--- title: "NEWSLETTER | Simulation & Game-Based Learning" author: "Mathew Georghiou" url: "https://books.playgoventure.com/3/newsletter" --- 🟢Playing Games🟢

# Game-Based Learning — What It Is, Why It Works, and How to Apply It This one video summarizes 25 years of my instructional design experience — investing millions of dollars to create educational games and simulations used by thousands of instructors and millions of students around the world. I share the **what**, **why**, and **how** — while weaving in mentions of some of our GoVenture programs, in case you’ve ever considered adopting one for your own teaching or training. I hope this video inspires you to embrace experiential, game-based learning — even if you don’t use one of my programs, there are many great experiences awaiting you and your students.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Board Games in School? A Fun & Effective Break from Technology ### Educational technology can be amazing when done right. But we also need frequent breaks from it — both students and teachers. Experiential group-based learning offers a fun and effective way to learn and a good alternative to ed tech. You can do this with your students using board games, card games, and tabletop games. ## More Than Monopoly The term "board game" often reminds people of the original Monopoly. But modern gaming has gone much farther than the old-school "opoly" format. (And so has Monopoly with its countless variations). There are thousands of games to choose from, and games are typically very affordable — used or new. ## Educational? The vast majority of games are designed for entertainment — not education. Regardless, *all games are educational* — even if that is not their intended purpose. Why? Because our brains are always learning — the rules of the game, winning strategies, critical thinking, interacting with other players. It's all educational. Skills are being developed. But the knowledge and skills gained while playing an entertainment game may not be as transferrable to the real world as a game designed specifically for education. That's the primary difference between an educational game and an entertainment game — the transferability, or usefulness, of newfound knowledge and skills. There are other differences as well, which will vary based on how the game is designed. If you are still skeptical of board games for learning, think of it less as a game and more as a guided experiential-learning activity. ## Comparison Here are a few ways I design educational games to be different than entertainment games: * Core game targets a specific subject area that matches school curriculum. * Exposes players to useful information related to the subject. * Achieves learning outcomes aligned to educational standards. * Gameplay makes players do and repeat activities that build skills. * Rules are extremely clear and guided. * Shorter gameplay to match the typical class time — 30 to 60 minutes. * Themes and graphic styles that are suitable for a general audience. * Variable number of players — typically 1 to 4 or 6. * Includes an Instructor Guide and supplemental resources. ## Examples I primarily design games to teach business and personal finance to people of all ages. But you can find games for nearly any subject that you teach — try searching boardgamegeek.com Here are some of my games used in many schools and home-based learning — Lemonade Stand Board Game

Food Truck Entrepreneur Board Game

Game Maker Kit — Design Your Own Games

I'm currently designing a Personal Finance Board Game and publicly sharing the entire design process — start with Part 1

### Questions? If you have any questions about games for learning, post them in the comments and I will share what I know.

# Play Our New Game — WORD6 — It's Like Wordle & Scramble ### What if you married **Wordle** and **Scramble**? You get WORD6— a novel word-game that challenges your vocabulary and puzzle skills. Two themes are available — *Entrepreneur* words and *Digital Marketing* words. The games reset every day at midnight with a new word. No downloads, just click to play. Play for free at GoVentureGames.com ## Gameplay

### No downloads, just click to play. Play WORD6 for free at GoVentureGames.com

# Free Lemonade Stand Game — Discover Powerful Learning We've made a free version of our popular Lemonade Standsimulation game available for everyone to play at FreeLemonadeStandGame.com — no login and nothing to download, just click and play. Playing this game for just a few minutes will help you discover how amazingly powerful games are for learning and teaching. Allow me to explain ... ## A simple explanation of why games and simulations provide powerful learning opportunities On first look, one might assume that Lemonade Stand is a simple game for kids. But, on deeper investigation, a powerful learning experience is revealed. Give it a try and you'll discover how a simple game can provide deep learning that is much more effective than traditional methods. Keep reading to discover how these concepts can be applied to any business process or skill. ### Here's how — The objective of the game is to make as much money as quickly as possible. To do so you must price your lemonade, determine its quality (sweet and lemony is best!), and order enough inventory to make it — lemons, sugar, water, and cups. Quality is a challenge because the tastier the lemonade the more it costs to make, which affects your pricing. It also affects your inventory because a tastier drink requires more lemons and sugar. The weather is also a factor. Lemonade sells better on hot and sunny days, and not so well on cold and stormy days. The weather, of course, is unpredictable and the forecast is often wrong. You must forecast how many sales you will make in order to purchase just enough inventory to match demand for the day. Purchase too much and it risks spoiling for damage. Don't purchase enough and you miss sales. Every decision has a consequence. And, your performance is tracked and evaluated continually. ### Stop and Reflect After you play the Lemonade Stand game for a few simulation days, stop for a moment to reflect on everything you have done. Consider how you have directly experienced product pricing, quality, inventory management, forecasting, cash flow, profit, and more. All in a matter of minutes. And it all made sense because you were doing it in a real-world context. ### No Comparison You could try to learn all this using traditional learning methods — reading and discussing the issues, and perhaps doing some simple exercises. But, until you run a lemonade stand business, you will never truly experience how all the variables are interconnected. ### Gain Years of Experience In Minutes What might take hours, days, or weeks to learn using traditional methods, can now be learned in minutes inside a simulation. It's the difference between theory and practice. It's what transforms knowledge to wisdom. It's the difference between making costly mistakes in the real world versus hitting the ground running. It's why pilots learn to fly in flight simulators. Experience is what ultimately changes behavior and improves performance. ### Now, let's take it to another level. We can open a second Lemonade Stand and employ someone to run it. Employee behavior can be modeled so they act like people do in the real world. You have to manage them well in order to succeed. How much will you pay them? Will they show up on time? Will they show up at all? How productive will they be? We can take it even further by adding other businesses that you must compete with in the simulation. Now you have to consider the pricing and quality offered by your competitors and how you stack up. Imagine if those competitors are not run by the computer, but are your classmates or coworkers — across the hall or around the world. Now, you have another level of engagement — healthy competition. Oh, and did you notice that this is fun too? Did you also notice that there isn't a lot of reading? It's all about doing, and very visual. Visual means it can transcend literacy, language, cultural, and other common challenges. ### Versatile Your business doesn't sell lemonade? That's ok. Any business process or skill can be simulated: sales conversations with customers, risk management challenges, customer service interactions, high-risk situations, and more. And it doesn't have to be with software. Card games, board games, and tabletop games can be just as effective. ### Want More Examples? For personal learning, check out GoVentureGames.com For educators, check out GoVenture.net ### All Games Are Educational Whether you are flinging angry birds, shooting aliens, or leading a guild into battle, our brains our learning. The only question is how transferrable is this new knowledge and skill? Read this article to find out — All Games are Educational — I'll Prove It With Space Invaders

# Educational Games Students Can Play With AI Michael Jordan & Kendrick Lamar ### Here are some super-easy examples of how you can help your students learn and practice any concept — using interactive games hosted by AI. * You can do this with nearly any concept. * You can make the game fit any timeframe. * Assessment is automated with a PDF of the results (but not all AI support PDF creation). ## Getting Started Simply copy one of the prompts below and ask students to paste it into the AI of your choice. * Text in bold can be customized to match your preferences. * The blank is for students to enter their name. > Instead of showing you what happens, I encourage you to give it a try — it only takes a minute to experience an aha! moment with this. * OpenAI ChatGPT — chatgpt.com/chat * Google Gemini — gemini.google.com/app * Microsoft Copilot — copilot.microsoft.com/ * Meta AI — meta.ai ## English | Basic Design and host a game for me to practice identifying grammatical errors in English sentences. Give me one sentence at a 10th grade level of reading and comprehension that has one error in it. Pause to ask me to identify the error in the sentence. Award me 1 point for a correct answer, 0 points for an incorrect answer. Repeat this for 3 sentences and total up the points in the end. Award me from 0 to 5 stars for my score. Create a PDF of the entire conversation and include my name _________________ and current date at the top of the document and include my name in the filename of the PDF. Go! ## ENGLISH | Kendrick Lamar Design and host a game for me to practice rhyming words in English. You play the role of Kendrick Lamar who wants to write a new rap song with me. Kendrick presents a line and asks me for the best word that rhymes and fits the lyrics. Award me points for my answer on a scale of 0 to 5. Repeat this for 5 lines and total the scores at the end. Create a PDF of the entire conversation and include my name \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and current date at the top of the document and include my name in the filename of the PDF. Go! *Variation — Try replacing Kendrick and rap with a country singer and song!* ## Business Design and host a game for me to practice understanding net profit versus gross profit in business. Give me one challenge. Pause to ask me to solve the challenge. Award me 1 point for a correct answer, 0 points for an incorrect answer. Repeat this for 3 challenges and total up the points in the end. Award me from 0 to 5 stars for my score. Create a PDF of the entire conversation and include my name _________________ and current date at the top of the document and include my name in the filename of the PDF. Go! ## Math | Michael Jordan Design and host a game for me to practice understanding basic probability statistics. Use a gameboard that has 3 spaces and each time I get a correct answer, I move forward one space. Make the game follow a basketball theme and have me compete with another player modeled after the celebrity named Michael Jordan. Whichever of us gets to the final space first wins. Create a PDF of the entire game log and include my name \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and current date at the top of the document and include my name in the filename of the PDF. Go!

# Play a Simulation Modeled After Your Business or a Different Business? This is a question that must be addressed when you are considering adopting a business simulation for your company — > Should you use a simulation that models your business or a different business? To answer this question, we must consider the *objective* for playing the simulation and the *profile* of the participants. Common objectives for playing a business simulation are for training purposes, as a customer empathy tool, or as a team-building activity. ## Same Business Use a simulation that models your business when you want participants to learn concepts, processes, KPIs, or other factors specific to your business. For example, a bank engaged my team to create a simulation that modeled the job of a branch manager. They wanted bank managers to practice making realistic decisions and experience the consequences of those decisions on the corporate KPIs measuring their success. Similarly, we had a Call Center engage us to create a simulation that modeled the job of a manager, using realistic challenges and KPIs. The simulation was included in the company's talent development for aspiring leaders. These examples illustrate that when you want to train people on a *specific job or role*, then modeling that job makes the most sense. ## Different Business When your objective is to train people on broader or soft-skills concepts, rather than specific decisions or processes, using a business simulation that is not modeled after your business often makes sense. One reason is that some participants may be distracted if the simulated business does not perfectly represent their real business. They may misunderstand the purpose of the simulation experience. They may attempt to make decisions in the simulation that are too closely tied to the real business, rather than focus on the task at hand. Another reason to use a different business is when modeling your business is not feasible — due to complexity, cost, or other factor. For example, our team was engaged to create a leadership training simulation for the back-office operations of a bank. Leadership training is particularly challenging for this group as there are a wide variety of roles within the organization. Modeling the operations of a single role or business unit would not work. So instead, we modeled the *common challenges* that leaders experience in their roles across the organization. As part of this process, we had to identify a type of business with similar challenges — in this case, we chose a national courier business. This type of business has similar challenges with the time pressure of keeping up with daily tasks (deliveries) while not ignoring medium and long-term responsibilities for keeping data secure and adopting innovations for an efficient future. When adopting a business simulation, consider the factors described in this article. --- To see examples of leadership training simulations, check out GoVenture.net/leadership

# Simple or Complex Simulation for Your Students? Should you choose a simple training simulation or a complex one for your students? Your choice will directly impact the learning experience for your students. I explain how to make this choice in the video below. With our GoVenture educational games and simulations, we solve this challenge for instructors by offering several different simulations to choose from and by building progression within each simulation so that the experience starts basic and progressively ramps up as you play.

**Receive this newsletter by email** —

Join our **online community** where educators and trainers share ideas, resources, and discussions on experiential learning, games, and simulations — TeachingSuperhero.com

I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Individual Play Versus Head-to-Head Multiplayer **Individual play** versus **head-to-head multiplayer** — when should you use these options in education? An exciting aspect of modern games is the ability to compete head-to-head against other players, locally or around the world. But, head-to-head multiplayer play can pose challenges in an educational environment. Some students (youth or adult) may not be equipped for the social pressure that sometimes happens with competition. Some instructors prefer to avoid competition altogether. The good news is that there are ways to leverage the high engagement of competition, while minimizing or eliminating the social pressures that may go with it. I explain how in this video.

> Have you ever had positive or negative experiences with competition? > Share your story below!

**Receive this newsletter by email** —

Join our **online community** where educators and trainers share ideas, resources, and discussions on experiential learning, games, and simulations — TeachingSuperhero.com

I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

🟢Teaching Strategies & Techniques🟢

# Tips To Limit AI Cheating (for Instructors) **Here’s a list of practical strategies for designing courses and assessments that make it harder for students to misuse AI while still encouraging authentic learning.** I have previously written about how AI has created a nightmare scenario for educators, that policing it is a losing battle, and why an AI policy is essential. The good news is that these challenges can be addressed by adapting your curriculum or syllabus to limit AI cheating while encouraging the ethical use of AI. While this may be more difficult in some subjects, it can also be surprisingly easy if you choose the right methods and tools. _Side note_ — Interestingly, I used AI to help me develop this guide, but most of the suggestions it provided were not AI proof. And it misspelled the text in the graphic. Acts of self preservation perhaps.🙂

## 1. General Course Design & Delivery - **Have an AI policy** — Clearly state when and how AI tools can and cannot be used. See section 9 for rationale you should share with your students. - **Pen-and-paper or offline assessments** — Require students to complete work without digital tools, using only pen, pencil, or physical materials. - **Prioritize process over product** — Make drafts, logs, reflections, and checkpoints worth as much as the final submission. - **Vary assessment types** — Combine written, oral, practical, reflective, and collaborative work. - **Frequent low-stakes checks** — Short in-class quizzes, verbal questions, or quick exercises to confirm understanding. - **Use personalization** — Require class-specific, local, or personal examples that AI won’t have access to. - **Rotate and refresh assignments** — Change questions, prompts, and data sets each term. - **AI-inclusive assignments** — When appropriate, require students to use AI but also critique, improve, or fact-check its output. --- ## 2. Validation & Assessment Strategies - **Proctored or supervised assessments** — Use in-person or secure online proctoring for key checkpoints. Enforce room sweeps, restricted devices, and dynamic versions to reduce collusion. - **Live conversations** — Have short one-on-one or small-group discussions about submitted work. - **Spot checks** — Randomly ask a few students to explain their reasoning or recreate parts of their work. - **Version history** — Require work to be done in cloud-based tools with change-tracking enabled. - **Think-aloud exercises** — Students narrate their problem-solving process in real-time. - **Video presentations** — Students record themselves presenting without a teleprompter (start with a wide view of the environment and no edits). --- ## 3. Experiential & Team-Based Learning - **Projects over high-stakes exams** — Shift weight to applied, multi-step projects. - **Games and simulations** — Use tools that require interactive decision-making and direct student engagement. (Examples of programs I create are at [GoVenture.net](https://GoVenture.net)) - **Team-based activities** — Have students collaborate and keep a shared journal or log of their contributions. --- ## 4. Math & Science Approaches - **Hands-on tasks** — Use real-world objects for measurement, calculation, or experimentation. Require photos of the process. - **Home-based experiments** — Students build models, conduct small experiments, record data, and show step-by-step progress. - **Unique variables** — Give each student or group slightly different input values or datasets. - **Local data integration** — Require problems to be solved using nearby environmental, community, or current-event data. --- ## 5. Writing Approaches - **Pen-and-paper process** — Students submit photos of brainstorming notes, outlines, and multiple drafts. - **Obscure or nuanced topics** — Use prompts that AI may misinterpret or lack data for. - **In-class source referencing** — Require citations from recent lectures, guest speakers, or materials not online. - **Personal integration** — Combine personal experiences with course concepts. - **Meta-reflections** — Have students submit a short statement explaining their writing choices and revisions. - **Keystroke-tracking tools** — Some apps can log writing sessions to reveal pasted text, though this moves toward policing and should be used cautiously. --- ## 6. Arts & Design Approaches - **Document the creative process** — Require photos or screen recordings of work in progress (sketches, drafts, iterations). - **Physical creation** — Include at least one element that must be produced by hand (sculpture, painting, physical prototype). - **Style emulation** — Have students replicate a specific style taught in class, which AI tools may not match well. - **Peer critique sessions** — Students present work for live feedback and Q&A. --- ## 7. Computer Science & Technology Approaches - **Code-from-scratch challenges** — Assign problems that must be solved without access to online code repositories. Verify via live coding demos. - **Oral walkthroughs** — Students explain their code logic and design decisions verbally. - **Debugging tasks** — Provide partially broken code to fix, requiring explanation of the errors. - **Version control evidence** — Require use of Git or similar tools so you can review commit history. --- ## 8. Business, Social Sciences & Humanities Approaches - **Case study personalization** — Have students analyze a case from their own community or workplace. - **Role-play simulations** — Assign scenarios where students act out negotiations, debates, or leadership decisions. (Examples of programs I create are at [GoVenture.net](https://GoVenture.net)) - **Current event integration** — Use topics from the last few days or weeks to make AI-prewritten responses less likely. - **Field research** — Require original quotes, interviews, or survey data collected by the student. --- ## 9. Why Some Skills Must Be Developed Without AI Assistance While AI can be a powerful aid, there are skills that lose depth, resilience, and transferability if they are always practiced with AI support. - **Cognitive Foundations** – Skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and logical reasoning are strengthened through the mental effort of working problems out independently. Overreliance on AI can short-circuit this development. - **Creativity and Originality** – True creative ability requires generating and refining ideas from scratch. If AI supplies the first or best ideas, students may never develop their own voice or style. - **Retention and Recall** – Without personally struggling through concepts, students are less likely to remember and apply them later, especially in time-pressured or offline situations. - **Judgment and Decision-Making** – Many real-world situations require weighing incomplete, conflicting, or ambiguous information. Practicing this without AI helps students build confidence and intuition. - **Skill Transfer** – Mastery in one context (e.g., writing without AI) often supports performance in other contexts (e.g., verbal explanations, live problem-solving) where AI may not be available or allowed. For these reasons, certain learning activities should be deliberately designed so that students engage without AI assistance — ensuring they develop durable, self-sustaining capabilities alongside their AI literacy.

