Simulation Design

There’s an apocryphal saying in show business, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” While I can’t vouch for the dying bit, I can shed a little light on the comedy part. I recently completed a project for a client who hired me and my business partner at Badiyan to write and produce a series of […]

I did a presentation for MNISPI (Minnesota chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement) recently on how to build simulations more simply and quickly with the 5-Step Simulation™ method. I had a great time, the participants learned a lot and enjoyed themselves, and we learned a lot about the value of paper airplanes as […]

Converting traditional lecture-and-discussion training courses to a more effective simulation-enhanced learning approach does not have to be difficult. In most situations, simulations will give you an increase in learner engagement, retention, and motivation over traditional training methods. You can achieve a time savings over traditional lecture-plus-discussion workshops by using simulations, as well. Here is an […]

Learning activities that recreate work situations make for better transfer of learning. We also know that people are engaged by story. Story makes training personally relevant. Putting these two things together is what my work focuses on—recreating work situations with an engaging story. That is why I developed the 5-Step Simulation™ Method. Simulations are simplified […]

I’ve had clients lately who have been great. I have also had clients who have wanted far more than their agreed-upon budget and timeline would allow. I’m wondering if the current wave of low cost, easy to use tools might be creating unrealistic expectations in the minds of learners, learning managers, and sponsors of learning. […]

Sometimes, it’s obvious. Other times, you have to make a choice. Simulations can be designed and run as solo activities, or as group exercises. In a group—or between groups—simulations can be done in a cooperative way or as competitive events. Different things push your choice as a learning professional in one direction or another. Solo […]

This simulation example was an online course in career coaching for 3,500 managers of a global manufacturing company. The course was offered in 7 languages to all management-level employees of this company around the world. The simulations followed two brief setup sections that explained what career coaching is and how to do it well. Learners […]

When I was the Director of L&D at The Schwan Food Company, I kept track of the kinds of learning and development projects that my teams worked on. They fell into some pretty consistent buckets of time, effort, and cost. Across different companies and clients, those buckets have remained pretty consistent. It has given me […]

“There was this one time,” the tale begins, and that draws the learners into the world of story. Shakespeare took it even farther, writing, “the play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.” Getting people into the “play” and engaging them with story is incredibly effective as a way to learn. Remember […]

Know your audience. Do the right thing. Those are two of the guiding principles I use in my training and HR work. Beyond my passionate focus on learning for performance, I strive to promote inclusion and diversity in the stories, scenarios, and cases I write. Inclusion for me is the sense of “make this welcoming […]

There are a lot of good uses for custom business cases. They can expose people to new ideas or situations, or document important decisions made by the organization. A good business case tells an exciting story right up to the point of the critical decision—readers are hooked, they are into the story, they understand what’s […]

This simulation example was for a large group workshop of 80 IT Solutions Consultants. They attended a training session on eight different consulting skills, and needed a way to practice the skills together in a realistic way. The sample simulation for Skill Practice is in the LearningSim portfolio. Situation   Need   Solution “We’re teaching a […]