Focus Magazine - Winter 2014 - 30

FEATURESTORY

* The tradeoffs/cause & effect
that manifest in the scenario
and/or broader context.
* Insight into the stakeholders,
beyond the obvious ones, that
are affected by the context.
* Demonstrations of the
impact of time and what can
make the students successful
in the future.
From a learning standpoint,
simulation benefits from its use of
storytelling to establish a baseline of
motivation for students to engage in
the learning process. Beyond that
though, the question is how simulation
can approximate real-life experience,
after all, it is simulated and not real. It
is the scorecard that propels a
simulation to be more than a good
story and enables it to approximate
experience through a series of key
learning opportunities:
* A good scorecard will represent the
issues at play that demonstrate the
Learning Objectives of the content
being addressed. For instance in
sales/district management, a sales
leader's success or failure may have
less to do with business acumen and
more to do with their ability to get
the sales people motivated, to
inspire commitment, focus on
productivity, communication and
other key elements. The scorecard
will provide insight into the issues
that they need to be thinking about
in the scenario and be able to relate
those insights to the consequences
of their decisions.
* The scorecard demonstrates the
cause and effect of decisions,
especially in difficult scenarios
where the tradeoffs are negative and
the student needs to choose,
essentially, which "bad" they can live
with. These are situations where
there are no obvious 'right' answers
and we want to provide our students

with experience in dealing with
them. After all, if it were easy or
obvious, we would not need to
simulate it. The scorecard helps to
demonstrate tradeoffs by having
specific scorecard items that
represent the issues that are at play
in a scenario and the ability to show
how the effects play off each other.
In our district manager (DM)
example, we could have a decision
relating to a problem that occurs
between a sales representative and a
customer. By breaking down the
leadership issues between the
manager and rep on the one hand
and the customer issues on the
other, the DM can gain valuable
experience in navigating unpleasant
situations. By understanding the
different elements that are at stake,
the scorecard helps to create the
necessary muscle memory around
the critical thinking aspect of
decision-making and the
understanding of what is going in
any particular situation so it can be
managed appropriately.
* The scorecard should also provide
insight into the affected
stakeholders. When we are faced
with a contextual issue, not only are
we challenged with the issue of
understanding the inherent
tradeoffs that could lead to success
or failure but also with respect to
'whom'? Sometimes we lose sight of
who is affected by our decisions. In
our district manager example, there

may be a sales person/team
scorecard, a scorecard for each key
customer and another scorecard for
management satisfaction that helps
to demonstrate the tradeoffs that
often need to be considered between
issues important to the team but less
important to management or the
customer, and vice versa.
* The scorecard also helps the student
to gain greater insight into the
effects of time in their decisionmaking and problem-solving. The
passage of time combined with our
natural abilities to both forget and
protect ourselves often provide a
buffer between cause and effect that
hamper our ability to learn from it.
The flow of time is a key design
metaphor in authoring simulations
and that helps to address the issue of
time-lag in decisions and also the
flow of consequences over time.
The scorecard helps us to concretize
the learning in decision making so that
the student can literally see the issues
that are at play in the issue even when
the decision does not lead to the best
outcome. This is a key enabler for
learning of greater impact than that of
instruction because it encourages
students to try things out, to explore
and discover. Even if they fail, they will
be able to gain valuable insight into
why and in that way add to their
experience portfolios that they can
draw upon when they face similar
situations in real life. I

Ken Spero is a senior learning strategist working in experience design. Email Ken at humentum@gmail.com.

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Focus Magazine - Winter 2014

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