# How to Know Students Are Actually Doing the Work You give students an assignment. You wait for them to submit it. Then you assess. **And you wonder:** Did they follow instructions? How much effort did they actually put in? Did they use AI to do the work for them? This is a growing challenge in education. Years ago, I realized the problem often starts with **assignment design.** If students can complete an assignment passively — or outsource most of the thinking — instructors are left guessing how much real effort happened. So when I designed simulation games, I approached assessment differently. In one simulation, students run a business. They make ongoing decisions about pricing, inventory, hiring, finances, and more.

In another, they manage a project from start to finish — assigning tasks, managing timelines, and trying to stay on budget.

**Participation** ----------------- In both cases, students can’t simply submit a final document and claim they did the work. They have to stay engaged throughout the experience. They must read information, make decisions, respond to outcomes, and keep adapting. Poor decisions create consequences. A business can run out of cash. A project can fall behind schedule. That means completion itself demonstrates meaningful effort and reasonably good decision making. Because of that, I often recommend assigning **50% to 70% of the grade to participation.** **Skill** --------- Then I separate out skill. Did they perform well? Did they make strong decisions? Did they achieve better outcomes? That usually accounts for the remaining **30% to 50%.** And if it’s a practice round? I often recommend grading entirely on participation so students can learn without unnecessary pressure. **Applying This Approach** -------------------------- This methodology goes beyond simulations. Board games, role-playing activities, live projects, and other experiential assignments can also be designed to track both participation and performance. In an AI-enabled world, assessment becomes much easier when students must actively participate throughout the learning experience — not just submit something at the end.

# 5 Teaching Strategies That Trigger Aha! Moments In Students ## Aha! An Aha! moment is a moment of sudden inspiration, insight, recognition, or comprehension. You know it when you see it happen or experience it yourself. Educators live for these moments of career satisfaction. They validate all the hard work and experience that made the Aha! moment possible. ## 5 Strategies Research shows that there are 5 teaching strategies that trigger Aha! moments in students. Here they are: 1. Real-life examples 2. Questioning 3. Reflection activities 4. Analogies 5. Problem-solving in teams Consider how you can adjust your curriculum or training experience to include one or more of the above strategies. ## The Secret Sauce There are many ways in which you can integrate one or more of the above strategies. But, from my experience, I only know of one learning method that can provide a context for all 5 of the strategies. > Educational games and simulations Playing a game or simulation provides a living real-life example with results that students can question and reflect upon to improve their performance. And it's a continuous problem-solving exercise. To clarify, I'm talking about deep simulation experiences, not casual mini-games — they can be useful too but won't achieve all 5 of the strategies. ## Google It! Rather than write more about this here, I recommend you review a few educational games and simulations that match your subject of interest. Seeing is believing (better than reading). This may help inspire new ideas for you to consider, even if you don't adopt what you see. Do a Google search to see what you find. If business, money, or STEAM education is your domain, check out my GoVenture programs. ## Research Source In case you want to take a deeper dive into the research, here it is — *A Modified Delphi Study to Define "Ah Ha" Moments in Education Settings* — *view research*

# Old-School Syllabus vs Experiential Syllabus Here’s how I help instructors change their course curriculum and syllabus from **old-school** to **experiential learning** to achieve these benefits: * Higher student engagement and less cheating * More fulfilling experiences for instructors * Better course and instructor ratings * Increased school enrollments Let’s start by reviewing a typical old-school syllabus. This syllabus is common in schools around the world — but it’s missing one big component. **Typical Old-School Syllabus** ------------------------------- 1. Read textbook 2. Lecture and slides 3. Watch videos 4. Guest speaker 5. Discussions 6. Prepare case (no AI) 7. Quiz **What’s missing?** ------------------- To illustrate what’s missing, let’s imagine the course is on _**how to ride a bicycle**_. Can you see what’s missing? Take another look — can you anticipate the question your students are going to ask? Here it is — “**When are we going to ride the bicycle?**” It seems quite obvious that to teach a course on how to ride a bicycle, you have to let students ride a bicycle. What if the course was about business, marketing, or engineering? **Should that be any different?** Yes, riding a bicycle has more of a physical component than typical school subjects. But there’s also a lot of cognitive decision-making — how and when to use the brakes, how to change gears efficiently, how to maximize speed, how to conserve energy, and more. So it’s not much different than learning other subjects and skills. Yet, right now, in thousands of schools around the world, students: * Learn business but never run a business * Learn marketing but never sell anything * Learn engineering but rarely build anything It doesn’t make sense. **Practice Makes Perfect** -------------------------- To gain meaningful knowledge and repeatable skills, we need to give students the opportunity to practice. And not just a little bit of practice, a lot of practice. Practice builds confidence. Confidence builds skills. Skills win jobs. Looking at a typical **old-school syllabus**, notice that: * Case studies are not practice. * Textbooks are not practice. * Lectures are not practice. * Quizzes are not practice. * Videos are not practice. Doing is practice. Experiential learning is practice. **Experiential Learning** ------------------------- To add practice to your syllabus, start by changing your mindset — become a **coach**. ❌ Don’t think in terms of delivering content and activities. ✅ Think in terms of facilitating experiences. **From Old-School to Experiential** ----------------------------------- Now, let’s transform the old-school syllabus into experiential — ### Experiential Syllabus | How To Ride a Bicycle * **Ride Bicycle** (safely) * **Balance & Pedaling —** Coaching, Exploration, Practice, Skill Test * **Braking —** Coaching, Exploration, Practice, Skill Test * **Gears —** Coaching, Exploration, Practice, Skill Test * Etc. Students ride the bicycle from the start and throughout the course, continually building their knowledge and skills. **Coaching** means the instructor provides guidance, advice, and hosts discussions and debriefs. **Exploration** means using a variety of learning resources to discover new knowledge — lectures, textbooks, videos, case studies, etc. These resources don’t go away, they are just used more effectively. For example, students can use them to learn more about braking, shifting gears, and other related concepts. **Practice** means riding the bicycle. If you cannot do this in the real world, use games, simulations, and role-playing experiences. **Skill Test** means assessing students to confirm they've achieved specific learning objectives. **Give it a try** ----------------- You don’t have to change your entire syllabus all at once — experiment by replacing underperforming activities with experiential learning. Discover the benefits and grow from there. Or, completely transform the entire syllabus by designing or finding resources that can help you get there quickly and easily. It’s possible. **One final tip** — If you try something new that you are unsure of, make your students feel part of the experiment. Give them the benefit of experiencing how innovation happens in the real world — through experimentation and iterative improvement.

# How Students Can Develop AI Prompting Skills By Playing Business Simulations Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), has revolutionized many fields, including education. While AI presents exciting opportunities, it also raises challenges for educators concerned about students using it to complete work independently rather than developing essential skills themselves. However, learning how to effectively use AI is just as critical as learning without it —students who fail to develop AI proficiency will face significant disadvantages in the workforce. The following activity is designed to help students enhance their AI skills while engaging with business simulations, like GoVenture simulations Instructors may assign this activity to their students as part of their curriculum. ## About GoVenture and AI * GoVenture simulations cover a wide range of topics, including business, project management, digital marketing, and more. These simulations are dynamic, responding to student decisions in real time, creating a personalized learn-by-doing experience. * Importantly, GoVenture is designed so that AI cannot be used to “cheat” the system. Instead, AI serves as a tool for students to improve their decision-making skills rather than simply providing answers. This ensures a fair and meaningful learning experience while fostering AI literacy. ## Instructor Guidelines Instructors can customize the following activity to fit their curriculum. When making adjustments, consider: * Student time investment—How much time should students spend on this AI activity? * Assessment requirements—This activity requires manual evaluation, how will you assess student responses? * AI model comparisons: If this is a core part of the curriculum, students may benefit from comparing multiple AI models or applying AI across various objectives. The provided activity template includes bold-italicized text indicating time-intensive components, allowing instructors to modify them based on their needs. --- ## Student Activity ### Objective To develop AI prompting skills and practice using AI in a real-world context while engaging with a GoVenture simulation. ### Activities As you play GoVenture, use AI to assist with *at least three* of the following activities: * Understand Subject Terminology * Receive Coaching Advice * Identify Risks and Opportunities * Evaluate the Consequences of Decisions * Analyze Data * Predict Future Outcomes * Apply Statistical Modeling * Optimize Metrics ### Considerations The effectiveness of AI depends on several factors: * The AI model you choose. * The quality of your prompts. * The data and context you provide in your prompts. * How you interpret AI-generated feedback. * The accuracy and reliability of AI responses. ### AI Models Use *two or more* AI models to compare their performance. Examples include ChatGPT, Meta.ai, Copilot, Gemini, or any other AI model of your choice. ### Instructions While playing GoVenture, use AI and record your objectives and results in an AI Activity Logsimilar to the examples below:

### Final Submission When you complete the GoVenture simulation, submit your AI Activity Log along with answers to the Reflection Questions below in *one of these formats*: * Written Report (Maximum 500 words) * Slide Deck (Maximum 10 slides) * Video Presentation (5 minutes) * Live Presentation (5 minutes) ### Reflection Questions Answer *10 questions*: 1. How did different AI models compare in terms of accuracy, detail, and usefulness? 2. Which AI-generated insights were most helpful, and how did they impact your decision-making? 3. Did any AI suggestions lead to unexpected outcomes in the simulation? If so, what were they? 4. How did you refine your prompts to improve the relevance and quality of AI responses? 5. What were the biggest limitations of using AI in this simulation? How did you work around them? 6. To what extent did AI align with your own critical thinking and problem-solving abilities? 7. How would you apply AI prompting techniques learned in this activity to real-world decisions? 8. Were there any differences in how AI models handled numerical data versus strategic advice? 9. Did AI responses ever conflict with your own instincts or prior knowledge? How did you resolve this? 10. If you had unlimited access to AI tools, how would you integrate them into future learning or professional work?

# The Moment You Know Students Are Truly Learning: When Their Conversations Change ### Are my students actually learning? Every educator has asked this question at some point. In this short video, I share an easy way to discover that learning is happening.

# How To Use 1 Game and 1 Computer to Teach Hundreds of Students I once played a game live with 350 middle school students in one room — playing together on one computer. It was an amazing experience with students yelling so loud I had to ask them to settle down (in a good way :-) We were learning about entrepreneurship — together. I repeated the same experience many times with various sizes and types of groups — teachers, young adults, underemployed individuals, and more. It always works well and the participants have an enjoyable and memorable learning experience. And, I'm able to do it with 1 game and 1 computer with the entire experience lasting less than one hour. Although, I can choose to play much longer for a deeper learning experience. ### Educators often worry about the time, technical challenges, and costs involved with adopting software games into their curricula. But you can eliminate all of these concerns by following the methodology I'm going to describe here. ### Here's how it works ... Setup * Start by finding a game that fits your training needs — this could be a popular video game designed for entertainment or a game designed for learning. Typically, the best games for learning are games that involve strategy and decision-making rather than fast action. * Get access to run the game on your computer. If it has a fee, you only have to buy one copy. * Choose a room with the ability to project your computer on a big screen. If you're doing a live video meeting, prepare to share your screen with participants. You will run the game for everyone to see. Role-Playing Introduction * Describe or show the game to participants and explain that they are your advisors and that you will seek their guidance as you play the game. For example, if playing a business simulation, you are the CEO and the participants are your senior management team. If playing a war-history game, you are the General and everyone acts as your military advisors. * For more advanced play (which takes longer to play), you can assign groups of people to advise you on specific aspects of the game. For example, with a business simulation, you can have different groups for finance, marketing, and production. With a war-history game, you can have different groups for military, politics, civilian, intelligence, etc. Play * Begin playing the game. * As you play the game, explain what is happening on screen as you pause to make key decisions. * When making a key decision, ask your advisors for their guidance. Hold an open discussion. Present two choices at a time and ask for a show of hands to determine which option everyone supports. For example, with a business simulation, you can ask, "Should we raise or lower our prices — show of hands, how many of you think we should raise our prices?" If the majority votes to raise prices, then ask, "Show of hands, how many of you think we should raise our prices by more than $5?" Repeat this approach of offering two choices until you land on a decision. * Alternatively, you can also use a polling app to collect feedback electronically — this is particularly useful if you have a very large group or a lot of choices that have to be made quickly. For the event with the 350 students, we had about 8 students sitting at different tables and each table had one audience response system, so the students at the same table had to collaborate to decide their vote. * As you input a decision into the game, explain to students what the benefits and consequences of the choice may turn out to be. Normally, these benefits and consequences will already have been revealed during the discussion prior to making the final decision, but it's useful to repeat them summarized. Repeat and Reflect * Repeat the above process for each key decision. * As you play the game and experience the consequences of the decisions made, highlight them for students to see and hold a discussion to reflect on the choices made. * Consider occasionally pausing the game to take a deeper dive into specific topics of interest using other media (demonstration, video, lecture, etc). When doing this for youth entrepreneurship, I demonstrate how to greet someone with a proper handshake, how to hold a conversation at a networking event, etc. * As you continue to play, you will see student confidence and opinions become stronger. This is a clear signal that they are engaged and learning. Make Connections * While playing the game, look for opportunities to make connections with the experience and your primary learning objectives. Choose a Volunteer * After you play the game for a round or two where the overall gameplay is now understood, ask someone to volunteer to be the leader. The new leader will take your role as the final decision-maker. You should continue to control the computer and the game software but the volunteer leader tells you what decisions to input into the game. Continue to facilitate the discussion by encouraging participants to offer their advice to the volunteer leader. It's always fun to see how the volunteer accepts this advice. Some will ignore advice while others may struggle to make a decision that pleases everyone. Play up this friction in a fun way. * After the volunteer leader makes one or two rounds of decisions, ask another volunteer to take over as leader. Repeat this for as much time as you have. Include a discussion on the different leadership styles demonstrated by the volunteers. * When I run a business simulation and have a volunteer take over the leadership role, I give them this hat to wear (they get to keep it as a prize):

Final Reflection * When time is about to run out, do one final reflection on the overall learning experience. **Done! You have just hosted a live role-playing experience that is effective and memorable with just 1 game and 1 computer.**

# Creating Student Camaraderie & Teamwork In Online Courses **One reason online courses fail to engage students is that they lack a sense of camaraderie.** Students don't get the opportunity to engage with their classmates in a meaningful way. This results in students feeling isolated in a lonely learning experience. Many students choose to go to college for the social experience — and those who do so online often miss out on this valuable opportunity. ### Aversion to Teams Many instructors have shared with me that — since Covid — most of their students do not want to work on projects in teams. They prefer to do things on their own. I believe this may be due to a combination of reasons: * A greater **sense of control** by not having to rely on others— in contrast to the uncertainty felt during Covid. * A desire to avoid the **inconvenience** of having to coordinate meetings with others. * A **lack of engagement** with academics in general — I believe this to be an increasing trend that started well before Covid. * The **social anxiety** associated with meeting new people and being forced to work together. I don't know how common this aversion to teamwork is with students around the world. And perhaps it's only temporary. But in any event, learning how to collaborate in teams with people at a distance is a critical skill in our modern world. ### One Solution Try using experiential learning and games — specifically, games that accommodate students playing in teams. Whatever subject you teach, there's a game out there that you can use to encourage teamwork and collaboration (or competition). In the video below, a student shares what happened when his class started playing a business simulation — check it out.

