Enhancing Employability through Games and Simulations



Creativity or Conformity? Building Cultures of Creativity in Higher Education

A conference organised by the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff in collaboration with the Higher Education Academy

Cardiff January 8-10 2007

Enhancing Employability through Games and Simulations

Anne Hill, Nick Morton,

Ruth Lawton, Alexandra Hemingway

University of Central England Birmingham

e-mail anne.hill@uce.ac.uk

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Abstract

Students should be developing as independent and lifelong learners, continuing personal and professional development. In a one-year project (2005-2006) at UCE Birmingham, the key aim has been enhancing employability skills through using games and simulations. It was intended to enhance students’ abilities to be flexible and responsive to the changing needs of organisations (another phrase which has been used is ‘future proofing’). The project was funded through the University’s Learning and Teaching Strategy but the resource base is continuing and the concepts have been firmly embedded across the university and beyond.

Enhancing Employability through Games and Simulations

Introduction – The Project and Partners

Students learn best when they have fun and have experiences which enable them to develop and apply a wide range of skills – in particular, skills which they will need to develop and enhance ready for their future careers. The key focus for a one-year project at UCE Birmingham, a collaboration between the Faculty of Law, Humanities, Development and Society and the University Careers Service, funded through the university’s learning and Teaching Strategy, was to enhance students employability skills through games and simulations. Employability is a central element of the University’s Educational Character and Mission statement, which stresses the importance of students becoming reflective and creative practitioners. The use of games and simulations can help develop these skills, providing opportunities for student-centred and focused learning in a safe yet challenging way and encouraging so-called ‘pleasurable learning’[1] whilst simultaneously learning by doing.[2]

It was intended that the materials collected, invented, tested, reviewed and adapted throughout the project would have a wide applicability and adaptability for use across a diverse range of fields of study. We believe the project has and continues to contribute to an emerging field of interest within learning and teaching research.[3]

Although staff often develop games or use simulations, we found this is often done in isolation and this project scoped what was available in the wider community. It provided opportunities for those who were using such methods within their teaching to share their ideas and continues to provide a resource for those who might be interested in adding games and simulations to their repertoire of learning, teaching and assessment techniques.

Defining Employability in the Context of the Project

Mantz Yorke[4] suggests that there are three constructs to employability in higher education, any of which enable a good graduate to “stay in the race”[5]. The constructs which may be explored are:

1. Students getting a graduate level job (destination surveys)

2. Students being developed by the experience of HE (as curricula and extra curricula processes)

3. Students being in possession of relevant achievements (skills, understandings, personal attributes, which are not necessarily the same as employment)

Employability can also derive from the ways in which students learn from their experiences, with subject specialisms providing a context here (specific knowledge and/or transferable skills).

In the project the team focused on Construct 2, using the curriculum to provide opportunities for students to develop, enhance, practice and reflect upon a wide and varied range of ‘employability’ skills. Games and simulation exercises challenge students, for example, in such areas as problem solving, negotiation, making ethical and moral choices, appropriate modes of communication, team working and leadership. Knight and colleagues[6] suggest it is better to focus on a few ‘employability skills’ but to “bombard” students with as many opportunities to practice as possible. Games and simulations have a role here in providing a suitable environment for such practice, especially where students are given the time and space necessary to be reflective (‘reflection on action’ and ‘reflection in action’) as suggested by Schön[7].

Defining and Developing Games and Simulations

It may be useful to define the term games and simulations in the context of the project. Games can be instructional activities, such as you might find on-line, and interactive board games, card sorts, card and dice games and icebreakers. Such games provide opportunities for engagement through participation and are best used with time for feedback, debriefing and reviews to provide learning opportunities. Games can be created by a lecturer or bought off-the-shelf from manufacturers. A particularly rich source of such games is the fields of personal development, such as team building and leadership, logic and problem solving.

Simulations create, in a ‘safe’ environment, possible scenarios which can test students’ ability to respond, react or problem solve real or anticipated situations. This can prepare them for professional, workplace or emergency situations in the real world. Simulations can use ICT formats for group and individual exploration, or be set up using, for example, role play type activities in the classroom.

Structuring the Project

This project encompassed a broad range of activities designed to include as many people as possible in:

• Scoping literature and contacting the wider community

• Developing a web resource site

• Testing and reviewing games and simulation activities

• Writing up and sharing with wider community

Given that the project required both research (scoping) and practical testing of the games, the evaluation was through a series of focus groups and reflective activities as follows:

• focus groups with staff facilitators/participants and student participants;

• self-evaluation by students/staff of games and simulations they participated in;

• testing and reflective reviews of specific sourced games and simulations;

• reflective reviews of perceived value and applicability of created/adapted games and simulations by participants.

Central to our ethos was to actively involve the student voice. We ran a series of lunchtime sessions, in which well over 100 students have now experienced a range of games and simulation exercises and provided feedback on their experiences and the value they perceived the process of games activities may have for their future learning. Alongside this we ran workshop sessions for staff, and over 50 colleagues across the faculty have experienced some off-the-shelf games and a variety of card sorts[8] through this programme.

Furthermore they have been testing, reviewing, developing and sharing their own ideas as a result of these sessions. The dissemination vehicle has been through the development of a Moodle (VLE) site with both internal and guest access[9]. The experiences of the team to date have also been shared at the Higher Education Academy Conference and the International Conference for Scholarship ion Teaching and Learning in the US.

