Study: Business Simulations Raise Grades for Undergrads

Dr. Richard Blunt over at BX-Games has a non-refereed paper on eLearn Magazine regarding a study of three college classes split into control and experimental groups to examine video game effectiveness for learning. The courses consisted of freshman business students, a junior level economics class, and a junior level management class.

Portions of each class received the intervention while the remainder did not. Grades were compared between the two groups from each class. The introductory business experimental group used the game Industry Giant II, the economics students used Zapitalism, and the management students used Virtual U (a free download thanks to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation). Here is Dr. Blunt’s summary of the results:

The findings show that classes using the game had significantly higher means than those classes that did not use the game. There were no significant differences between male or female scores, regardless of game play, while both genders scored significantly higher with game play than without. There were no significant differences between ethnic groups, while all ethnic groups scored significantly higher with game play. Lastly, students ages 40 and under scored significantly higher with game play, whereas students age 41 and up did not.

In short, the studies found that, at least in some circumstances, the application of serious games significantly increases learning.

The comments section has some interesting conversation, especially regarding business simulations, which have been used in B-schools for at least 50 years or so. One could argue the board game Monopoly is a business simulation, I suppose, and if so that would stretch back their birth date to the 1930s (or much earlier, if conspiracy theorists are correct).

Other than that, the importance of the study is that it seems to show an intervention may lead students to a higher grade, at least in undergraduate business courses. Somebody will need to determine if students who volunteer for interventions such as a business simulation video game would earn a higher grade anyway just because of their own innate study ethics, or if the games serve to encourage slackers to work harder, etc.

References:
Blunt, R. (2009, December 1). Do serious games work? Results from three studies. [Online.] Available: http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=research&article=9-1

CFP: Computer Games & Their Applications

The following call for papers was shared by Rosario De Chiara over at Universita’ degli Studi di Salerno, Italy.

Computer Games and their applications (CGa)The industry of computer games is a flourishing reality since several

decades. Several issues on their future are going to be presented and

discussed at the symposium since the availability of hardware and

software platforms is widening their use, breadth, capabilities and

(of course) impact on increasingly large audiences. Moreover, computer

games engines offer, nowadays, also a mature environment for non-ludic

applications that can leverage on their graphical capabilities to

offer interactive virtual environments for educational applications.

The advantage is that the overall result is available on standard PCs,

that make any result immediately available to a large audience.

The interest of the research in non-ludic applications is witnessed by

the rapidly growing industry that features the use of interactive

games technology within non-entertainment sectors; the trend is

showing an organized industry of developers using cutting-edge

entertainment technologies to solve problems in areas as diverse as

education, health-care, national defense, homeland security,

analytics, corporate management and more. Several commercial games are

used for purposes that are not entertainment related, such as SimCity

and Civilization, but many titles are built with an educational

purpose in mind, such as Virtual University, 3D Driving Academy etc.

We want to provide an opportunity to researchers in the field to

discuss and present their research. The objective of the symposium is

to cover state-of-the-art results, present and discuss key research

issues and outline future directions of computer games and their

applications in any field, not necessarily bound to entertainment. The

setting of the symposium would encourage and stimulate discussions

among the researchers and the audience.

Papers presenting original research within the theme of "Computer

Games and their applications" are being sought. Suggested topics

include (but are not limited to):

    * Exploring new game genres for future Games

    * Exploring new hardware (Multicore-CPU, GPU, Cell) for future Games

    * Development tools and techniques for games

    * Games and Accessibility

    * Educational games

    * Game-engine based reconstruction of cultural heritage

    * Game-based Policy/management environment

    * Authoring environment

    * Game-engine based cooperative multi-user environment

    * Game-based application for Public-health

    * Games in the mobile and ubiquitous setting

    * Location-based games

IMPORTANT DATES:

Submissions due:         March 15, 2007

Important Dates:         <http://www.graphicslink.co.uk/IV07/DATES.htm>

Camera-ready:            April 20, 2007 (accepted submissions)