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The benefits of experiential learning often go far beyond what you may expect. **Give it a try.**

# Building Student Excitement With a Big Reveal (and Music) Let's say you've designed a fun competition for your students. When it comes time to reveal the leaderboard or final results, make a show of it. It's fun to witness student emotions as they watch their results revealed using visuals. Emotions quickly swing from anticipation to anxiety to joy and then back to anxiety then back to joy and — you get the picture. It's much like being at a horse race — a wide range of emotions over a few short minutes. Warning — You may not get the same effect when revealing the results of a quiz or exam 😊 I'll show you one example of a big reveal method in this video — and keep reading below to discover my favorite music to play.

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The music playing in the video is _O Fortuna_ — one of my favorite musical pieces to use for dramatic effect when revealing the leaderboard results in a head-to-head multiplayer simulation. You may know _O Fortuna_ from the 1981 movie Excalibur.

My second favorite reveal music is _The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly_, from the classic spaghetti western by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone. Check out this amazing live version by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra —

Another interesting one is the James Bond theme, but it doesn't have a crescendo like O Fortuna. I do use it as my ringtone though 📳 Of course, there are many contemporary songs you can choose that can be just as fun — I use a lot of music in our businessXP curriculum to energize students at key points in the curriculum. > What's your favorite music for a big reveal?

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Experiential Learning Changes Your Role From Instructor to Coach Instructors who adopt experiential learning into their courses discover an important change in how they interact with students. They move from being an **instructor**, or provider of information, to a **coach** or advisor. A coach who facilitates the learning process and encourages reflection through observations, questions, and discussions. It's an amazing experience — an Aha! moment in teaching. I bet you'll love your new role as a coach. It feels more inspiring and meaningful. And it saves you curriculum time, allowing you to share your own personal experiences and focus on the best you have to offer to students. > Instructor — "I'm going to teach you what you need to know. > Coach — "I'm going to help you discover what you need to know. Let me show you how it's done in this video.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Failure, Gaming, and School We fail every day. I call them micro-failures. If you're prepared to expect and accept failure and learn how to use failure to succeed, you'll build resilience to tackle the most complicated problems in business and life. Yet school teaches us to fear failure. In this brief video, I explain how playing games rewires your brain to achieve success through failure.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Case Study Learning Is Good But Not As Good As This **Case Study**-based learning is good. But not nearly as good as **game and simulation-based learning**. A Case Study expects students to care about some problem they have no personal experience with that happened to some person or organization they probably have never heard of. In a simulation game, the student is the case study. It's their own virtual life. It's their own problem they are investigating and solving. In fact, it's not just one or two problems. It's a continuous problem-solving activity where they make hundreds of decisions. And directly experience the consequences of those decisions. If you believe that one case study provides students with a valuable learning experience. Imagine the opportunity to experience hundreds. **If you want a student to care about learning, make it about them.** Give them a personal experience. Allow them to find meaning through failure and success — **of their own doing**. **PS**: And you don't have to worry about AI doing all the work. ![Case Study vs Bus Sim POSTERS Experiential Learning Games & Simulations.png](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/case-study-vs-bus-sim-posters-experiential-learning-games-simulations-RGgy4O.png)

# Assessment Strategies for Educational Games & Simulations ## Assessment Challenges As an instructor, are you spending hours and hours on assessment? Are you wondering if students have put the work in? Are you worried that some students will be surprised and disappointed with their grades (and it's too late to do anything about it)? Are you worried about cheating? ## Educational Games and Simulations Can Help Here's how: * Assessment in games and simulations is based on measurable actions and results. * Results are based on demonstrated behaviors, skills, and performance — not just knowledge or memorization. * Assessment is available to students in real-time, so they are always aware of deficiencies and how to correct them — no surprises. * Assessment is automated, saving time and improving accuracy. ## Assessment Options Each game or simulation experience will be different, but here is a list of the assessment options that may be available for instructors to apply. ### Participation Participation means playing for a set amount of time. Some games and simulations require full engagement by students and can be a good measure of effort. ### Skill Skill means achieving specific milestones within the gameplay. Skill measures and assesses specific competencies. ### Competition Compare student results in the same class or cohort — or in some cases a global leaderboard. Note that competition is a double-edged sword that needs to be considered carefully in education. ### Competency Quiz Tests and quizzes can be used to assess student outcomes. Generally, these are not as reliable as in-game assessments of behavior but can help round out assessment. ### Peer Evaluation When playing in teams, students can be requested to rate their teammates (privately). ### Student Experience Report or Presentation Instructors may choose to have students prepare written or oral presentations or reports on their experience playing the simulation. This encourages students to reflect on their experience and what they learned, and then organize and present their thoughts. ## Deeper Dive If you want to see examples of some of the options described above, here are several videos and a related article: ### Related article Using Goals for Student Assessment in a Life & Money Simulation ### Videos **Student Assessment Using a Realistic Business Simulation**

**How to Automate Student Assessment Using a Simulation**

**Using Time Played in Student Assessment**

# Fair & Stress-Free Student Assessment Quizzes and exams are the best part of the school experience. Said no one ever. They can be quite memorable, however. The stress of preparing for the test, the stress of taking the test, and the stress of waiting days or weeks for the results. Oh, and the stress that comes with receiving a poor result — much of which is often caused by the pressure of high-stakes testing that many are ill-equipped to manage. Fun times. I recently wrote about the problem with fear-based education. Quizzes and exams feed that fear. ## What's even worse is that most tests are very poor at measuring the success of learning. I did well in school because I memorized everything. Text, dates, and mathematical patterns for formulas. Most of which I quickly forgot soon after the test. The academics were boring and this was the easiest way to game the system. This strategy worked for me through K-12 and 6 years in university studying engineering and math. Most people don't have the capacity to memorize like I did, but it serves as one example of how conventional testing does not work. And, interestingly, it wasn't until after I left school that I realized I love to learn. ## Education is more than just gaining knowledge — it's about applying knowledge, demonstrating skill, and changing behavior. To measure and assess the above requires new ways of testing. **Testing by doing.** Much like **learning by doing** — through experiential learning, problem-based learning, quests, and other such approaches. All of this is now possible and has been for a very long time now. I like to call this **authentic assessment** — in contrast to the old-school pseudo assessments. ## When done well, in addition to authenticity, this approach also offers two big benefits — automation and real-time results. This means the results are continually available to the student and instructor. There's no guessing or waiting. The student has direct knowledge and control of the outcome and can adjust their level of effort as needed in real-time, without pressure. And the instructor does not have to spend much time on assessment — or having to defend the results. This saves hours of effort that can now be used to coach students to be successful — or to personally relax and recharge. It's a win-win for everyone in every way. ## Next Steps Consider how you can change up your assessment methodologies. Move away from problem with fear-based education. If you want to see real examples in action, check out this article and video demonstration: Assessment Strategies for Educational Games and Simulations

# Personalized Learning In Education — The Easy Way The concept of **personalized learning** in education has been around for a long time. Here is one definition I found online: > Personalized learning is an educational approach that aims to customize learning for each student's strengths, needs, skills, and interests. Sounds great. Also sounds hard, doesn't it? How can a busy teacher find the time to do that? Electronic tools have been created for specific subject areas and courses to offer personalized learning, but I suspect they take a significant commitment to adopt and integrate into a curriculum (plus the costs and lots of administrative approvals). What if you don't have the time and budget for that? There are much easier ways to apply personalized learning. ### Simulation games are one example Simulation games offer a similar experience for all students, but allow each student to choose their own path to achieve success. This personalization tends to engage students more deeply because they have control of the journey — they are making their own decisions and realizing the consequences of those decisions. This goes beyond a piece of software choosing what the student should learn next. Content selection is certainly a useful feature, but it tends to be primarily focused on identifying and closing deficiencies. That's not the same as making something feel personal, like a personal journey. Simulation games can accommodate varying degrees of learner capabilities by using progressionto slowly build complexity based on what the learner is ready to take on. Customizationfeatures can also allow the instructor to choose the best options for specific learners. ### Examples There are many games and simulations designed for entertainment that apply progression and customization. If you can find one that meets your curriculum needs, give it a try — you may be pleasantly surprised by the results. For a specific example to illustrate these concepts, I'll use one of my business simulations. In this simulation, students start by running the most basic of businesses — a lemonade stand.

The GoVenture Entrepreneur Business Simulation

**Personalization** The student gets to choose the price of their lemonade, the recipe (quality), how much inventory to buy, and more. Even though all students may be running a similar lemonade stand, their personal choices directly affect the results. It's their lemonade stand, their decisions, and their consequences. This is much more personal than the common case-study method used in many business schools. I write about the Case-Study Method here). **Progression** Once the student proves their success with a single lemonade stand, they can then open a second lemonade stand and hire someone to run it for them. Then a third lemonade stand. Once the instructor feels the student is ready for the next level up, they can progress to running a kiosk business. This business has more products, more inventory, and more business decisions. Eventually, the instructor can let the student level up to a full business, which is a super-comprehensive experience. This approach of progression provides a personal path based on student competencies.

**If you want to apply personalized learning the easy way (and effective too!), then consider games and simulations for your curriculum.**

# How To Design Better Multiple Choice Quizzes — 2 Tips I'm going to show you two ways to improve multiple-choice quizzes. Testing using multiple-choice quizzes is certainly not a good way to assess *skill* or *behavioral change*, but it can be okay for measuring *current knowledge*. I say *current* knowledge because students who memorize concepts to pass a multiple-choice quiz typically forget the answers within a few days. This begs the question of why multiple-choice quizzes are so widely used in education — but let's leave that for another discussion. ## Tip #1 Present 3 multiple-choice answers instead of 4. Have you ever wondered why many quizzes include 4 answers? It turns out that research shows no meaningful difference in results between 3 or 4 answers. So, it's better to offer 3 answers because it's easier for teachers to create quizzes and students may find them less intimidating and take less time to complete. ## Tip #2 I'm sharing a technique we use in the multiple-choice quizzes that are included with some of our GoVenture simulation games. We believe this technique significantly increases the accuracy of the test results and reduces the impact of guessing. Let's use this question as an example: ``` Question: What mix of colors makes green? 1. Yellow and blue 2. Red and blue 3. Yellow and one other color ``` A typical quiz might award you 5 points for choosing (or guessing) the correct answer. And 0 points if you choose the wrong answer. Note that a blind guess gives you a 33% chance of a correct answer. A somewhat educated guess likely gives you a 50/50 chance of guessing correctly. Some quizzes try to discourage guessing by deducting points for wrong answers. I'm not a fan of this approach because it contributes to fear-based education (which I wrote about here). ### Here's our technique ... For each of the 3 answers, we provide 3 selections: * Best Answer * Incorrect * Correct but Incomplete The student must make the correct selection for each of the 3 answers, as shown below.

There can only be one *Best Answer*, while *Incorrect*and *Correct but Incomplete*can be repeated. * 3 points are earned for the correct *Best Answer*. * 1 point is earned for each of the other two correct answers. * To earn the maximum 5 points, all three have to be correct. This approach better ensures that students have a deeper understanding of the content being tested. ## More On Assessment * Fair & Stress-Free Student Assessment * Assessment Strategies for Educational Games and Simulations * Video of the concepts described in this article —

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Video discussion of this topic

# Real-World Projects Versus Simulation-Based Learning In my work introducing experiential learning to instructors around the world, I often encounter instructors who go the extra mile to give students real-world projects — consulting with local businesses, managing live initiatives, or solving actual organizational challenges. These educators deserve tremendous credit — arranging, supervising, and assessing real engagements takes significant time, effort, and institutional support. Yet I’ve also noticed that some of these same instructors, understandably proud of their real-world based approach, can be quick to dismiss simulation-based learning. Perhaps because they do not consider simulation to be “real”. In my experience, however, the richest learning comes from **combining** real-world projects with realistic simulations. And if you can only choose one of these methodologies, simulation tends to win out most of the time. ### Why Real-World Projects Fall Short * **Logistical Burden**: Securing partnerships, scheduling work, and handling approvals and liability can overwhelm an instructor’s capacity. * **Unpredictable Value**: Projects may shift scope, stall, or fail to expose students to key business functions. * **Assessment Challenges**: Performance depends on uncontrollable factors — client responsiveness, market shifts, and student mobility constraints. * **Equity & Accessibility**: Not every student can commute or navigate client-site protocols, and barriers may exclude those with disabilities. * **Limited Exposure**: Short-term projects rarely let students experience management-level decision making or the full cycle of strategy, execution, and review. ### How Simulations Fill the Gaps * **Broad Decision-Making**: Simulations put students into decision-making roles, forcing them to weigh trade-offs across finance, operations, marketing, and HR. * **Accelerated Cycles**: Multiple weeks, months, and years of strategy and consequences can unfold in a single session. And learning can be reinforced through repetition. * **Risk-Free Experimentation**: Students test bold strategies — pricing changes, marketing blitzes, organizational pivots — without real-world fallout. * **Automated, Consistent Assessment**: Built-in dashboards track metrics for holistic, fair, and objective grading. * **Scalability & Access**: Thousands of students can participate simultaneously, anytime and anywhere, with minimal administrative overhead. ### A Hybrid Path to Deeper Learning 1. **Pre-Engagement Simulation** – Build core skills in a controlled environment. 2. **Live Client Project** – Apply insights with authentic stakes and client feedback. 3. **Post-Project Simulation** – Revisit scenarios to test alternative strategies and compare with real outcomes. By weaving simulations and real-world consulting together, instructors can offer students the **best of both worlds**: the authenticity of live projects and the management-level decision making, experimentation, and scalability of simulations. This hybrid approach not only maximizes learning but also ensures every student, regardless of circumstance, can engage fully and confidently. For simulation ideas, visit GoVenture.net

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# Unique Way to Increase Student Enrollment & Recruiting Typically once or twice a year, middle school students visit high schools to discover courses and programs available to them when they transition. High school students visit colleges to do the same. Various program hosts deliver some type of tour and presentation. They may have 20 to 60 minutes to wow the participants into signing up for their programs. The most common result — big yawn, small wow. 🙃 There's a better way. I'll share how colleges and high schools use games to win more students. And how multinational companies use them to recruit new employees. This article is focused on business education, but the concept can be applied to any subject if you can find the right type of game to use. ## Recruit Students or Employees With a Fun Event Example — Play a business simulation competition: * Very easy to host and highly engaging for participants. * Can be done in a 20 to 60-minute session — or stretched over multiple days and weeks. * Can be done with one computer or tablet — or one device per participant or team. * Any number of participants. * In person or online. * Live or asynchronously. There are three ways to host such an event. ### EVENT TYPE 1 — Facilitator Runs One Business with Everyone Participating Together * Facilitator plays the simulation game on a big screen (if in person) or shared screen (if online). * Participants do not require any devices or resources. * Step-by-step details are here — How To Use 1 Game and 1 Computer to Teach Hundreds of Students ### EVENT TYPE 2 — Participants Run Their Own Businesses * Participants play the business simulation on individual devices. * Facilitator hosts debriefs and shares leaderboards at various intervals. * Example case study — 1-Hour Business Simulation Competition ### EVENT TYPE 3 — Tabletop Games * Local participants play a board game in groups of 2 to 6 per game during a scheduled event. Tabletop games I've designed — GoVenture.net/games --- The result — more wow, less yawn — ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ More step-by-step details here — GoVenture.net/Group ### Increasing Enrollments For the Long Term Hosting a fun event is great for the short term, but what about the long term? One of the best ways to increase enrollments in the long term is to modernize your curriculum with experiential learning. Let word-of-mouth student engagement do the marketing for you. Add a game to your curriculum. You'll win more students and provide a better learning experience. Examples — GoVenture.net/products

# How to Create Learning Outcomes, Objectives, and Standards With AI As an instructor, you are expected to achieve specific learning outcomes, objectives, or standards. When you are creating or adopting a new resource, you may have to go through this exercise manually, which can be quite time-consuming. Now there is a fast and easy way to do this — with Artificial Intelligence. I did this recently for some new products I had designed. Here’s how I did it and you can do the same: ### Food Truck Entrepreneur Board Game * The rules of the game are in a PDF document. ChatGPT 4 will accept documents (version 3 does not). * Here is the prompt I used: *I’m going to upload a PDF document of the rules of a board game called Food Truck Entrepreneur. Create a comprehensive list of topics covered and learning outcomes.* * You can see the unedited results at the bottom of this page — GoVentureFoodTruck.com ### Project Management Simulation * This program uses video to explain the fundamental concepts of project management while the student manages a simulated project. I copied and pasted the video script text into ChatGPT with this prompt: *Create a comprehensive list of topics covered and learning outcomes from this text related to project management.* * The full unedited results are at the bottom of this page — GoVenture.net/pm ### Digital Marketing Simulation * I used the same process as the Project Management Simulation above. * The full unedited results are at the bottom of this page — GoVenture.net/dm ### Images The headline image with this article and the image below were both created with ChatGPT 4 (DALL·E). Notice the text on the whiteboards. It's funny, but don't worry — AI is much better with plain text.

