Polytely refers to the fact that a complex real-life situation usually does not imply a single fixed goal for actors. Instead, the goal improving the company s economic success - is quite vague. If actors try to put this vague goal in concrete terms, they may actually realize that they now have multiple goals to reach, which can even be contradictory. The first study focuses on the problem of involvement in a synthetic environment and the face-validity of the virtual management task. The second study focuses on controlling learning by doing processes in a complex environment where different subjects may strive for different goals.
Results show that the face-validity of our virtual company scenario is quite high.
Our second intention leading subjects to build up an adequate representation of the complex economic setting and it s inherent problems, and to develop flexible skills to cope with the constantly changing demands of the situation proves to be far more difficult to reach. Main topics for a discussion are the chances of using interactive synthetic environments as training tools and how to support learners in an adequate way.