A simulating workplace
by
Emma Masters
UniSA students studying
systems management or hotel and convention management at Le Cordon Bleu are set to benefit from new multimedia simulation programs
developed by the University’s online services team.
Described as interactive pick-a-path stories with all the bells and whistles, simulations are a new way of delivering course material that gives students the chance to put theory into practice.
Students using the three simulations developed at the Flexible Learning Centre (FLC) – System Sim, Convention Sim and Ramsden Hotel Sim – work in an office where they can receive and send emails, access and store important documents, and receive instructions from managers and clients via video or telephone calls.
Le Cordon Bleu’s director of e-learning Peter Jacobs is the simulations’ executive producer. He says the interactive programs ask students to make decisions in real-life office settings.
“Students are given a range of resources and information and are then given a scenario or a decision they need to make," he said.
“What they decide then sends them down a path that presents more issues and problems they need to solve.
“In our 'sims' the students get instant feedback through the consequences of their decisions.”
The online services production team (pictured) at the Flexible Learning Centre (FLC) took more than 12 months to develop the sims, including designing the look and style of each interface, filming and producing the video clips and programming complex decision sequences and events.
The work has led to a new project that puts the power of sim teaching and learning into the hands of UniSA course coordinators and academics.
Two multimedia programmers at the FLC, Michael Lewis and Roger Noble, have been working on a simulation building tool.
“We hope to deliver a tool to allow course developers to manage the sequence of events within a simulation,” Online Services manager Mark Wittervan said.
“This would allow academics to build new simulations or reuse existing ones.”
The sim-builder project is in prototype stage with the release date set for 2006.