# Student Internships — Without Barriers Internships can be a life-changing experience. But they are challenging to manage — and controversial. That's where **virtual internships** can be an amazing alternative — I'll show you how in the video below. Here's a comparison of the challenges — ### Conventional Internships * Finding employers willing and able to offer meaningful experiences on the exact schedule that you need. * The availability of qualified employers varies based on region — some locations may have none. * Matching students to employers. * Managing employers and having contingency plans when things don't work out. * Time and effort to monitor and assess student internship activities. * The unpredictability of unexpected events — weather, health, etc. * Accommodating students who are unable to commute or have disabilities or other barriers to employment. * Lack of managerial experience makes internships less effective and meaningful — too many entry-level or busy-work jobs. * Increasing controversy surrounding low-paid or unpaid internships. That's a lot to manage. Much respect for those educators who are able to do all of the above successfully! ### Virtual Internships * Virtual internships are an amazing alternative that solve all of the challenges above. They can be offered to students who are not able to do a conventional internship or to enhance or replace conventional internships. * Even some people skills can be practiced in a virtual simulation. But when it's not enough, live activities can be added to supplement the experience. In this video, I'll show you how virtual internships are done using educational games and simulations.

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# All Teachers Must Do This One Thing With AI — Or Else AI this and AI that. It's all too much. But here is one thing all teachers must know and do. You must knowthat your students are also struggling with this information overload and uncertainty. So you must do this one thing — you must clearly explain your guidelines for student use of AI in your specific course. Are students not permitted to use AI in any way? Are they allowed to use AI in a small way? Are they allowed to use AI in a big way? ### You have to tell them. Because if you do not, students are left to wonder — "Am I being resourceful by using AI or will I be accused of cheating?" It is not fair to you or your students to have such uncertainty. Having basic guidelines can help avoid problems for everyone — and you can always revise them later.

# Is Your VR Metaverse Experience On Time? **Time** — this is one of the most important considerations when designing educational experiences. And a particular challenge for the VR metaverse. Why? ---- Because instructors have a limited amount of time to achieve specific learning outcomes for each course that they teach. And, with courses that have synchronous delivery (live online or in person), each session is often less than one hour. Instructional designers must consider how much time their learning experience will take, and how it can be segmented into multiple short sessions when necessary. Students may spend time on lectures, textbooks, videos, lessons, activities, games, simulations, virtual reality, quizzes, and more. If one learning experience requires too much time, many instructors will not be able to fit it into their curricula, otherwise they risk not being able to achieve all the required educational standards for the course. Back to VR ---------- VR is amazing for exploration. But such exploration needs guidance to assure that students (all students in the same cohort) make progress towards the end goal within a reasonable period of time. If you design the learning experience to be too open-ended, the burden will fall on the instructor to keep things moving forward. And that is a recipe for frustration. Be On Time ---------- When designing a VR experience for education, be sure to consider: 1. The **learning outcomes** that will be achieved and how they may fit in the context of a broader educational requirement. 2. How **time** can be segmented and managed to assure a well-structured experience for instructors and students. Doing this will increase your chances of your experience being adopted more widely.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Metaverse VR AR MR Web3 — Which Should You Choose? Education and training are getting even more complicated with the metaverse, VR, AR, MR, and Web3. How do you determine which technology is best for your learning experience? I created this comparison table to help — https://bit.ly/webvrar

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

🟢Learning Theories & Trends🟢

# We Issued Certificates Without Exams — Here’s How and Why We recently issued our first **GoVenture Certificates** to a class of students who learned using **experiential** business simulations. I have always found it odd that so many certifications seem to be based on anxiety-inducing high-stakes exams that can be passed with good memorization. That doesn’t make sense to me. When we designed our credentialing program, I wanted to do things differently, like this: * Based on demonstrated competencies, skills, and performance * Assessment that spans days and weeks, not a few hours * Assessment that is fair, consistent, and automated * Allows for multiple attempts to pass or improve * Not prone to AI cheating * Effort is rewarded * No “test prep” * Low stress And I wanted it to be easy for **instructors** too: * The entire process should be integrated directly into the syllabus — no extra work required. * If a student has a sick day — no problem. Misses a full week? Still good. * No extra cost for anyone — it’s included in the price of GoVenture. That’s exactly how it works. We introduced the program in August 2025 and students are now earning their credentials. Students demonstrate their skills by working through realistic business scenarios inside GoVenture simulations. They make decisions, deal with consequences, adjust their strategies, and see how those choices affect results. What’s being assessed is how they think, solve problems, and perform over time. Students are awarded certificates with unique IDs that employers and other stakeholders can validate with a quick online search. Certification is open to anyone who uses GoVenture programs in school, university, workplace, or personal learning contexts. **GoVenture Certificates** are available in the following areas: * Entrepreneurship * Business Fundamentals * Accounting Fundamentals * Project Management * Leadership * Digital Marketing * Personal Finance * Job Readiness * Health & Wellness * Typing ### We share all of our requirements and assessment criteria publicly — so if you want to take a deeper dive, you’re welcome. Here’s an example of what is required to earn the _Entrepreneurship Certificate._

About GoVenture games and simulations — GoVenture.net GoVenture Certification program — GoVenture.net/certification

#Teacher's Hierarchy of Needs (vs Maslow's) I’ve had the privilege of communicating with thousands of instructors and administrators across all levels of education. Most often, I’m introducing ideas around experiential learning, games, and simulations. What surprises me is how often my audience reacts with delight, as though they are discovering these methods for the very first time. It makes me wonder — how can something so powerful still feel so new to so many educators? Aren’t teachers always looking for better ways to teach and engage their students? I believe the answer lies in something similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Just as people must satisfy their most basic needs before they can focus on growth and fulfillment, teachers are often consumed with the lower levels of their own professional “pyramid.” _[See the pyramid at the top of the page.]_ Classroom management, grading, curriculum mandates, administrative tasks, and limited budgets can absorb nearly all of a teacher’s time and mental energy. With so many demands at the base, there’s little capacity left to explore innovative teaching methodologies. And even when teachers are curious, many are discouraged by the challenge of securing budget approval for new initiatives. This is why I worked with AI to create a Teacher’s Hierarchy of Needs — a framework that mirrors Maslow’s but reflects the realities of educators. If we truly want to see meaningful change in education, we need to help teachers move up their own pyramid, relieving them of the burdens at the bottom so they have the freedom to reach the top where innovation and transformation happen.

# Banning AI in Schools Is Not an Option Trying to ban AI today is like trying to ban the Internet 20 years ago. Technology always changes how we work and learn. AI is transformational and already everywhere — in students’ pockets, at home, with their friends, at the library, and at work. Soon it will be ubiquitous. So how practical is it to try to ban it? Some argue that society bans smoking, alcohol, and other dangers from young people. True. But those things are health risks, not tools for learning and productivity. They’re also not already in everyone’s pocket or becoming essential employment and life skills. **Does AI hallucinate?** Yes. **Can AI be dangerous?** Yes. **Does AI make mistakes?** Yes. **Can AI compromise learning?** Yes. With this list of Yes’s, shouldn’t we advocate for more education, not less? More education to help instructors use AI wisely. More education to help students use AI responsibly. You can’t gain AI skills without using AI — conversations are not enough. Hands-on practice is required. (PS: I don't sell AI products or services.) Practice is the best way for humans to gain confidence and skills. Speaking of humans, all of those risks listed above — we can replace “AI” with “humans” and the answers are the same. We are all well aware of the barrage of misinformation, manipulation, and scams spreading through our communication channels. More education is the only way we can protect ourselves from these dangers — whether they originate from humans or machines. ### Many fear that using AI strips away the ability to think. And while that can be true, it’s also a very narrow view of how AI can be used in learning. The very same AI that replaces thinking can also enable us to expand our thinking and creativity. We can explore ideas and create things that would never have been possible before. > Here's a simple example — Consider the enormous amount of human energy wasted over the past 30 years creating PowerPoint slide decks — dragging boxes, tweaking fonts, fixing colors, fighting charts. Instead of teaching students to think deeply about how to best communicate an idea, we trained them to wrestle with software. The key is to change the school curriculum to _**strategically**_ use AI — and sometimes _**not**_ use AI. This does not mean turning teachers into AI experts or content creators. It does not mean training students to be better employees or exposing children to unsafe systems. It means helping instructors and students understand when AI is useful, when it isn’t, and how to think critically about its output. It also means using AI to unlock creativity — helping students activate skills they may not yet have, or may never develop otherwise. Like every tool invented in human history, it ultimately comes down to how it’s used. **Related articles:** * Tips To Limit AI Cheating (for Instructors) * All Teachers Must Do This One Thing With AI — Or Else * Could Educators Be Contributing to the Next Digital Divide Without Realizing It? * Universities Have 3 Years to Change Before AI Crushes Enrollments

# Could Educators Be Contributing to the Next Digital Divide Without Realizing It? The digital divide made headlines years ago when access to technology — like computers and the Internet — was unequal across different populations. This gap was widely seen as a barrier to opportunity, as access to digital tools often determines one’s ability to succeed in education, employment, healthcare, and civic life. At the time, the divide was largely about resources and funding, since hardware and connectivity were expensive to purchase, distribute, and maintain. While this issue still exists in many parts of the world, including in high-income countries, significant progress has been made over the past two decades. ### But now, a new kind of digital divide is emerging. And educators may be contributing to it without even realizing. This time, the divide is around **Artificial Intelligence**. AI has already demonstrated its powerful impact on everyday life and work. Even if development were to stop today — an unlikely scenario — its current capabilities are already transforming the world. Educators around the globe are grappling with how AI is disrupting the classroom, especially with widespread concerns about academic dishonesty. Some are choosing to ban AI, ignore it, or strictly police its use. But these approaches are unsustainable. Worse yet, they risk widening a new digital divide —between students who are prepared for the future and those who are not. Being **properly educated** today means more than just mastering traditional subjects. It requires learning methods that prevent students from offloading all their thinking to AI — so they still develop essential knowledge and skills. At the same time, students must be taught how to use AI effectively to enhance their success in both work and life. This balance is possible, but only if we rethink how education is delivered, measured, assessed, and credentialed. This may sound challenging, but most educators have control of their curricula and can begin implementing incremental changes today — it may be even easier than you may think. (For ideas, check out my other newsletter articles)

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# All Games are Educational — I'll Prove It With Space Invaders

Watch Full Screen

Are all Games Educational? -------------------------- Are games a guilty pleasure or an unparalleled learning experience? The answer to this question may allow us to view games in a different light. Take, for example, **Space Invaders**— one of the original and most iconic games ever made. A very basic game in comparison to what’s available today.

Is Space Invaders educational? ------------------------------ Check out the video at the top of this article where I play the game. Am I learning anything by playing Space Invaders? The answer is yes, I am. Deep learning is happening. While I’m playing the game, I’m learning the rules of the game, the game mechanics, cause and effect, and more. What happens when I shoot a shield? What happens when I shoot an alien? What happens when the aliens drop down a level? **I'm learning through trial and error as I fail in the game.** In fact, I’m failing constantly. I fail when I miss an alien, when I shoot my own shield, when I let the aliens drop down a level, and when I get shot. I fail when I lose attention or focus. I call these **micro failures** — and they happen all the time in games and in our daily lives as well. As I fail frequently and repeatedly, I’m also learning to overcome that failure. The act of failing doesn’t paralyze me, it teaches me. Ultimately, with enough practice, I will achieve success through failure. Incidentally, that’s how many successful business people actually become successful. They experience countless micro failures, until they eventually succeed. And, there’s even more going on in Space Invaders. I’m practicing and improving hand-eye coordination, physical timing, and fine motor skills. As a father of a child with special needs, I learned not to underestimate the importance of this type of learning as my son struggled to hold a pencil or drink from a cup. But with therapy and practice, including gaming, he’s now beating me at Mario Kart using a game controller. > The fact is that all games are educational. All games are learning games because our brain is always learning. It doesn’t matter if we are shooting aliens, flinging angry birds, or leading a guild into battle, our brains are wired to learn. So the question is not if a game is educational or not. We _**are**_ gaining knowledge and we _**are**_ are gaining skills. The question is how valuable the gaming experience is to helping us improve our daily lives. Is the knowledge and are the skills we are gaining from playing the game transferrable to the real world? Can they help us succeed at life? To answer that question, compare **Space Invaders** to the **GoVenture Entrepreneur** business simulation game that is designed to train you how to start and run a business (Disclosure— I designed GoVenture Entrepreneur).

The **GoVenture Entrepreneur** simulation game is designed with a specific educational objective, whereas Space Invaders is designed purely for entertainment. Clearly, the GoVenture Entrepreneur game equips the player with much more knowledge and many more skills that are useful to real life. And, the experience is compressed in such a way to transfer knowledge and nurture skills in a highly-accelerated way, potentially multiple times faster than any other learning method. So, all games are indeed educational because our brains are always learning. We can choose games purely for their entertainment value (with a little bit of educational benefit), or choose games that help us succeed at life.

# Using Games for Education Games designed for _**education**_ are quite different than games designed for _**entertainment**_. I have previously described how all games are educational — It doesn’t matter if we are shooting aliens, flinging angry birds, or leading a guild into battle, our brains are wired to learn. Let's take a closer look at the **benefits** provided by games designed for _**entertainment**_ and the **challenges** they pose for educators who want to use them. WoW --- First, consider the skills required by a person who is leading a guild into battle in World of Warcraft (WoW)— a massively multiplayer online role playing game with a fantasy-science fiction theme.

