Forum .LRN Q&A: Simulations and the Future of Learning Book Review

A review of Simulations and the Future of Learning about the future of online learning using simulation.

This probably is closely related to the simulation package now in OpenACS contrib repostiory and it is definitely a unique area to focus on improving .LRN

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Posted by Alfred Essa on
Dave, interesting reference. Thank You. Can you say more about the "simulation package" you mention? Where can we find out more information?
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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Al,

Collaboraid worked on it, so they would have more information. The code is in the OpenACS repository under contrib.

I can't find a description of it, but I know I saw one somewhere.

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Posted by Caroline Meeks on
Dave, you saw it in the bids to Concord and PBS. Collaboraid helped me write the following.
Additional evidence of .LRN’s extensibility are the innovative learning tools being developed with .LRN. One example is the Dutch legal educational consortium ROCS (RechtenOnline, including Leiden, Tilberg, and Rotterdam Universities) commissioned the Simulation package as the platform for a virtual city and system for law training. The city consists of hundreds or thousands of virtual locations and characters. Instructors create legal scenarios, such as a civil lawsuit or an EU regulatory review, with a set of roles (Judge, defense lawyer, plaintiff's lawyer, and so on) and tasks (file a motion, respond to motion, etc).

Professors then customize the legal scenarios for their specific classes and enroll their students. Students are automatically divided into groups and roles, and conduct the simulation through a web interface, webmail and email. For example, a student playing the Plaintiff may receive a message with instructions and hints to navigate the virtual world, interview witnesses, and file a motion with the Judge. When this is complete, the student playing the Judge receives a message with the document, and must respond to it in kind. Some roles may be reserved for teaching assistants or professors, and Professors can review all students work.

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Posted by Aernout Schmidt on
Caroline gives a nice overall view of the Simulation Package. The package has been developed (by Collaboraid for the RechtenOnline Foundation, under the GPL) to host workflow-based legal games in education, but its use need not be restricted to law schools. Pieter van der Hijden is currently doing a thorough job on the simulation Package documentation, as well as being responsible for 'project 15', aiming at making the package (which is plagued by some bugs and other birth marks) ready for production use. I have posted him the link of this thread and hope he will join the discussion. May take some time - he is somewhere on a holiday, I think.

There are four basic functions in the Simulation package:
1. CityBuild - supporting the creation of 'characters' and other objects in the virtual gaming environment
2. Simbuild - supporting the specification of workflows - to let authors create simulation templates (workflows - roles - communication tasks)
3. Siminst - supporting the instantiation of templates, with documents, instructions, students and teachters, as well as the automatic casting of students and teachers in a class on roles in games.
4. Simplay - supporting the game being actually played

There is some enthousiasm in the Netherlands generated by the package as it is. A few follow-up projects are in the pipeline. I think the package could be of some value to dotLearn and, if the dotLearn group thinks so too, it may be worth while to combine forces.

Aernout,
good to hear that you are working towards a release of an stable Simulation Package. Indeed is interesting to run Simulations in serveral fields (imagine engineering and others), and having the flexibility to create your own template is important. Please keep us posted about the stable release, then I'm sure I"ll find interested users here at Guatemala. For sure this sort of packages makes .LRN an unique kind of product.