Simulations as Interactive Narratives


I just had a great hallway encounter with Elisa Alabaster this afternoon. She is a director at Ososim, a simulation company based out of the UK. We had a quick conversation about our respective work, and her description of how Ososim thinks of simulations gave me a great inspiration.

Elisa and I were discussing a maxim of mine "When you buy a sim, you buy the assumptions of the designer." And the model of the designer. Because sims are based upon some model of human interaction, the designer's model constrains an educator using the sim.

Elisa had a different idea, though. She said that Ososim creates a simulated environment, event, encounter and that the models come form the educator. IN her descrioption, I realized something powerful about how they design sims:

Simulations are less a game and more an interactive story. The program sets up a context and some events, but it is less about solving specific problems than a game. I'll talk about the definition of a game later, but a good summary of definitions can be found on Ian Schreiber's Online Game Design Course from Summer '09 (scroll down to "So, what is a game, anyway"). In its simplest term, a game is goal oriented, with obstacles and conflict. Most importantly, games are about overcoming challenges.

Interactive narratives allow people to change a story as they experience. We, the reader (or player) help create the story as we go along. The author (designer) has part of the story specified, and creates further story along with the reader. Or, in the case of simulations, the designer has considered several options that are included in the interactive story. In the most effective simulations, not only does the program provide a base for interaction and story development, but a facilitator is able to adjust in order to handle the truly innovative player.

Narrative development is a point I emphasize in my design, and a lot of that has to do with the constructivist writings of Jerome Bruner. If you are interested in looking into the role of narrative in education, here are two good resources - infed and TIP


I haven't had a chance to work with Ososim yet, but look forward to getting deeper knowledge of their approach to simulations.

Note that the way I have described simulations here does not describe all of them - Ososim specializes in simulations for complex issues like strategy and leadership. Simulations for simple tasks can and do play more like a game than an interactive narrative.

Constructivism is a learning philosophy, not a methodology



Constructivism writings get caught up with methodology. However, methodology is irrelevant to learning theories (which constuctivism is). If you are a constructivist, you believe that people create meaning even when in a lecture.

Lectures are problematic for constructivist supporters, possibly for two reasons. First, lectures are power-filled events, and the constructivist could be rebelling against the lack of personal power in the situation. Second, the constructivist advocate could be an idealist and closet social constructivist and be frustrated by what they see as a sub optimal education technique. However, there are two problems with this: first, lectures are social learning, just not completely democratic social learning. And, in fact, if one assume knowledge differential = power differential, there is always a power dynamic in learning. Second, there is no ideal group learning situation, because of the idiosyncrasy of learning and the social nature of education.



So, what do we do? As students in a lecture, become an empowered constructivist. Make meaning aggressively. Ask questions of the lecturer, ask questions over the web, have discussions with yourself, the book, your classmates. As an educator, design lectures to facilitate the construction of meaning rather than the reception of data. Build a framework, pull people in with a narrative, give explicit permission to explore.