The guild leader assembles a group of players from around the world and leads them into various battles — assessing individual player skills and powers, identifying risks, managing time, communicating, adapting, solving problems, resolving conflicts, negotiating, and more. **Daniel J. Moore** wrote an insightful article about his experience as a Guild Leader in How I Learned Management Skills in World of Warcraft Compare the first-hand experience described above with any conventional management or leadership training you may have read about or undertaken. How do PowerPoint slides, executive speeches, empathy workshops, and team bonding sessions stack up? The Benefits ------------ Here's what makes _**entertainment**_ games so amazing: * **Engaging gameplay** — because they are not limited by having to achieve an educational outcome. * **Progression** — many games are designed to have players progressively grow their skills as they encounter challenges of increasing difficulty. * **Depth of play** — because game designers want you to play more not less. * **Repetition** — sometimes called "grinding" — it's not always good, but when designed well can serve as a muscle-memory exercise for your brain to build and reinforce new skills and make it easier to recall and apply those skills in the heat of the moment. * **Budget** — much of the above is often supported by significant financial investments, which makes it possible to build bigger and better. (Although low-budget indie developers create amazing games too.) There are more reasons we can list, but that's enough for now. The Challenges -------------- Ok, so if entertainment games are amazing, why do we need _**educational**_ games? How are they different? Here's how and why: * **Time** — entertainment games often have too many superficial activities which use up valuable curriculum time. Educators only have a limited amount of time to achieve the educational outcomes required of them. A game that takes dozens of hours to play but only achieves a few learning outcomes — regardless of how valuable and sticky they may be — is a deal breaker when an instructor is required to meet 100 learning outcomes in 40-60 hours. * **Progress** — instructors often prefer that students in the same cohort progress at the same rate through an educational experience. That may not be possible with an entertainment game. * **Failure Management** — games are all about failure. Failing — repeatedly, and then succeeding. Schools are all about avoiding failure. They are not equipped to manage it. And educators do not have the time and resources to do so with each individual student. The game must manage this, but entertainment games are not designed to do so. * **Assessment** — entertainment games may not provide the proper data for instructors to assess student performance. And games that do provide deep data may not format it in a way that is educator friendly. * **Technology** — typical computing devices available in education cannot play some entertainment games. These technical challenges were significant in the 1990s and early 2000s, but less so now. Except for Virtual Reality (VR) where headsets may become the new digital divide. * **Student Privacy** — entertainment games may collect personally identifiable information (PII) of their players in a way that will be a deal breaker for educators who are legally liable to maintain student privacy. * **Theme** — entertainment games may have themes or graphics that may not be suitable for (public) education. _(Personal example: I designed a_ _game that teaches you how to type_ _using a fantasy science-fiction theme, even though I knew that this theme would not be favored by some typing instructors)._ * **Credentialing** — boosting your resume with a certificate or certification can help you win a job, but adding your _World of Warcraft_ leadership skills probably will not. It should, but it will likely have the opposite effect. _On a personal note, I'm trying to change that by providing business training with a_ _global business game_ _that I hope will boost personal resumes._ * **Perception** — many people do not appreciate the educational benefits of gaming. They see games as a time-waster or a guilty pleasure. When I started selling my first business simulation game to educators over 20 years ago (2000), I couldn't use the word "game" to describe it or I would be thrown out. More people are gaming now more than ever, but the stigma still exists in the minds of many — particularly the administrative decision-makers. Which is Better? ---------------- If you are designing an educational game or considering adopting one, consider this: > Games designed for learning cannot compete with games designed for entertainment. If you are comparing _fun_ or _repeat play_, the entertainment game is always going to win. That's because whenever a game has some other objective beyond entertainment, the gameplay becomes watered down — there's no way around that. But — what's important to keep in mind is that games designed for learning do not directly compete with games designed for entertainment. They compete with other resources designed for learning — textbooks, lectures, videos, projects, and case studies. And that's a competition that educational games will always win. So there you have it. --------------------- This is why entertainment games, as amazing as they may be, are rarely used in education. And why games specifically designed for education are important. Of course, some adventurous educators do use entertainment games quite successfully — if that's you, share your story in the comments! > PS: Speaking of **leadership training**, check out my businessXP training — the world's first and only fully-game based training for aspiring business leaders and entrepreneurs.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# All Games Are Educational Imagine all of the human energy being devoted to games. And people do it because they want to. People skip school, work, and sleep to play. Many even pay to do it. Talk about motivation! **Games are great for entertainment and escapism.** But, can we harness this enormous power to advance human kind? The answer is — yes! **You see, all games are educational.** Our brains are wired to learn, no matter what we are doing. Whether we are flinging angry birds, shooting aliens, or leading a guild into combat, our brain is learning. But ... with games designed for entertainment, our brain is gaining knowledge and skills that may or may not be useful in the real world. With a game designed specifically for education, the learning and skills become much more transferrable to the real world. **Games that help us succeed in life— now that’s powerful.** Don't like the idea of games in education? Ok, let's call it what it is — experiential learning. Learning by doing — is there any better way?

# Learning Styles — Debunked? You have probably heard this before. That we learn best based on our preferred **learning style**: * Visual * Auditory * Reading & Writing * Kinesthetic **Multiple intelligences** are also widely discussed: * Spatial * Musical * Naturalist * Linguistic * Interpersonal * Intrapersonal * Bodily-Kinesthetic * Logical-Mathematical But are these concepts true and accurate? ----------------------------------------- Not quite. It seems that the concept of **learning styles** has become a **neuromyth** — a widely held belief of the results of brain research that may not be true. Current thinking suggests that these original theories were _inaccurate_ or have been _misunderstood_— or both. And they are sometimes being _misrepresented_ even by those who have attempted to debunk them. Modern Thinking --------------- A more modern and practical view seems to be this: 1. We each have different _**abilities**_ rather than _**styles**_. 2. Multiple _**methods**_ of delivery are always better. 3. Being _**focused**_ is of key importance while learning — another word for this might be _**engaged**_.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Rote Learning Builds Your Brain's Muscle Memory **Rote Learning** is a memorization technique based on repetition. Most of us have used it to learn and remember the alphabet or our math multiplication tables. Rote learning is often considered to be a bad way to learn. It seems inefficient and uninspiring. But, just like any tool in a toolbox, it can be _very_ powerful when used strategically. ## Muscle Memory In sports there's a concept called "muscle memory." Through practice, athletes repeat a physical movement thousands of times so that the movement becomes consistent. This muscle memory helps a golfer swing a club with better accuracy, a basketball player sink a higher percentage of shots, and a hockey player skate more efficiently. We use our muscle memory every day to walk across the room, climb stairs, and do many physical motions we don't have to think about. For athletes, muscle memory does one more important thing — it helps them maintain consistency and mastery _in the heat of the game_. Performing well in the heat of the game is what separates the great from the good. ## Muscle Memory For the Brain In education, rote learning is like building muscle memory for the brain. It can be a very powerful technique when used properly. Because learning a new concept, even if you fully understand it at the time, is likely to be quickly forgotten. And, if not forgotten, its unlikely to be applied in the heat of the moment when you need it. Rote learning can solve this. ## Rote Learning in Games Rote learning is used in many games for entertainment and games for education. Take the old-school _Pac-Man_ game for example.

This game has about 5 minutes of unique gameplay, and then you repeat everything. Yes, the game moves faster and the monsters get more aggressive, but the gameplay is the same. Yet, millions of people have spent countless hours playing this simple game. Modern games have similar repeat gameplay or "grinding" as it is sometimes called. Grinding builds confidence and refines skills for bigger challenges to come. ## Instructional Design Learning that does not use rote methods risks falling short. For example, role-playing exercises are a common technique that can be fun and effective. But if you only do a few of these activities, what you are learning is unlikely to be burned into your brain's muscle memory. This means you may not be able to recall and apply what you learned when you need it. And, if you can't apply what you learn when you need it, then we have to question the value of the education provided. The key to leveraging the power of rote learning is to identify the core skills that are needed in the heat of the moment and then strategically apply repetition to build consistency and mastery. Not too much repetition. You want to avoid unnecessary grinding. But just enough to accomplish the learning objective. The challenge, however, is that rote learning takes time. Time that most instructional designers cannot plan for in an educational experience that may only be a few hours in duration. ## Educational Games & Simulations The most feasible solution is to use a game or simulation. Games and simulations allow us to apply rote learning in the shortest amount of time possible. We can design activities that are laser focused on the skills needed and the perfect amount of repetition to build consistency and mastery. Here is an example of how I applied rote learning to teach accounting in a business simulation. The objective here is to teach how to post debits and credits in bookkeeping. This is something a bookkeeper will do thousands of times and must be done with 100% accuracy. Watch the video to see how it works.

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I will share more examples in a future issue of this newsletter (or ask me in the comments).

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Students Learn More About Money In Games Than in School **How many young people do you know who saved up their money to buy a game?** I know I did. I was constantly saving up to buy video game cartridges for my Atari 2600 (yes, I’m old). Or for a memory expansion pack for my Vic 20 so I could squeeze in more lines of code (most of you have no idea what I’m talking about 😃)

Today, young people (and adults too) save up to buy the latest PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, or gaming computer. For many of us, it may be our first memory of being motivated to save money to achieve a goal. It’s our first lesson in personal finance. Add it up and this lesson has been repeated millions of times by people around the world. ## Then we have school. You may be surprised to know that many US states and Canadian provinces already require personal finance education to be taught in schools — and many more are coming on board. I follow this because, over 15 years ago, I designed what may perhaps have been the first realistic personal finance simulation for use in schools. Many schools around the world use my GoVenture educational games and simulations to teach students about business, money, and health. **But most schools do not.** Most schools crowbar a few personal finance lessons into other courses like math or economics — falling well short of what is needed. Some schools offer full courses in personal finance — which is great — but they tend to use textbooks, videos, and basic lessons to teach. Not very effective. Not very motivating. Because personal finance is something you have to experience. > Doing a few basic budgeting exercises and having a video talk at you about personal finance is rarely going to change how we manage money. ## Now, back to games. Beyond saving to buy games, if you are a gamer, you also know that many games have economics built in. You may have to buy or trade materials, tools, weapons, or other resources. Often there is a virtual currency used to represent and exchange value.

To succeed you have to apply knowledge and skills in personal finance. You are not being lectured to about personal finance. You are not watching a video about personal finance. You are not doing a meaningless activity about personal finance. ## You are *doing* personal finance. You are given choices, making decisions, and experiencing the consequences of your decisions. This is learning at its finest. And it’s not happening in school. **It’s happening in games.**

# Does School Motivate Students With Fear? Conventional education doesn’t work very well. We all know this to be true from our own experiences in school. And there is one big problem that proves it —- *fear* is used as a primary motivator for students. Yes, fear. If you don’t study, you will fail the quiz. If you fail the quiz, you will fail your course. If you fail your course, you will have to repeat it and may be held back. If you are held back a grade, you will not be with your friends. If you still don’t comply, you will not graduate. If you do not graduate, you will be disqualified from most good jobs. If you do graduate but have poor marks, you will still be disqualified from most jobs. If you don’t get a good job, you will be destined for a life of low income and unhappiness. ## Fear. Fear. Fear. In my early days of school, the strap was a form of punishment. The threat of the strap was often enough to get us in line.

But we have evolved as a society, recognizing that there are better ways. And while physical threats may no longer be allowed, fear is a threat of its own kind. ## It’s time to evolve from fear-based education. Education is essential — that’s not debatable. And so is accountability. So, how can we counter fear-based education? ## We can leverage activities that people do by choice. Playing games, listening to music, watching movies, creating videos. An enormous amount of human energy goes into these activities. People pay money to do these activities. They spark intrinsic motivation. ## So, why is education not leveraging these types of activities more deeply? I say “more” because such entertainment-focused activities are used in small pockets of the curriculum. I know this to be true because I design educational games and simulations used by thousands of schools around the world. And there are many others like me who offer new and creative ways of learning. But it's an uphill battle to encourage many educators to change how they approach teaching and for administrators to support them. Particularly those administrators who seem to like buildings more than curriculum. To be clear, we should not blame educators — we've all inherited fear-based education through decades of conformity. But that doesn't mean we have to perpetuate it. ### Change will happen faster when we realize that education does not need to be based on fear. But you don't have to wait. You can be the change. Take a baby step or a big leap. The solutions and support are out there waiting for you.

# YIPPEE — Education Philanthropy Done Right Being in education for nearly 30 years, I've seen a lot of philanthropy applied in the sector. I'm sure most of it has been helpful, but it rarely works really well. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to discover YIPPEE — this is philanthropy done right and I'm sharing it here with the hope that more funders will learn from this approach to maximize their impact. ## What is YIPPEE? YIPPEE is a website that gives educators points that they can use to buy products. 1 point equals 1 US dollar. Educators receive the equivalent of $500 just by signing up on the website — which takes 2 minutes. Yup, $500 for 2 minutes of your time. The products that are available to buy with points are sourced from various publishers who offer high-quality educational resources (some of my GoVenture resources are on YIPPEE). Educators can keep earning points by posting product reviews — 100 for a simple review, sometimes more for an extended one. 250 points can also be earned by attending online professional development sessions, which typically are only 1-hour long. Talk about easy money! ## Why is this unique in philanthropy? 1. No Funding Applications. Educators don't have to spend hours writing up funding applications, waiting for weeks or months to discover if they'll be approved, and then experience disappointment when denied. YIPPEE eliminates this unnecessary energy drain and rejection that often discourages educators from trying their best. 2. Choice. With YIPPEE, educators are not forced to use a specific resource because it's free, required by an administrator, or funded by a third party. Educators get to choose resources that best match the way they like to teach and the needs of their students. 3. Better Resources. Let's face it — free resources are usually not the best resources. They may lack features, support, and future upgrades. And even the best quality free resources are not the best fit for every instructor and student. YIPPEE solves this by enabling educators to access fee-based products at no cost. The product provider gets paid by YIPPEE. 4. Freedom to Experiment. It's rare that a teacher is provided funding to experiment with a new way of teaching and learning. And with no strings attached. With YIPPEE, educators don't have to ask for permission to buy something. They don't have to ask for forgiveness if things don't quite work out. And they don't have to write up reports to justify what was tried. Freedom. 5. Avoid the Branding Trap. Many nonprofits frequently create their own resources (or pay people like me to create them) because they want their own brand on the content. That's a problem. First, it means they are spending time and money to create content that likely has already been created elsewhere. Second, the final product is usually not as good as what's already available from more experienced and better-funded providers. This means an enormous amount of energy is focused on doing things that do not best serve the needs of educators and students. YIPPEE avoids this by curating the best products already available and allowing educators to access them at no cost. YIPPEE partners with other content providers rather than compete with them — the result is that everyone wins. ## What's the Catch? The only catch is that YIPPEE is not (yet) widely available — * YIPPEE launched in 2022 and is only available to educators in the USA. * The content focus is currently on entrepreneurship education, which includes business subjects like marketing, accounting, startup, etc. * Funding for using points to purchase paid products is currently (as of 2024) limited to supporting teachers in specific regions of the US states or who have attended certain events. As more funders come on board, YIPPEE will be able to expand its offering to fully benefit instructors in other regions. But even if an educator is not (yet) eligible to use points to purchase paid products, they can still benefit in four ways: 1. Discover curated resources. 2. Read (real) instructor reviews. 3. Collect points that may be usable in the future when your region is funded. 4. Some resources are free and do not require points, so they are available educators throughout the USA. ## Sign Me Up YIPPEE Website — YIPPEE Create an account — Here Some of my GoVenture educational games and simulations are on YIPPEE.

