilizing sound business formulas and never leave you or your participants wondering whether the outcomes are correct.

"Initially, we were surprised by the complexity of the Cesim SimBrand marketing simulation. After the first round, we realized that the problem does not come from the complexity of the simulation platform but rather from the students' level of analysis in terms of business strategy. Even though students have to take into account many parameters and new developments in a limited time and in a context that they are not familiar with: marketing and business strategy, adequate information is provided to enable participants to assimilate the knowledge necessary for the proper understanding of the business game and the use of the platform.", Claude Guédat, Vice President of the Telecom Department at INSA Lyon.

 

Interested to find out how business simulation games complement theoretical knowledge?

 

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Tags: Educator 2.0, What are business simulations?

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