ABSEL Awareness Amongst Business School Faculty: A Ten Year Update Study

Authors

  • William J. Wellington
  • David Hutchinson
  • A. J. Faria

Abstract

An e-mail survey of 30,137 business faculty members from 426 AACSB schools across all business disciplines was undertaken to investigate business simulation game adoption and usage behavior in 2013. The survey produced 1024 fully complete responses for a 3.40% response rate. While many issues were addressed in this survey, the current paper examines only respondent awareness of ABSEL among business faculty members and compares this awareness to survey findings reported in 2003. The current survey results show that only 10.2% of all survey respondents are familiar with ABSEL. This can be compared to the 13.7% of 1056 survey respondents who were familiar with ABSEL as reported in the 2003 survey. Among current simulation game users in 2013, 15.5% stated that they are aware of ABSEL compared to 28.0% who were aware of ABSEL in 2003. Amongst former simulation game users, 17.3% are aware of ABSEL in 2013 compared to 22.9% in 2003. Finally, in 2013, only 2.5% of non-users of simulation games are aware of ABSEL which is exactly the same percentage of non-users of simulation games who were aware of ABSEL in 2003. The survey results suggest that ABSEL awareness has declined significantly in the last ten years while simulation usage itself has actually gone up. As was found in 2003, advertising, direct mail and e-mail may be the best means of communication for ABSEL to increase awareness. A cooperative advertising effort between ABSEL and simulation game publishers might also be useful.

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Published

2014-03-10