# 2 Reasons Why The "Coding In School" Movement Is Misguided And Needs To Be Replaced With This ... **I originally wrote this article in 2016 — perhaps during the peak of the "Coding In School" movement. Seven years before the recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, etc). Some believe that AI is going to eliminate most programming jobs in the coming years. Perhaps the time has come to refocus this energy.** --- There has been a big movement these past years to encourage more computer programming (coding) in schools ... for all students, regardless of their predisposition. While the theory and motivation behind this movement are good, the execution is misguided. Here's why: 1. Very few people will ever be suited to a career in programming. Coding is hard. Your brain has to be wired a certain way to be good at it, and to enjoy sitting at a computer for hours on end. This is a very small (tiny) percentage of the population. I have interviewed hundreds of people who formally studied coding in high school and college and it's quite apparent that most will never have a career in coding. 2. For most people, coding will be too challenging and/or boring. This will immediately discourage them from doing it and will alienate them from the other good things related to coding that they could have been excited about. Yes, I do understand that the "coding in schools" movement is not necessarily about creating career programmers. And for clarity, I'm not talking about coding courses that students choose to take on their own — they are still needed for students who self-identify this interest. I'm only talking about the movement to get everyone to experience coding. Proponents say that our world is driven by code, so it makes sense for everyone to know how it works, even if just the basics. And, it will help fill the ever-increasing job demand for such skills (*Wait! 2023 news update — AI has other plans about such jobs)*. They will add that coding also builds focus, logic skills, problem-solving skills, teamwork, and more. **And, I agree with them. I agree with all of it.** But, they are going about it the wrong way. I'll reveal the right way to do it in a moment, but first let me say that I don't hold these views because I'm some type of technophobe or luddite. Quite the opposite, in fact. I have a 40-year programming background, having started with Basic on my Vic-20 when I was probably 10 years old. I can fully appreciate the value of learning to code at a young age and how it can mold a young mind. I'm a programmer, software designer, and entrepreneur who hires and works with programmers (and many other types of knowledge workers) on a daily basis. **I get it. I support it.** But, not in the way most people do, because of the reasons I outlined above. My thinking is further influenced by 25 years of deep experience designing and selling highly-complex educational products while trying to understand what motivates and enables people to learn quickly. ## What we really need to be teaching in schools is product design and commercialization. Here's why: 1. Everyone is touched by the process in some way, mostly as consumers. This provides real-world context for learners. And, if you prefer fantasy worlds, that works too. 2. The process has a role for everyone. If you don't like coding or technology, maybe you will like graphic design, or packaging design, or photography, or video production, or writing, or acting, or research, or marketing, or selling, or ... you name it. Product design and commercialization has it all. The key is to create awareness of the entire process (not just coding), so that the learner can self-identify with the role that is most personally engaging. Once you have a learner engaged and motivated to discover more and do more, you've won. We've won. Now, all you have to do is point them in the right direction to exercise that motivation. I have come to realize that much of the time and energy invested in formal education goes towards extorting learners to learn. Yup, extortion. You better learn this because it will be on the test! If you fail the course, you will be held back and not progress with your friends. You will lose your tuition money. Your family will be disappointed. You won't get a good job. It's fear-based education. We should not force coding on students in a way that they will fear it, and I can pretty well guarantee you that many will fear it ... including those who could possibly love it someday. We have to build a larger funnel of engaged students by introducing them to the entire process from idea, to design, to production, and commercialization, many of which will gravitate towards coding. Ultimately, this approach lays the foundation of **entrepreneurship** and the **entrepreneurial mindset** ... and may just be the most meaningful gift we can give to our students.

# I Gained Confidence and Courage — by Failing I gained *confidence* and *courage* by failing— that's what two college students recently shared with me after playing a GoVenture business simulation game. Confidence and courage are two things I strive for my children to have (kindness is another). I suspect that most instructors would love for their students to gain this mindset as well. ## How can we facilitate confidence and courage in our students? The answer is — through experience. We are a collection of the experiences we've had in our lives — both good and bad. So, if we want to influence behavior, then the best way to do this is by facilitating targeted experiences. But delivering live experiences in the real world can be costly and expensive. That's where simulation comes in. Here's what one student shared with me: > \[The simulation\] was a different experience from general learning. I did not feel as much *stress* and gained more *confidence* in what I was doing. Being able to fail and learn from failures without having my ego judged was a huge *confidence* booster. Learning through failure is not a common topic in school. School teaches us to fear failure. That's a problem because life is full of failure. Simulations and games help us learn to expect failure and how to use failure to achieve success — I describe how in this video. Here's what another student shared with me: > As a conservative person, I found myself playing "safely" from my point of view during the trial part. But I could not get the profit I desired or the customer satisfaction levels that I wanted. > Only when I played the version after the trial I had the *courage*to risk more, and my profit margin increased a lot. > It is an amazing tool for business learning purposes, developing different skills to get *bolder* and *think differently* through the game and in real life. These students gained confidence and courage by failing. How often do you hear that in education?

# Enrollment Decline — Schools Have Lost Their One Competitive Advantage Many colleges and universities are having a tough time these days with enrollments. But there is one reason that I rarely see mentioned and it's super important to acknowledge — **geography**. For the past decades, most schools have had a single competitive advantage — their location. They draw students from their surrounding communities. But what happens when many courses are offered online? And when students increasingly choose courses they do not have to attend in person? Here's what happens — your program becomes commoditized. It looks like every other online program offered by every other school. > com·mod·i·tize— to render (a good or service) widely available and interchangeable with one provided by another company *(source: Merriam-Webster).* Your geographic competitive advantage is now gone. Now you have to focus on *differentiating* your offering in some other way. You probably can't compete with schools that have a stronger brand. You may not be able to afford lowering prices in a race to the bottom. Your best alternative is to modernize your curriculum. Make that your competitive advantage. PS: It's a lot more affordable than a fancy new building most students will never visit.

# Universities Have 3 Years to Change Before AI Crushes Enrollments AI is transforming education unlike any other previous technology. But not how you think it is. It's _**not**_ because educators are using AI in ways to improve student learning (although some are). It's _**not**_ because school administrators are using AI to replace teachers (although some are). The real reason AI is transforming education is because students are using AI to game the entire school system. Students are using AI to do their thinking and their assignments. It's cheating on a mass scale never before possible. **It's a nightmare scenario for educators.** Accept the cheating and you become a diploma mill. Try to catch the cheating and you waste countless hours on policing that's never going to be foolproof. Report the cheating and you open a can of worms full of drama. It's a nightmare scenario for educators and it's a nightmare scenario for university enrollments. **The Bad News** ---------------- We are now into our third year of AI being widely accessible for daily life and work. Imagine students in middle school now going through high school using AI for much of their school work. After six years of living with AI, what will their attitudes be about enrolling in university in 2028? University education has already been on the attack for being too long, too expensive, and generally uninspiring. Now add AI to the mix. **The Good News** ----------------- Education has needed to change for decades now. The ingredients to do so have been available, but resistance has been strong. Old-school thinking and legacy systems maintain the status quo. The AI tsunami is the catalyst that will force education to change. I think most people would agree that change is needed (although with much less agreement on how). **What do I mean by change?** ----------------------------- I'm not talking about video meeting apps and learning management systems. That's just the plumbing. Sadly, we saw how education struggled with these basic concepts during Covid. We have to reimagine how education is delivered, measured, assessed, and credentialed. We have to change the curriculum/syllabus for every program and course. The more that AI influences the process and outcome, the more change that is needed to assure that AI can be used to enhance learning not bypass it. Does this shift sound too huge to tackle? **The Even Gooder News** ------------------------ Do made up words make this article less likely, or more likely, to be written by AI? 🙂 The even **_better_** news is that this is all achievable by most instructors reading this article. Education is widely distributed rather than centralized. This means most instructors have the ability to modify their own syllabus to match their personal preferences with how they achieve the required curriculum outcomes. You can make this change right now, today. Educational systems that are more centralized may take longer to settle on a solution, but that solution can be pushed out faster if administrators are committed to making change. **Avoid the ongoing drama.** Change an activity, flip the classroom, adopt experiential learning, use pen and paper — the solutions are out there and they are easier to implement than you may think.

# Join My New Community for Educators and Trainers Hey, it's Mathew — my team and I have just launched a **private community** for **educators and trainers** to share ideas, resources, and discussions on *experiential learning, games, and simulations*. I invite you to join us and get immediate access to free resources. Here is the link — Skool.com/TeachingSuperhero This video shows you inside the group —

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## Why Launch a New Community? There are over 6,000 educators and trainers who follow my newsletter on the topic of experiential learning, games, and simulations — and I sense that a more interactive option would be desirable. Educators prefer to learn from other educators or instructional designers. And they want to share experiences and resources to help each other. But I find that most online community groups are not working well. Most groups on LinkedIn and Facebook have low engagement or too many sales pitches, and the interfaces have too many distractions. I'm also a member of a game-based learning group on another proprietary platform that has over 17,000 members, and it's totally dead — likely due to the very old interface design and lack of effort by the hosts to create value and engagement. So, I searched for a community platform that has a super-simple and clean interface and that's completely focused on community engagement. I found one and it's even gamified, which allows me to provide rewards and prizes to members who remain engaged. ## Teaching Superhero Teaching Superhero started as a newsletter and now it's also our new community group. We created the group to help improve learning around the world. We encourage everyone to share ideas and best practices, ask questions, and learn from and support each other. Joining only takes a few seconds and the community is asynchronous so you can participate whenever you want. We may have the occasional live online event. Here is the link to find out more — Skool.com/TeachingSuperhero I hope you will join us (click the JOIN GROUP button). Thank you! Mathew Georghiou

# Rate My Professors — Do Your Reviews Matter? My observation: > Course evaluations have now become Amazon reviews — "These shoes are uncomfortable when I wear them on my hands — 1 star" I did some brief research on the impact of RateMyProfessors.com — a popular website where students review their instructors. If you're an instructor who did not know about websites like this, did your heart just sink? Or are you eager to go and discover your rating? **Perhaps you think sites like this are trash?** Maybe so. But consider how often you review the product ratings on sites like Amazon and how they have influenced your own purchase decision. The reality is that such ratings do have an impact. And if it's not RateMyProfessors.com (with its somewhat dated reviews), it's some other website, social media post, or face-to-face conversation that's happening. Students will Google you. Many will believe what they read. Most will not do rigorous research. You already know all of this to be true. ## The Age of the Personal Brand We now live in the age of information where everyone has a **personal brand**. Your personal brand is how others **feel** about you. Yup, feel. We cannot tell others how to feel about us — but we can influence that feeling by contributing to what people see, hear, and read about us. Whether we like it or not, we all have a personal brand. We can choose to let others define it for us — or we can make an effort to define it ourselves. A strong personal brand not only helps us, but it also **helps us help others** by making it easier to connect people, open doors, raise money for good causes, and more. Ok, now let's get back to education ... ## Prior to conducting my mini-research, here was my advice to instructors: *If websites like RateMyProfessors scare you, there are two options:* 1. *Dumb down your course by reducing attendance and homework requirements. Make it super easy for students to pass. — or —* 2. *Level up your course by adding more experiential learning. Make it engaging, practical, and meaningful.* ## After My Research ... My advice has not changed. You can improve your rating by making things **really easy for students**. Or, by making them **feel better about the hard work** they have to put in to earn their grade. If you choose the second option, then the question becomes — ## How can we make students feel better about working harder? Here's how: * Make the content delivery more **engaging**— more interesting, less reading, more doing. * Make the experience feel **practical**— dispel the common question of "Why am I learning this?" * Make the learning **meaningful**— build personalized skills that are transferrable to the real world. From my experience, the easiest way to do all of the above in one shot is to adopt **experiential learning**. For the adventurous instructors, this can be a rework of the entire curriculum. Or for an easier transition, it could be adding an enhancement for part of it. The first step is to start searching for examples of experiential learning (BTW, this article is part of my newsletter and teacher community where I share such examples). ## Weaponization of Reviews Increasingly, students and non-students use reviews as a way to penalize people and companies they don't like. These manipulated reviews are an unfortunate reality that are difficult to address. My thinking on this is as follows — if you see an unfair review, try to reply to it if you can. The reply should be clear and rational, not aggressive. The reply is not for the original poster, but for everyone else who will be reading the post. Because I think it's more problematic to leave an unfair review unchallenged than it is to provide a measured reply. But caution should be used in any event. ## Interesting References Here is a small collection of some of the more interesting references I stumbled upon when I was researching RateMyProfessors.com. Some of these are a bit old now, but still interesting. This research is not rigorous by any means. --- ### Amusing Reviews Received by One Instructor My *negative* reviews include the following: * "The amount of homework was unreal. I spent on average, 5 hours a week on this homework, which is also graded on correctness." * "Only take this class if... you like learning on your own." * "He is a really tough grader and will take off points for little things (i.e. forgetting an equals sign)." * "He... marks off on tests if he doesn't know how you got an answer." * "Also, the homework is graded on accuracy not completion..." * [source] --- ### Advice by Benjamin Faust

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### Advice by a Top Writer on Quora I’ll answer this as somebody that takes teaching (very) seriously, used to have an active RMP page, and somebody as a student that used RMP all the time to \[check professors/write reviews\] as I didn’t want to waste time with a poor-quality professor (I’ve had my fair share of pretty bad professors, they correlated pretty nicely with RMP reviews). *Continue reading on Quora* Here ### Professors Read Their Reviews — plenty of videos like this one

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### Research * Does “Rate My Professors” Help or Hurt Learning? * What Ratemyprofessors.com Reveals About How and Why Students Evaluate Their Professors: A Glimpse Into the Student Mind-Set * Responses to Negative Student Evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com: The Effect of Instructor Statement of Credibility on Student Lower-Level Cognitive Learning and State Motivation to Learn

# How To Invest a Small Amount of Money I suspect this may be a question that lots of students have for their instructors. Hopefully, my answer here may help. --- When you have very little money and social media is full of humble bragging about making big money investing in real estate, stocks, bonds, crypto, you name it ... what should you do? You already know that investing a small amount of money in any of these options is unlikely to turn into a lot of money. And the bigger the risk you take, the more likely you are to lose it all. What to do? Here's the answer — Invest in yourself. Use whatever time and money you have available to gain new skills. Enroll in courses, attend events, or work internships. Do something that opens your mind and gives you skills that will move you forward. Be careful with taking on big debt to do this — start by finding free or affordable options. **Invest in yourself.**

# Students Cheating With AI? Maybe Students Are The Ones Being Cheated? > I hear about students cheating with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other methods? > Maybe they are not the cheaters. > Maybe they are the ones being cheated by an old-school curriculum that fails to inspire learning? For sure, there are people who cheat because they don’t want to put the work in. But I think this requires broader thinking in education. We need to ask why so many students are compelled to cheat — or at least take the easy way out. I often have discussions with instructors about assessment and I advise them that they should grade students on every assignment, even the practice ones. At a minimum, grade them on participation. Because many (most?) students will only do what they are graded on. > “Is that going to be on the test? No — ok then I’m not doing it.” Have you ever heard or said that? Again … why? The reality is that many (most?) students don’t go to school for an education, they go for the credential — the path to a job. And they go for the social experience. Some people have a romanticized view of education where students go to school to discover new information, open their minds, and be challenged. If students ever had that expectation, sadly, for many it’s long gone by the time they finish high school. By the time they get to college, many students want to do the least amount of work on academics so they can spend more time doing everything else that college offers. Some may believe this is a cynical view of education. But I tend to think of it more as a fair observation. And an important one to consider when the college dropout rate is thought to exceed 30%. Not to mention the consequences of student loan debt. The reality is that students don’t look forward to (or fondly back on) sitting through lectures, cramming for assignments, and being subjected to stress-inducing exams. That's just accepted as the price of admission (on top of the real $ price of admission). ## So, what’s the solution? Is it to *lower the standards* and expectations of students? No. A better option is to *raise standards* by improving the curriculum to provide students with experiences that are more meaningful and inspiring.

Buckets of money are spent on fancy new buildings, but very little on changing the curriculum. Improving curriculum only takes a tiny fraction of the money spent on infrastructure — yet it seems to always be at the bottom of the list. Perhaps because there's no celebration or ribbon cutting when an instructor upgrades their course experience from good to great. Yet, this is where the real work happens. ## Curriculum Matters And better curriculum already exists for nearly every subject. We just have to look for it. And be willing to try something new.

