Educational Technologies

Week 2 Assign 1 - Educational Technologies

Teaching Business – All fun and games?

 

Gaming, gamification, game-based learning, it doesn’t matter which term we use, the truth is, we are surrounded by technology that allows us to participate in a multitude of different games any time day or night.  From the time we are toddlers we learn to play games.  Games play an important part of development through our adolescence and teenage years. Some people may believe that games are for kids. I am not one of those people.  I believe that people should embrace game playing their entire lives.  Games keep us entertained, they help us learn numerous skills, they keep our brains active, they increase our desire to succeed and the list goes on and on. So why should we ever quit playing games?  I don’t think we should and statistics are showing that the average age group of game players is older than some might think.   As of May 2012, according to the Entertainment Software Association:

• The average gamer is 37 years old and has been playing for 12 years. Eighty-two percent of gamers are 18 years or older.
• Forty-two percent of all players are women and women over age 18 are one of the industry's fastest growing demographics.
• Today, adult women represent a greater portion of the game-playing population (37 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (13 percent).
• Twenty-nine percent of game players are over the age of 50, an increase from 9 percent in 1999. This figure is sure to rise in coming years with nursing homes and senior centers across the nation now incorporating video games into their activities.
• Sixty-five percent of gamers play games with other gamers in person.
• Fifty-five percent of gamers play games on their phones or handheld device (Brink, 2012)

With statistics like these, it is obvious that games are not just for kids anymore.  With smart phones and tablets becoming basic household staples, older age groups are becoming more and more familiar with electronic gaming.  That is why I think gamification should play an integral part of adult education.  The technology is out there so why not use it?

One thing that really stuck with me when I walked for my MBA graduation ceremony was the fact that the color of our hoods for business degrees was drab.  Seriously – drab.  I didn’t even know that was considered a real color.  But yes, the color was drab.  My first thought was, there are sixty-four crayons in a big Crayola box and they couldn’t come up with any other color than drab?  Business is not drab!  It’s fun and exciting and there are challenges and problem solving and customer service issues.  How can the color representing business be drab?  Business is what makes our economy work.  Business is how we earn livings.  It is not drab!

Since obtaining my MBA, I have had a desire to teach online classes to students in the business field.  Having ownership in a successful small business and spending nearly three quarters of my life in customer service, business administration and management is something that I am truly passionate about.  I believe that small business owners play a crucial part in our society and teaching others about the inner workings of the business world is something I sincerely wish to pursue. 

My goal is to make learning fun and interactive for my students.  From my own educational experiences I feel that learning is much easier and retention of information is much higher if the learning material is memorable and holds the students attention.   Obviously, I cannot deliver all of my learning material in game form, but there are definitely games out there that are educational that I can apply in my business classes.  Two games I would like to use in my classroom are Capitalism II and MIT’s Management Flight Simulators.  I chose these two games because they are interactive and they put the student in real life business situation where they are given the chance to make business and management related decisions.  They are also shown the benefits and consequences of their decisions.  The following is a brief description of the games.

 

Capitalism II              

http://www.enlight.com/capitalism2/index.htm

Capitalism II is a game that I would definitely use in my class.  Capitalism II is offered on the Internet as a PC game.  This is a strategy-based game that allows student to interact in a simulated business environment.  The main features of the game are: 

• Students assume the roles of top managers of a company
• They must identify and evaluate market opportunities, formulate business plans and execute them to achieve results.
• They have to make decisions in such business areas as marketing, sales, pricing, manufacturing, hiring, capacity planning, inventory management, research and development.
• Students are given a specific set of business or financial goals to meet.
• They have to face the consequences of their decisions.
• So students must think hard about each decision they are going to make.
• During the process, they also learn the essentials of leadership and team building (Brink, 2012)

 

 

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/LearningEdge/simulations/Pages/Overview.aspx?home

MIT Sloan has long been a pioneer among business schools when it comes to action learning—creating real-world applications of classroom knowledge. Management flight simulations are the latest such application. These innovative and interactive tools create a virtual world in which students explore and participate in the critical management issues facing a range of industries and organizations.  Students who participate in a simulation can see the immediate consequences of their decisions and learn what it’s truly like to juggle competing priorities amidst a constant influx of information. (Learning Edge, 2012). 

 

Another multimedia tool I would like to use in my classroom is web videos.  In addition to gamification, videos can help students learn and present them with memorable information.  "A lot of students these days expect information to be presented in a flashy, entertaining way, so videos can help draw them in," says Larry Sanger, executive director of WatchKnowLearn, a site that collects education-related videos. High school student Patrick Greaney still remembers a photosynthesis video he watched in class at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, that featured a catchy tune. "The song stuck in my head and made me remember the process better," he recalls (Hillner, 2012).  Two video sites I would like to incorporate into my classroom are YouTube and MIT’s case studies. 

MIT Case Studies       https://mitsloan.mit.edu/LearningEdge/Pages/Case-Studies.aspx

The teaching case studies available on LearningEdge, which fall under the headings of entrepreneurship, leadership/ethics, operations management, strategy, sustainability, and system dynamics, are narratives that facilitate class discussion about a particular business or management issue. Teaching cases are meant to spur debate among students rather than promote a particular point of view or steer students in a specific direction (Learning Edge, 2012).

 

You Tube – Business Lessons

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=business+lessons&oq=business+Less&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l5j0i5l5.3947.6585.0.10088.13.9.0.4.4.0.229.1394.2j5j2.9.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.DirwNdl9C9M

There are over 3.5 million videos that fall under the search of Business Lessons on YouTube.  Obviously that many videos fall under the category of information overload. However, the way I would use both MIT and YouTube would be to ask my students to pick either a case study or a prominent business figure and write a report about the business lessons they learned after watching the videos.

I did this type of assignment during my MBA classes and found it to be very interesting.  Many times when students are locked down to their text books and they are only learning about business theories and financial statistics, the work can become very monotonous.  Stepping outside the classroom and allowing students to see and hear from successful business people and see their lessons in action, it brings their textbooks to life and reminds them that the theories they are studying will someday apply to their careers in business.

 

Brink, J. (2012, May 6). Game-based learning for the corporate world. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://www.trainingmag.com/content/game-based-learning-corporate-world

Hillner, J. (2012, February 22). How to use online video in your classroom. Retrieved November 7, 2013, from http://www.edutopia.org/youtube-educational-videos-classroom

Learning Edge. (2012). Retrieved November 7, 2013, from https://mitsloan.mit.edu/LearningEdge/simulations/Pages/Overview.aspx?home