SimWord of the Day: The Sixth Paradox of Educational Simulations

Vendors and builders of simulations like to describe them as vaguely and mystically as possible:

• Learning By Doing.

• Flight Simulator for Business Skills.

• Safe Environment to Take Risks.

• It is Like Actually Being There.

Yet this hype-driven misdirection blurs product categories in the marketplace, eradicating the critical lines between different types of simulations (branching stories verus interactive spreadsheets vs. game based models vs. virtual labs vs....), making comparison hard and lessons learned to apply the right type of sim for the right situation even harder.