Here's a personal example — For the past 20 years, I've been designing and selling educational games and simulations to schools. Occasionally, some educators and administrators have told me that they are not interested in my type of products because they believe that there is insufficient empirical research to demonstrate the benefits of this type of learning. The irony is that these same people choose to continue to use lectures, textbooks, and other old-school learning methods that we already know don't work well. They would rather stay with something that doesn't work well than take a chance on something new — even when the upside could be transformative. I also encounter educators who are willing and eager to try something new, but tell me that their administrators would never approve of it. (Probably the same administrators working on that fancy new building.) The moral of the story here is that if we want students to be more engaged in their learning, then we have to reconsider how education is delivered, measured, assessed, and credentialed. And this all starts with the curriculum. > *Fun fact — Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been used to power educational products for decades. It's not new, it's just now available more directly to students.*

# A.I. Songs About Simulation-Based Learning I asked ChatGPT— an artificial intelligence system — to create a rap song about simulation-based learning. And then I asked it to do the same in the style of The Beatles. And again in the style of The Rolling Stones. And again in the style of Taylor Swift. The results are \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_. Well, that's up to you to decide. You can fill in the blank by posting your comments below this article. --- ## Rap Song > create a rap song about simulation-based learning Simulation-based learning, it's the way we roll We're learning how to do things that we don't yet know We're diving into scenarios, virtual and real We're gaining skills and knowledge, it's an amazing deal In the simulated world, we can make mistakes We can try new things and see how they shake We can learn from our failures and build on our success We can be creative and express Simulation-based learning, it's the future of education It's how we prepare for complex situations and new innovations We're not just reading about it, we're living it We're mastering the skills that we need to fit Into the real world, where we can shine Thanks to simulation-based learning, it's our time to shine We're ready to take on any challenge that comes our way We're unstoppable, and here's what we have to say: Simulation-based learning, it's the best way to learn It's how we'll conquer the world and our future to earn So let's embrace it, let's make it our own We'll be unstoppable, and our future will be shown --- ## Beatles Song > create a song about simulation-based learning in the style of The Beatles Verse 1: In a world that's constantly changing, We need a way to keep improving, That's where simulation-based learning comes in, It's a way to practice and win. Chorus: Simulation-based learning, It's the future we're yearning, It's a way to test and try, Before we go out and fly. Verse 2: With virtual scenarios to explore, We can learn so much more, We can make mistakes and learn from them, Without any real-world mayhem. Chorus: Simulation-based learning, It's the future we're yearning, It's a way to test and try, Before we go out and fly. Bridge: It's not just for pilots and doctors, It's for anyone who wants to excel, We can learn and grow at our own pace, And prepare for any place. Chorus: Simulation-based learning, It's the future we're yearning, It's a way to test and try, Before we go out and fly. --- ## Rolling Stones Song Verse 1: We're learning in a simulated world It's a new way to learn, it's a new kind of girl We're not limited to just one reality We can explore and discover, it's such a novelty Chorus: Simulation-based learning, it's a brand new game We're breaking free from the traditional chains We're learning in a simulated world It's a new way to learn, it's a new kind of girl Verse 2: We can make mistakes and we won't feel the pain We can try again and again We're not just limited to one point of view We can explore and see things from a different hue Chorus: Simulation-based learning, it's a brand new game We're breaking free from the traditional chains We're learning in a simulated world It's a new way to learn, it's a new kind of girl Bridge: We can travel through time and space We can visit different places We can learn about the world in a way that's new Simulation-based learning, it's something we can do Chorus: Simulation-based learning, it's a brand new game We're breaking free from the traditional chains We're learning in a simulated world It's a new way to learn, it's a new kind of girl --- ## Taylor Swift Song Verse 1: We're learning in a virtual world Where anything can be unfurled No limits to what we can explore Simulation-based learning has so much more Chorus: It's a whole new way to learn A world that's digital, but still so real We can make mistakes and try again Simulation-based learning, let's begin Verse 2: We can fly a plane or be a doctor The possibilities, they seem to offer An endless array of careers to choose Simulation-based learning, there's nothing we can't do Chorus: It's a whole new way to learn A world that's digital, but still so real We can make mistakes and try again Simulation-based learning, let's begin Bridge: We don't need a classroom or a teacher In this virtual world, we can be our own leader We'll learn at our own pace, no pressure, no test Simulation-based learning, it's the best Chorus: It's a whole new way to learn A world that's digital, but still so real We can make mistakes and try again Simulation-based learning, let's begin --- What do you think of the results?

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

🟢Business & Entrepreneurship Education🟢

# What It Really Cost Me to Invent a $30 Toy A few years ago I invented a plastic toy that makes building Hot Wheels tracks more fun. Occasionally, I get feedback that my TrackJack is too expensive. In fact, the first ever Amazon review I got said it was a clever, useful, and well-made product ... but too expensive — so they gave it 2 stars. The price was $24.99 (currently it's $29.99 and 4.4 ⭐s) Now, you may know that there's not a lot of room between $0 and $25 ... because ... math 😊 Of course I realize that most people are not aware of the costs of bringing a product to market. Some think the inventor pockets the entire selling price. The reality is that we might profit a few dollars per sale if everything goes perfectly well. Here's a list of all the costs to bring my TrackJack from idea to customer. 🟢 PREPARING INVENTORY * Manufacturing (sample, make, assemble) * Packaging (make, ship, assemble) * Barcode Fees * Shipping to Warehouse in USA * Shipping to Warehouse in Canada * Customs Brokerage Fees and Tariffs * Inventory Receiving Fee * Storage Fees (recurring) 🟢 SELLING * Reseller Listing Fee (Amazon, Walmart, Etsy) * Reseller Sales Fee (per order) * Shipping Materials * Order Fulfillment Fee * Shipping to Customer 🟢 BUSINESS OPERATIONS * Refund Risk and Costs * Marketing Costs and Risk * Business Operation Costs * Foreign Exchange Fees * Insurance Costs * Accounting Costs 🟢 INVENTING * Idea & Market Research * 3D Modeling * Prototyping * Testing * Find Manufacturer * Manufacturing Mold (limited lifespan) * Safety Testing * Product Naming * Product Photography * Brand Design (fonts, logos, messaging) * Legal & Trademark * Patent Application * Packaging Sourcing * Packaging Design * Packaging Die 🟢 FOUNDER / INVENTOR * Personal time to manage all of the above * High probability of failure 🟢 PROFIT * If everything goes perfectly well with a product that sells for less than $30, you might make a few dollars per sale. * Then you lose some of that to income taxes. ❓ WHY DO IT * Inventing something from nothing that delights people is pretty rewarding, even if you don’t make much money from it. * Personally, I’m doing this as a side hustle so I’m not dependent on financial success. I wouldn't describe it as "fun" — I do it because I value the experience. 🚩 MY ADVICE for Inventing Physical Products 1. Sell your product for 2 to 5 times what it costs to make and deliver it to the customer. That’s assuming your final price is considered reasonable by most customers — I feel I have to keep my TrackJack under $30, which doesn’t give me much wiggle room. 2. Create a small and light product that sells for at least $100 so that shipping costs, storage fees, and tariff uncertainty have less influence on your profitability. PS: I also invent board games and software games — I have different advice for those types of products.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# How To Teach Business Strategy With a Strategy Journal In a Simulation Game **Strategy** is one of the most difficult business concepts to teach and learn. That's because a cohesive strategy requires bringing together multiple business functions and understanding their interrelationships. You simply cannot learn this through lectures, textbooks, videos, and case studies. **You have to experience it.** In the video below, I demonstrate how a GoVenture business simulation game is used to teach strategy in an experiential-learning activity. And, I reveal the single most common mistake people make when trying to devise a strategy. This includes students in school, startup entrepreneurs, and corporate managers.

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# Teaching Ethics With a Business Simulation Game **Ethics** — a timely topic in our changing world. It seems there are more ethical failures these days than ever. Or perhaps there are not and it's our enhanced communications that make them easier to spot and share. In any event, ethics is an important topic in education to prepare students for the real world. ### Ethics can be both simple and complicated. In my business, I like to simplify it by saying that "we always do the right thing even if it costs us money." Of course, ethics can be more than that and there is a lot of nuance that can be difficult to capture. ### How can we teach ethics? There are plenty of real-world examples of ethical failures, so using case studies is an obvious approach. Role-playing can also be effective. In this video, I demonstrate how we enable students to **directly experience ethics** in two different business simulation games — GoVenture CEO and GoVenture WORLD.

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# Teaching HR and Employee Management Using a Simulation I think most entrepreneurs will agree that one of the toughest aspects of running a business is managing employees. Resumes, skills, salary, benefits, scheduling, morale, productivity, customer service, training, layoffs, and the list goes on. Mistakes will be made — guaranteed. No-win decisions will happen — guaranteed. The complexities are astounding. So, how can we learn to manage all of this before we're in the trenches? How can we learn to predict problems before they happen and avoid common mistakes? How can we gain years of managerial experience in minutes? There is only one way — simulation. In the video below, I demonstrate how the hyper-realistic GoVenture Entrepreneur simulation is used to help people of all ages learn HR and employee management. For clarity, this simulation does not provide training in one-to-one communication with employees. That's best accomplished using live or simulated role-playing activities. Virtual Reality (VR) can provide even more realism for this type of experience. But that's a topic for another day. **For now, check out this video ...**

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# Leadership Training, Role Playing, and Simulations | Audiogram ## This issue of my newsletter is an audiogram and a slide deck. You've seen audiograms before but may not have known what they are called. I'm going to show you how I made this audiogram as you may find this useful for delivering your training content in short and punchy segments. I hope you may also find the content of the audiogram interesting, which is ... ## Leadership Training With Game-Based Learning The 2-minute audiogram below is a segment from a discussion I had with Simon Kardynal, CD, MA for his Trench Leadership Podcast. We discuss how emerging leaders can gain experience using game-based learning. Simon shares his experience in the military doing role-playing exercises and I explain why role-playing is an effective learning experience but falls short because training someone to make good decisions in the heat of the moment requires practice that includes hundreds or thousands of repetitions. I describe it as "building the brain's muscle memory." Listen to the audiogram below and then keep reading to find out how I made it with a few clicks.

## More On Leadership

Here is a brief explanation of my views on leadership and the missing ingredient in most leadership training — View Slide Deck ## How did I make the audiogram? Consider how you can use audiograms to deliver your training programs in short, punchy sessions. An audiogram is actually a video file where the visual elements are automatically generated from the words of the spoken audio. This video file can be shared just like any other video file on YouTube, LinkedIn, and other social media networks. I created this audiogram using Descript — a unique video and audio editing program that automatically transcribes (converts audio to text) your source video and allows you to edit the video in text format, just like you edit a text document. Here's what the editing interface looks like ...

With a few clicks, you can select and export any segment of your source audio file into an audiogram. It only takes a few minutes. The audiogram I shared here is a small segment of a longer discussion — from which I can create many audiograms. ## Podcast Full Interview Here is the link to listen to the entire podcast discussion I had with Simon on leadership training and game-based learning — Trench Leadership Podcast

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Learning & Teaching Accounting With a Business Simulation Game I skipped 90% of my classes in college. But I still put the work in and graduated with a degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering and most of a BSc in Math. Got a good job with IBM but quit after 16 months to start my own business. **It was time to learn accounting.** So I bought a book and read it. It was easy compared to the complex topics I studied in college. But then it happened. Six months into my new business I ran into cash flow problems. That's when I realized I didn't really understand accounting — I had to _feel_ accounting. And it was not a good feeling. I've learned a lot about accounting since then. I've even designed entire accounting software systems. And I have discovered that many (most?) business people do not understand accounting. Many even fear it. **And I think I know why.** It's because accounting is not taught well. Not in books and not in school. College students study business and accounting for years and still don't truly understand it. Because doing case studies and quizzes does not really prove competency. Even fundamental concepts like the Accounting Equation — _Assets equals Liabilities plus Equity_ — I feel is presented in a non-intuitive way. Yes, this original format aligns closer with _Debits equals Credits,_ which make sense from a bookkeeping perspective. But it is much less intuitive from a business management perspective when the same formula represents a _Balance Sheet_. Here's a better way that shows the purpose of a business is to create value:

**So I set out to test a theory I had about a better way to teach accounting.** I used one of my business simulations that enables students to run their own business (similar to McDonald's, Starbucks, Platinum Fitness, Napa Autocare, Great Clips, etc.) and expanded the accounting features. I then recorded a series of short videos of me playing the business simulation while demonstrating accounting in action. That's the key — demonstrating accounting in the context of an active business. **My second objective was to teach accounting fundamentals as quickly as possible.** Because I know most people don't want to sit through an accounting course. The result was a video course that teaches accounting basics in 29 minutes. Yes, 29 minutes, that's not a typo. And I made the course available for free on Udemy — the world's leading course marketplace, plus some other platforms as well. The result is that I've had over 30,000 students enroll in the course with nearly 2,000 reviews, nearly all 5-star ratings. The positive student comments reveal what I had thought to be true — that many people do have trouble with accounting and many college students go through school without really understanding it ("feeling it") despite being able to pass their courses. But after taking my course, they do. Nowadays, many high schools and colleges use my business simulation to teach accounting. And they are able to do so in a much deeper way than my video course offers because students can play the simulation themselves. Students run their own business while practicing and applying accounting — experiential learning at its best. If you want to _**learn**_ accounting basics in less than one hour, I invite you to try my free video course — * On Udemy — Udemy * On my website — GoVentureCourses.com/Accounting-Basics If you want to _**teach**_ accounting, check this out — GoVenture.net/accounting And here's a free **accounting cheat sheet** — GoVenture.net/CheatSheet

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# How To Teach Business Strategy With a Simulation Game Strategy is one of the most difficult business concepts to teach and learn. Those of us who grew up playing board games likely have an advantage. **Board games** are an effective way to experience and practice strategy — but they are not nearly as good as **software simulation**. Why? Because **board games** take a long time to play, and only a few people can play together. Games with deeper strategy require so many hours of play and so many rules to follow that they are not practical for most educational environments. A **business simulation** enables deep gameplay that is more widely accessible and can be played by many people together in person or online, synchronously or asynchronously. And, it can provide data — lots of data. In this video, I demonstrate how we use a **Strategy Guide** in an **online business simulation game** to help students add structure to strategic thinking and use data results to apply evidence-based decision-making. Check it out ...

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# Why & How Business Education Should be Taught Using Experiential Progression In the thousands of schools and businesses at all levels that I have worked with around the world over the past 20 years, the vast majority teach business in the same way. Topics are separated into courses and delivered in a linear fashion. Topics are rarely intermingled. But that's _not _how business is experienced in the real world. In the real world of business, we are hit with everything at once. And at varying degrees at different times. It's overwhelming, particularly for budding entrepreneurs who must manage the entire business. Check out this graphic — and I'll explain the last item in more detail below.

## Experiential Progression Let's break down these two terms — *experiential*and *progression.* ### Experiential To become good at business, you have to *do*business. Reading about business, talking about business, watching videos, writing business plans, and doing case studies are no substitutes for the experience of actually doing business. This is where simulation is an invaluable learning tool. Simulations allow students to actually run businesses and to experience how to make good business decisions using problem-based learning and evidence-based thinking. ### Progression With *progression*, you learn key business concepts all at once, starting with basic concepts and expanding deeper and broader into each topic as you go — as the problems become more complex. Much like the layers of an onion.

Progression makes it easier to engage students from day one and enables them to achieve success early in their learning. Progression provides students with immediate context that makes it easier to understand and apply deeper concepts that will come later. Many video games apply progression very well, where new gameplay becomes unlocked and the game gets more difficult as you keep achieving success. ### Experiential Progression Experiential progression combines both concepts. For example, a student can start by running a simple business, such as a lemonade stand. This allows them to directly experience key business concepts in a simplified way — product pricing, inventory management, product quality, customer sales and satisfaction, revenue, expenses, and profit. No talk of accounting, or balance sheets, or human resources — yet. As the student achieves success with the lemonade stand, the business expands and now they can open a second lemonade stand in another part of the neighborhood. Now they must hire an employee to run it. And they have to manage products, inventory, and cash for multiple locations. That's *progression*happening. After achieving success with two lemonade stands, they can add a third (more progression). Once they master the lemonade stand business, they can level up (progress) to a kiosk business. This business has multiple products, more inventory to manage, more prices to set, more customer issues, more employees to manage, and the introduction of accounting basics. After the kiosk comes ... well, at this point it's best to show you rather than tell you. Check out the video below for a real-world example of a program that's been used in thousands of schools and businesses around the world — GoVenture Entrepreneur. I designed the first version of this program in the late 1990s (yes, about 25 years ago). What you will see in the video is the modern version. Jump to the 40-second mark to skip over the intro.

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## More Than Just Business I've been using business as an example, but experiential progression can be applied to all types of topics and learning. And there are different ways to apply this concept than what I show in the video above. Much of it comes down to using problem-based learning and scaffolding the experience to progress from basic to advanced concepts.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# This Video May Forever Change How You Teach Business Why is experiential learning through simulation games such a powerful learning methodology? I'll show you why (and how) in this video where I play a Lemonade Stand game. The same Lemonade Stand game is used in middle schools, high schools, MBA programs, and Fortune 500 companies.

