Business Learning Games

Few activities develop sophisticated life skills as well as intelligent games, and a batch of new business learning games are a perfect example. The benefit of all realistic games, of course, is that they provide a safe platform to test out behaviors, learn to work with others, and benefit from mistakes. The new breed of complex business simulations has accomplished all of those goals in ways never before imagined.

These new business learning games create a fleshed-out, complex set of market conditions for students to download and work with. Once they have worked through the scenario at hand, they can upload their decisions and receive quick, comprehensive feedback. In this way, business concepts go from abstractions to experiences.

Lessons of Business Learning Games

The best business strategy games teach several lessons simultaneously. Most obviously, of course, they teach students to navigate complicated fiscal straits and come out on top. Less obvious, however, are the social skills that these team-oriented games provide.

When students are forced to collaborate as they make decisions, team-building skills can be dramatically increased. Just as in the business suite, students using these simulations must find ways to take the best of each other's ideas and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. That's the way good business works; why do it any other way in the classroom?