Feedback and Embedding Ideas from the Project

One of the most pleasing aspects of the project has been that it has resulted in some embedding of the concepts and approaches in the classroom. Staff have shared their experiences and gone on to develop new ways of delivering their teaching, feeling they have a justification for trying out new approaches. Previously they may have been nervous about trying out games, perceived perhaps as being frivolous or judged by peers to be a waste of time and not appropriate as a higher education activity. However, according to NESTA[10], “there are multiple and evolving definitions of learning, with significant areas of disagreement both as to what it means to learn, and what forms of learning are valuable”. The project team argue there should be no limiting of what is acceptable classroom practice, providing staff are clear about how the games or simulations contribute towards the achievement of session and overall learning outcomes.

In testing out games staff provided feedback on their experiences and examples of how they used the off-the-shelf games for the VLE. One commented that:

• “What impressed me the most was the simplicity and adaptability of what was available.”

And another said:

• “Will I be using any of these in my classes? That would be yes. Would I recommend others to go along, have a look and give them a try? That would also be a yes.”

Some staff told us what they were doing in this area already, sharing what had previously been a solitary activity for them, and others were motivated to develop their own new games and simulation exercises. Where a member of staff used an interview simulation she had developed, her students reported:

• “I really enjoyed this…it helped me apply for a new job at work.”

• “[The session was] fun and informative”

• “I found the role play initially very daunting but I found I really did enjoy it, it was also very beneficial.”

A member of staff who attended one of the early workshops explained how she had been inspired to create an interactive ‘game’ for a normally theoretically-heavy module, and commented:

• “it was a useful way of encouraging the students to be reflective, not only about the intellectual issues involved, but about our discursive practices in the classroom”.

Student feedback from the focus group sessions included comments such as:

• “More sessions should be encouraged as it helps bring out hidden skills in individuals.”

• “It is really beneficial playing such games. Increases knowledge.”

• “It was generally helpful. I wish this sort of thing would be done frequently.”

Where Are We Going from Here?

The project officially ended in summer 2006, but the Moodle site continues to grow as more staff and guests add to the rich seam of resources which have been scoped. As staff try out new ideas they are keeping the team informed about their progress through this medium.

The project team were very aware that more of the energy in the one-year life of the project was around games, with only a light focus on the potential for designing and using simulations to create transformative learning. Mezirow[11] first offered a definition of transformative learning to describe how adult learners make sense of their experiences, with others later describing this as involving cognitive and intellectual change and transformation of the person. Close partnerships with our employer stakeholders reflect the notion that contemporary work environments require employees who can think creatively, solve problems, and work effectively within teams[12]. This seems to provide a real opportunity to use simulations as a tool for transformative learning. Therefore the team have joined with others across the university to bid for a more extensive project in this area, and look forward to continuing to develop this exciting and innovative area of learning and teaching practice.

The team would be very pleased to receive contributions to the ‘games’ project and to the new developments.

References

Butcher V, 2004, The role of card sorts in employability learning, Higher Education Academy Resources: Employability, available from

Corder M, Horsburgh M and Melrose M, 1999, ‘Quality Monitoring, Innovation and Transformative Learning’ in Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol 23:1, February

Chapman C, Ramond L and Smiley G, 2005, ‘Strong community, deep learning: exploring the link’ in Innovation in Education and Teaching International, SEDA, Vol 42:3 February

Gibbs G, 1988, Learning By Doing: a guide to teaching and learning methods, Further Education Unit, London

Harvey L and Knight P, 1996, Transforming Higher Education, Buckingham, The Society for Research into Higher Education/Open University Press

Knight P and colleagues, 2002, Briefings on Employability 3, The contributions of learning, teaching and assessment and other curriculum projects to student employability, LTSN Generic Centre and ESECT, York

NESTA Futurelab (2004) Literature Review in Games and Learning, Report 8, NESTA, Bristol

Schön D A, 1987, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, Jossey Bass, San Francisco

Yorke, M. and Knight, P, 2002, Employability through the curriculum, Available at

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[1] NESTA Futurelab (2004) Literature Review in Games and Learning, Report 8, NESTA, Bristol

[2] Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning By Doing: a guide to teaching and learning methods, Further Education Unit, London

[3] ‘Research into the use of mainstream games in education is relatively novel, but growing rapidly’, NESTA Futurelab (2004) Literature Review in Games and Learning, Report 8, NESTA, Bristol, p. 3

[4] Yorke M, 2004, Employability in higher education: what it is - what it is not, Higher Education Academy Resources: Employability, available from [downloaded 4 March 2006]

[5] Brown, 2002, p9, cited in Yorke, 2004

[6] Knight P and colleagues, 2002, Briefings on Employability 3, The contributions of learning, teaching and assessment and other curriculum projects to student employability, LTSN Generic Centre and ESECT, York

[7] Schön D A, 1987, Educating the reflective practitioner, Jossey Bass, San Francisco

[8] Butcher V, 2004, The role of card sorts in employability learning, Higher Education Academy Resources: Employability, available from [downloaded 4 March 2006]

[9] To visit the Moodle site go to moodle.uce.ac.uk and click on ‘Staff Courses’ and then

guest access key is ‘gaming’. The key is case sensitive.

[10] NESTA Futurelab (2004) Literature Review in Games and Learning, Report 8, NESTA, Bristol

[11] Mezirow, 1991; Harvey and Knight,1996, cited in Corder et al., 1999, ‘Quality Monitoring, Innovation and Transformative Learning’ in Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol 23:1, February,

[12] Chapman et al., 2005, ‘Strong community, deep learning: exploring the link’ in Innovation in Education and Teaching International, SEDA, Vol 42:3 February

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