Using games in business education: An evaluation experiment comparing games to other selected methods in teaching sustainable development concepts

Simulation games are recognized as useful and effective learning tools in the business world, as they create conditions within micro ‐ worlds where participants can experience results of different strategies, which they want to undertake. This use of strategies enables game participants to explore multi ‐ party decision rules and analyse factors that stimulate or hinder the personally desired decision outcomes. Within this context the purpose of the paper is to present the outcomes of an experiment evaluating and comparing an application of a serious game with other teaching methods in the academic study of sustainable development concepts as a part of bachelor’s and master’s degree curriculum in business management. The tested hypothesis is that experiencing a designed situation during a simulation game can provide students with deeper understanding of presented complex issues and concepts more effectively than a lecture, text analysis, or discussion. A controlled experiment was conducted in the sustainable development class to test the hypothesis. The benefits from applying the designed simulation game in teaching compared to the selected methods were presented. The importance and value added of a debriefing as well as a designed evaluation of the compared teaching methods were discussed. An alternative, artificial world with set ‐ up conditions designed to observe actors’ behaviour within a micro ‐ world of pre ‐ defined rules can be a very informative and a self ‐ assessing tool for the business actors. While dealing with the problems of common goods management, the effects of policy implementation, as well as possible scenarios of multi ‐ actor behaviours, can be tested and simulated within the set ‐ up reality. In such conditions, factors conditioning goals achievement can be analysed and simulated. Moreover, alternative pathways, strategies, and negotiations can be explored. Finally, expected risks and rewards from taking the defined decisions can be proved or disproved. The paper presents the outcomes of an experiment evaluating and comparing an application of a serious game with other teaching methods in the academic study of the sustainable development concept. A controlled experiment was designed to evaluate and compare four different teaching methods such as a lecture, a text analysis, a discussion, and a simulation game. It was conducted in a sustainable development class to verify the hypothesis that a simulation game can give students deeper understanding of complex issues and concepts more effectively than other forms of education. The following sections describe the method of the conducted experiment, elaborate on its outcomes, and present the discussion of results. information flows or to innovations in management operational structures within companies. Within the field of strategic management simulation, games allow participants to explore risky strategies and their consequences. The domain of sustainability is very interesting to explore, for instance, the systems dynamics concepts, their consequences, and the strategies of common pool resources management. Games are useful also for research purposes such as data collection, behavioural understanding, and conducting controlled experiments. Exploring collective and personal business strategies in a game can help people to make decisions about investments. An example of such an application to help farmers develop a local product is presented in Martin and others (2007). Moreover, games can be important in decision making to analyse and understand policies, implementation issues, and consequences. A good example is the Floodplain Management Game (Stefanska et al, 2011) that was further developed into the Lords of the Valley (CRS, 2014). A gaming exercise was designed to explore problem ‐ solving and relational activities for river floodplain management. The purpose of the game is to explore complexities and uncertainties of multi ‐ party collaboration. The game Lords of the Valley was conducted several times with water management stakeholders and other actors in Poland. In such situations, decision making rules of various stakeholders with regard to man agement in the floodplain are made explicit as well as their risk ‐ prone or risk ‐ averse behaviours towards flood risk. These games provide insight into the possible consequences of different strategies of land use management taken by the game participants and allow the analysis of decision rules of stakeholders’ actions. Internal dynamics of the teams can be observed, e.g. how they are making decisions, sharing information, and how the actors are dealing with uncertainty and risk. An interesting overview of case studies presenting applications of action research from around the world, including participatory observation, serious games, and role ‐ playing exercises within the field of climate change adaptation is given by van Buuren and others (2014). The action ‐ oriented research methods to exercise feasible governance strategies and instruments for climate adaptation can be used to satisfy the need for both policy ‐ relevant information and scientific knowledge. The evaluation analysis presented in this paper makes an effort to account for the above ‐ mentioned factors in the designed evaluation process of the chosen teaching methods. The hypothesis of the serious game conducted in the class on „Sustainable Development“ at the Faculty of Management AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland, was that experiencing a designed situation during the game can teach students more than a lecture, analysis of literature, papers and case studies, or a discussion. A controlled experiment was conducted in the class to test the hypothesis. Thirty students took part in the experiment. The class composition was quite heterogeneous in terms of sex (70% female and 30% male), nationality (students from: Italy (10%), Spain (10%), Portugal (10%), Germany (10%), Turkey (30%) and Poland (30%), and age (between 20 and 28 years old). A class was in turn experiencing four teaching approaches to the four basic concepts of sustainable development. First, the concepts were presented to the group and students were asked to complete the first questionnaire. The questionnaire was assessing their preliminary knowledge about the concepts and defining the study goals for themselves with regard to each concept separately. Then, the concepts were presented one by one using different teaching approaches. Each teaching approach was evaluated right after the delivery concerning the level of understanding of the concept, the fulfilment of the defined learning goal, and the perceived effectiveness of the teaching method. At the end, the final questionnaire revealed students’ preference towards teaching methods before and after the exercise as well as the comparison of the effectiveness and the efficiency of the methods. The reason for such design of the controlled experiment was that the students could experience all the methods and compare them in order to choose the most effective and efficient one. The conducted experiment can be seen as a pilot study for evalua tion of using games in teaching complex sustainable development concepts to an international audience at the university level. The study was conducted on the international group of students, bringing in variety of teaching and learning experiences. Therefore, its results can be meaningful for further research on the most effective teaching methods of sustainable development concepts within the international context. Further research can be