Business School Course Replaces Teacher With Technology...
Can a Video Game Teach Just as Well as a Professor?
A team at Hult International Business School has
developed a game that offers roughly the same educational benefit as an MBA
class.
By Sarah Grant October 21, 2015 — 12:17 PM PDT
The chance to learn about leadership and management from
top corporate strategists is part of the business school guarantee. But what if
your B-School professor could be replaced by technology, without sacrificing
any educational payoff?
An experiment conducted by John Beck, Ph.D., at Hult
International Business School found that a business strategy video game proved
just as effective in teaching students as a professor.
Beck recruited 41 undergraduate students to take an
MBA-level course in that business strategy. Half of the group was taught by a
professor. The other half spent the same amount of time playing a video game
called One Day that Beck designed and developed with his consultancy, North
Star Leadership Group.
When tested on class material, both groups got the same
overall score. The gamers performed slightly better than the traditional
learners on the exam's multiple choice section and both groups averaged the
same score on the interview portion.
There was one portion of the test in which the traditional
students scored higher than the gamers: the written case study. One Day works
well for teaching students how to apply fundamental concepts to a scenario, but
it doesn't teach teamwork or the more complicated nuances of a situation,
Hodges said. "The problem with case studies in business school is that
they are always simpler than real life," he said, adding that professors
can help expose students to those real world complexities in a way digital
games can't.
This was Hult's first foray into online education, said
Hult President Stephen Hodges Ph.D., The experiment comes at a time when many
business schools are experimenting with making their curriculum more virtual,
and some find themselves competing with online degree programs.
Hodges thinks One Day offers students the best
combination of digital resources and professors. "Online programs seem to
be either outdated or trying to replicate a classroom experience," said
Hodges. "No one is really developing a new pedagogy that wouldn't be possible
in the classroom."
In the game, which is based on the course Beck taught at
Hult, players create a business strategy for an airport based on data reports
and interactions with characters that change every time a student plays, said
Hodges.
The game requires students to think independently, which
is different from the group work in classrooms, said Hodges. "Students who
played the game reported that they were exhausted after playing," because
the game forces players to make decisions constantly.
"Do I think gaming is the sole way to complete an
MBA? No," said Hodges. But games take up some of the educational burden,
giving professors more time to help students refine their skills, he said.
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