Abstract
At the beginning of this study I wanted to discover what effects competition in games and simulations had on learning. I also wished to gain a deeper understanding of how people learn from games so that I could produce findings which would be useful to practitioners of games and simulations. My research has revealed that competition can become too great an influence on students' decisions and behaviour and then becomes harmful to learning. I found that students adopt different approaches to competitive games which I labelled Competitive or Opportunist, Learning, Skill Specific, Rhino (Really Here In Name Only) and Confused. Their approach depends upon their prior experience, age, maturity, expectations and the quality of the tutor involvement. These different approaches lead in turn to different types of decisions, behaviour and eventually, learning. I also found that tutors need to be deeply involved during the whole game in order to guide students away from over-competitive behaviour and decisions,and towards a more rational and learning orientated approach. In addition tutors need to devote considerable time and effort at the end of the game to resolving conflicts and misunderstandings. In order that my study should prove useful to practitioners I have designed models of student approaches to games and simulations as well as a model of a business game. In addition I have drawn up, on the basis of my findings, a list of suggested guidelines for tutors who use (or are thinking of using) games and simulations. I hope they will indeed prove to be beneficial to both tutors and students.