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.
