Although this page discusses the role of the tutor in the context of using business simulations, the tasks described are applicable to running courses for business people.

The Business Simulation Tutor's Tasks

ADMINISTRATOR

This role ensures that the business simulation runs smoothly. And although administration is mainly delegated to the computer we provide special functionality to ensure that where appropriate the tutor is supported.

FACILITATOR

This role ensures that all the participants' questions can be answered completely and quickly. This recognises the importance of the tutor being able to respond to team questions professionally and authoritatively. But, I see it as a passively, reactive tutoring task as it depends on the learners requesting help.

MANAGER OF LEARNING

This role ensures that learning is stimulated proactively and the teams are coached when and as needed. Business simulations are student centred and leaning is delegated to them. But, the responsibility for delivering effective, efficient and consistent learning and so we provide the support needed to do this.

Tutor Support System

In order to support these roles our simulations build in a Tutoring Support System that encompasses:

Help System

This is an online, context sensitive, hypertext help system that explains how to use the software, explains the current task and, for direct use simulations, defines terms. The help screens displayed depend on the current task and what the simulator user is doing.

Decision Screening

Whenever decisions are entered into the simulator they are screened at three levels to see if they:

• can be processed
• are unusually large or small
• are "sophistic"

This ensures that mistakes and misunderstandings are trapped before simulation occurs. (Sophistic decisions are those that, based on the current business situation and trends, suggest a lack of business acumen and clear thinking.)

Explanations

This is a series of reports that show, in detail, how the financial and operational results are calculated. So, they allow the tutor to explain and reconcile results in response to questions asked by the participants.

Comments

Besides the usual quantitative reports, many of our simulations provide qualitative comments on team's strengths and weaknesses. These replicate the feedback that might be received from staff, customers, suppliers, etc.. The comments are deliberately fuzzy ensuring that the teams must discuss and decide the relevance of the comment and decide whether to change their actions. Examples of these comments are as follows:

• Product A seems profitable
• Capacity seems low
• Inventory shortages may limit sales
• Some customers feel the price is high

Tutor's Audit

This consists of a series of reports that compare teams and so highlights and records differences between teams and allows the tutor to quickly identify which teams need coaching and which teams need challenging.

Team Commentaries

This records, for each team separately, their progress. It consists of several reports that analyse team performance. These commentaries can be used to help individual team coaches & assessors and provide a record that can be used in the post simulation review or as the basis of a formal report.

Most recent update: 13/10/10
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Phone +44 (0)20 7537 2982 E-mail jeremyhall@simulations.co.uk