Abstract:

Using educational and simulation games in teaching has been shown to have many benefits. In general, people of all ages like to play games, so using games can make learning more fun and engaging. Games also support our natural tendency to learn through inquiry. In addition to subject based content, games also foster learning of such important work-life competencies as collaboration, communication, and problem solving.

We have inquiry-based approach at the core of our pedagogy in Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences Porvoo Campus. This approach creates a great basis for using different educational games in our course implementations. One of the types of educational games is simulation games, which we have now implemented for several years in our courses. Until now, the game implementations have been developed using PDSA-cycle based on feedback from participants. However, we acknowledge that even though gaming might be engaging for many, not everyone is the same. Different people get motivated by different elements and aspects of gaming: some like to learn and explore, some like the social elements of gaming, and for some it is all about winning the game. Hence, we have need to pay attention to these different player types in our development process.

Different player types (e.g., Bartle’s player types) have been widely discussed in the context of game design, and they have also been used to analyze players of different educational games at various levels of education. In this paper, we build on this research, and we use taxonomies of players when developing our implementation of business simulation games in higher education. We start by studying if these player typologies can be applied to business and hospitality students from university of applied sciences in Finland. For this we analyze feedback, reports, and surveys from previous implementations. After this we are going to suggest how to develop business simulation game implementation to better serve the needs of different participants. These recommendations can later be used to increase both engagement and entertainment factors, as well as pedagogical and educational aims of implementing a simulation game.

Keywords:

Educational game, player types, business simulation, course development, inquiry-based pedagogy.