A Comparison of Student Perceptions with Accepted Expectations for Business Simulations

Abstract

A question often asked about business games is, do participants in business simulations obtain the educational benefits they perceive they are receiving? To investigate this, selective game participants wrote papers on the major benefits and limitations of their experiences, and these were compared with similar items found in both the academic and more popular business literature. The two groups tended to list the same advantages, however, there were significant differences in their rankings of relative importance. There was even less agreement on the disadvantages of gaming. The participants seem to view only one side of these issues while the literature often spoke of a second, more positive side.