Didactic design for business games

This paper presents the didactic design of two deployments of the EIS Simulation, which is a learning game for teaching change management. Two models, the 1-2-1 and the TiA, are used as framework for analysing how didactic activities are used for supporting, focussing and facilitating the learning process, as well as how different didactic models are used for generating different results. The first model, the 1-2-1-model is used for addressing what didactic activities succeed and precede the game, as well as how these activities facilitate a particular mode of participating and understanding, both the learning game, and the process of game-based learning. The second model, the TiA-model, is used for addressing how different didactic activities are embedded in the period spent playing the game and in particular how different reflective processes are used to facilitate a more reflective mode of participation, which is in contrast to the idea of trying to create a game-flow. By studying the two deployments of the EIS, two very different images of game-based learning processes emerge. The EURO deployment followed the 1-2-1 framework, where the learning process starts in a theoretical room, moves on to the practical experience, for then to return to the theoretical approach to the game subject, the game-based learning process can be seen as an attempt to facilitate an explorative process. The IKEA deployment followed the TiA model, resulting in a much more blended approach, which explicitly sought to facilitate reflective processes by disturbing the participants while playing the game, creating a more reflective and theoretically reflective approach to creating game-based learning processes. Together, the two models provide different images on how to blend inductive and deductive learning processes together with a learning game in order to facilitate particular learning processes with its participants.