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--- Want to see the next level of business after the Lemonade Stand? * For personal learning to start or level up your business career check out GoVentureCourses.com * For Instructors who want to enhance their curricula — check out GoVenture.net And check out this testimonial on the power of business simulation —

# How Games Will Transform (or Destroy) Business Schools The value of a college diploma or degree in business has been losing ground for some time now. Rising tuition costs have made college education unaffordable for many. What’s worse is the high number of people who drop out of college while still having to repay student loans. Despite a 2,000% rise in tuition over the past few decades, has the quality of education delivery been improved? The same old-school teaching methods are still a common practice— lectures, textbooks, case studies, and quizzes. Even with the availability of video meetings and advanced technology, these resources are rarely used in innovative ways. It’s hard to find another product or service that has become 20 times more expensive while offering the same or less value. ## Change in education has been slow. I’ve been working to help schools improve student learning for over 20 years. I design educational games and simulations to teach people about business, money, and health using the power of gamification. My programs are very realistic, much like flight simulators are used to train pilots. I’ve had some success, reaching millions of learners around the world through thousands of schools, universities, nonprofits, and businesses. I also work with major companies that most people would recognize. > Despite this success, most of what I experience is frustration. Frustration at discovering so many instructors and trainers who do not want to change how they teach. And instructors who fear even the most basic of technologies. I also discover motivated instructors that do want to change but encounter resistance from administrators. ## The status quo in education is powerful. But there is one thing that is more powerful than the status quo — the Internet. The Internet transforms, or destroys, every industry and process that gets in the way. And then comes gaming — an industry that will soon surpass movies and music and sports combined. The human energy invested in playing games is staggering. And game-based learning has become more widely accepted as highly effective. > The result is that the combination of Internet and gaming is going to transform, or destroy, many business schools. I don’t know how long it will take to happen broadly, but it’s already started. It was around the year 1999 when I first started approaching schools to adopt my original GoVenture business simulation — here's a screenshot from version 1:

The original GoVenture business simulation — circa 1999. Back then, I couldn’t use the word “game” to describe our program. The view at the time was that games were for young people to pass time at home, they were not for use in schools. So, I used words like “experiential learning” and “simulations” to get in the door— and ultimately make the sale once instructors experienced the power of game-based learning with their students. It's been a grind, but my educational games and simulations have since reached every type of organization you can imagine — schools, universities, clubs, economic development organizations, prisons, and Fortune 500 companies. Millions of people have played and learned with GoVenture. And I can now confidently use the word “game” (usually). > Change is happening in education and business schools are the most vulnerable. Why business schools? Because you do not need a college diploma or degree to have a successful career in business. Certainly, those credentials can open some doors. But they are not required like they are for engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and other such professions that are regulated by government or industry associations. A career in business may also provide the fastest and highest levels of success, even for high school dropouts. Check out these dropouts who became billionaires. And, consider that mega-entertainers *Oprah* and *Jay-Z* made their big money in business, not entertainment.

* Fun fact #1 — the odds of becoming a billionaire are 1 in 600,000 if you live in the United States. Globally, the odds are 1 in 3.7 million. * Fun fact #2 — here's a secret that Richard Branson hid for decades about his business knowledge. ## The Value of School? Successful businesspeople with large followings have been publicly questioning the value of business school for a number of years now. This includes Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, and others (watch a video of what they say). Major companies like Google, Apple, IBM, Costco, Hilton, Bank of America, and others along with state governments are no longer requiring degrees for jobs, and are instead focusing on skills and past experience. Further accelerating change has been the COVID pandemic forcing schools to move online. > This exposed how poorly schools use technology for learning. And, it has permanently changed student expectations and choices. There are now perhaps over 10,000 postsecondary institutions around the world offering online options to compete for student tuition money. Most provide the same courses and programs. And everything starts to look the same when online. The prestigious universities will continue to win, regardless of what they do, because their students are buying a membership to their exclusive alumni clubs. That has value. But what about the other 99% of schools — will they choose to compete on price in a race for the bottom? Unlikely. The only remaining option is improving their curricula to offer a better student learning experience. And for business education, that means adopting experiential learning, most likely through games and simulations. > Because you have to “do” business to “learn” business. The reality, however, is that the bureaucracy inherent in most educational institutions will not allow them to move quickly enough. ## The Internet waits for no one. And entrepreneurs are already building solutions to change how education is delivered, measured, assessed, and credentialed. The concept of spending years in school and lots of money before you can start a career in business or start your own business may not make sense when there are faster, more affordable, and more inspiring options available. I’ve already launched a program called businessXP — the world’s first and only fully game-based experiential training for aspiring business leaders and entrepreneurs. I believe it to be a viable alternative to business school — and it’s multiple times faster and more affordable. It's also an effective preparatory experience for students who are college bound. I also continue to work with wonderful instructors around the world that truly want to improve learning for their students by adopting experiential learning through games and simulations. > But, I’m not optimistic about the future of many universities and colleges. The competitive advantage that universities hold with degrees and diplomas will keep them winning students for some time. But the legacy overhead and glacially-slow ability to change will ultimately be the demise for many.

# 1 Cool Thing About Inflation — And How To Teach Students Here's one of the benefits of high inflation — cool money bills like the one below. I think this was real back in 2008.

Want to teach students about inflation? --------------------------------------- Play an investment simulation and let them experience it as investors. Interest rates go up. Current bond prices drop. New bond issues have higher yields. Stocks may fall (or not). Mutual funds diversify the risk (or dilute the upside). Gold may serve as a hedge (or not). Real estate is in flux. That's an example of saying a lot without actually saying anything. But one thing is for sure — talking about all these concepts to students goes in one ear and out the other. Allowing students to invest money, even if it's virtual, changes the game. Real or Virtual --------------- You can do this by having students invest _**virtual**_ money in _**real**_ markets. There is plenty of real market data accessible for all types of investments and it's all freely available. You can manage all of this for a cohort of students with a simple online spreadsheet. Or you can use one of the many online simulations, some of which are free to play. **Playing the real markets can be problematic** ----------------------------------------------- But, there are two challenges with playing the real markets, including simulations that use real market data. 1. Real markets have so many options and so much information that it can all be too complex and overwhelming for students. Instructors need to work at limiting the scope. 2. The timeframe is too short. Playing real markets for weeks, or even several months, is too short a timeframe to experience economic cycles. You are essentially day trading, which may be the opposite of what you want to teach about markets. Playing _fictitious_ markets with _real_ data --------------------------------------------- If you want students to experience economic cycles in a structured experience with a defined scope, then consider using a simulation with simulated money _and_ markets. I don't know how many of these types of simulations exist, but here's a screenshot of a simulation I designed that allows students to invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, and gold. And play the markets for up to 20 years, allowing students to fully experience economic cycles. It's part of the GoVenture Life & Money simulation that allow students to gain personal financial literacy skills by virtually living their lives for up to 20 years into the future.

How do you mix real and simulated data? --------------------------------------- Perhaps you may be wondering how simulated investments can provide realistic data? After all, you want the experience to be authentic for student learning. I'll share my design approach here in case you may find it helpful when designing your own educational experiences — * In order to create 20 years of economic cycles, the investments have to be fictitious. The stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. have to be made up. If we used real investments like Coca-Cola stock, then a student could just Google the historical data and use that to "win" every time. * So I found a 20-year period in the past where the markets behaved in a somewhat typical way (granted, "typical" may no longer exist in our modern world). I collected all of that real-world data and used it to drive the performance of the fictitious investments in the simulation. For example, the simulation has a fictitious automotive company stock and that stock behaves similar to the real-world automotive stock index during the 20-year period of historical data. Fictitious investment meets real-world data. Of course, there is much more complexity to building a realistic simulation, but you get the idea. **Experiential learning is the way** ------------------------------------ Whether you use a GoVenture simulation or other program, providing students with **experiential learning** is truly the best way for them to fully understand these and other money concepts.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Should Startups Use Spreadsheets or Apps for Accounting & Customers? This is a question that every new business has to consider — should you use a **spreadsheet** for your financial transactions or go directly to an accounting app? Should you use a spreadsheet for **customer relationship management** (CRM) or a **CRM app**? I've founded several businesses and have struggled with this question many times over the past 30 years. I'm sharing my conclusions here to help other startups. I should point out that I'm not an accountant but I'm pretty comfortable with accounting. I design business simulations with fully functional accounting modules. I teach a highly-rated online accounting course with tens of thousands of students enrolled. And, I've designed and set up many CRM apps. Despite my comfort with accounting and CRM apps, I have recently switched back to using spreadsheets for some of my businesses. I'll explain why and offer a detailed comparison to help you make the right choice for your new business. ## Start Logging Right Now! The best advice I can give any new business owner is to start logging your financial transactions and customer information right away. However you do it, *just do it*. Don't let everything sit in a box or scattered in your email. And be sure your log is backed up in the cloud. You will regret it later if you have to spend hours trying to figure it all out, or pay big money for someone else to do it for you — and they will still need hours of your time, so you will end up paying twice in money and time. ## Why Is This A Difficult Decision? Because you don't know what your new business needs — yet. Even if you are an experienced businessperson, you won't know the best way to operate your new business until you start running the business. You won't quite know the best CRM systems and processes needed to win and support customers. You won't quite know the best accounting accounts to track or which transactions take the most time. Don't spend your precious startup time fiddling with accounting and CRM apps. Spend that time getting to market quickly and winning customers profitably. At that point, you will have the information you need to choose the best accounting and CRM solutions for your new business. Because it won't be new anymore. There will be fewer unknowns and you will be ready to scale. At the same time, do not neglect tracking your accounting and customer information. Do it from day 1. And keep up with it. Start with a well-formatted spreadsheet and tweak it as you go. **When is the right time to switch to apps?** It depends on your business. It might be after a few months, one year, two years, or never. ## Let's Compare — Spreadsheet Versus App **Learning Curve** * Spreadsheets are familiar and typically easier to start using than learning new apps. **Setup** * Both spreadsheets and apps require some type of setup to align them to your business needs. Templates are typically available to speed up this process, but with apps it can be confusing to choose the right template when you are not yet familiar with the app. **Convenience** * When you have to frequently add and edit data, it's better if the software is quick to launch or keep open without having to constantly log in or require many clicks to get to where you need to go. I find that a spreadsheet tends to be more convenient in this regard than most apps, particularly with accounting transactions. **Big Picture View ** * Apps have custom screens for everything, which means you end up in the weeds rather than viewing the bigger picture which seems more natural with a spreadsheet. **Accuracy** * Spreadsheets are easy to use but also easy to make mistakes with. Apps designed for a specific purpose tend to reduce errors because of their custom interfaces and other error-checking features. **Versatility** * Spreadsheets are limitless, which means you can store any information you want in the same document. Apps are more focused and less flexible. * Apps provide reports with a few clicks, whereas spreadsheets require extra work. * With spreadsheets, some activities (like invoicing) require more manual work or are not feasible to do (like payroll accounting and payment processing) — but can be done easily with apps. **Cost** * Spreadsheets tend to be free or less expensive in the long run than apps. Not always, but typically. **Scalability** * Both spreadsheets and apps typically have infinite scalability (more data and more users), but spreadsheets become difficult to manage as your data grows. Apps are better for scalability — but may also be much more expensive. * If your business grows, you will likely want to move away from spreadsheets to apps. **Collaboration** * Both spreadsheets and apps have collaboration features, but apps tend to be better for collaboration. This makes it easier for multiple people to use the software at the same time with less risk of losing data. **Mobility** * Both spreadsheets and apps can be used on smartphones but spreadsheets tend to be clumsy on devices with small screens. Apps typically have interfaces optimized for small screens making them easier to use and less likely to induce errors. ## Real World Examples Here's my experience: * My main business has many products, processes hundreds of sales (thousands actually but we roll them up), has several employees, works in multiple currencies, has shareholders, and most everything else a mature business has. This business uses CRM and accounting apps and I have a full-time person who manages the accounting and multiple people handling CRM. Spreadsheets would not work well for this business. They would have been ok the first few years but not after that. * I have a **side hustle business** that has one product, no employees, no other shareholders, and sales that are handled by resellers like Amazon and Walmart. In total, this business requires less than 100 accounting transactions to be posted each year. I started using an accounting app for this business from day one. That was a mistake. The next few bullets explain why. * Even though there are few transactions, every time I went to post one, it was a tedious process to launch the accounting app, find the right menu option, and make choices in a bunch of fields — most of which I never use. Because of this inconvenience, I would avoid posting transactions as they happened and instead set them aside to do later. But when later came, I had to spend time trying to find the source information and remember how to properly categorize everything. * Then at the end of the fiscal year, it would take hours to close out the system so I could hand over the financials to the accountants to prepare the tax return. * I have now switched to using a spreadsheet for the common transactions. It's quick and easy. And at the end of the year, I roll up the transactions in the spreadsheet and make a few larger entries in the accounting app. I have not discontinued the accounting app, I'm just using it in a more efficient way. This is my recommendation for other startups in the same situation. Use a spreadsheet then roll everything up into the accounting software at the end of the year (or end of each quarter or month depending on your tax and other needs). You can save money by doing the spreadsheet transactions yourself (or an affordable assistant) and pay someone to handle the accounting app which requires more skill. * To keep things simple, try to minimize the number of accounts in the accounting app. As an engineer, I tend to strive for more detail rather than less, so I initially created a lot of accounts so I could track every type of revenue and expense closely. But as an entrepreneur, I've learned that tracking such detail takes more time to do. And I rarely have the time to look at the results, so why spend time tracking data that is never going to be actionable? Doesn't make sense. Keep it simple to start. Then as you discover what's important in your business, you can expand to track more data. ## Tools I use * **Google Sheets**— I like having online access from any of my devices, plus the version history is nice to have. I use other Google products so I rarely have to log in, just one click and I'm in. Microsoft Excel (online) is a good alternative (and better than Google Sheets in some ways). * **Business Management Spreadsheet**— I created this template for managing the main aspects of any business, including accounting, customers, inventory, tasks, employees, suppliers, taxes, and more. It's available here for free with a tutorial video, startup guides, and more. * **Wave Accounting** — Free online accounting app. I use this for all of my smaller businesses. It works well. It's missing some features like check printing, which seems crazy to me, but it's hard to argue with free. * **Quickbooks Online**— I've been using Quickbooks (first offline then online) for my main business for well over 20 years. It works well but what I do not like is how Intuit keeps raising prices and with very little notice to customers (because it's hard to switch accounting apps). Because of this, I can't give a recommendation. An alternative is Zero. * **FreshDesk**— Designed as a customer support system, we use it for both customer support and CRM (even though it's not designed for CRM). A free version is available. There are many CRM apps you can research. * **Coda.io** — A modern platform that combines text, spreadsheets, and databases. I create custom documents to fill the gap where our other apps fall short.

# Budding Entrepreneur — A Story to Help Children Discover Entrepreneurship The new movie Champions featuring a team of athletes with special needs reminded me of a book I have to offer to parents and teachers — it's free and I've included it here. This is the backstory of why I wrote the book. Way back in 2012, my kids were aged 7 and 4 — old enough to begin learning about something I feel is important — entrepreneurship. Why? Because I believe that entrepreneurship is more than just running a business. Entrepreneurship is a mindset that empowers individuals to take control of their own future and helps them realize personal goals and objectives. It's about freedom, lifestyle, self-confidence, family, community, and more. **I wanted my children to discover this mindset.** At the time, I had already created a number of entrepreneurship education resources that were used in thousands of schools around the world — including software simulations and a board game. But these resources were better suited for teenagers and adults — my kids were too young. I thought a book might be the best way to start. So I looked for a very simple book I could read to them or that they could read themselves. A book that would help them begin to discover the entrepreneurial mindset as early as possible. But I couldn't find one. I found a couple of books to help kids start lemonade stands, but the content was too specific and detailed. (By the way, a lemonade stand is a *great* learning experience for kids — I highly recommend it.) **It's said that necessity is the mother of invention, so I wrote my own book.** A friend and talented photographer (Wendy Gouthro) had recently taken photos of my children and I felt that I could easily repurpose those for a simple book (but I changed their names since it's a work of fiction). Custom illustrations would have been great, but I just wanted something quick and easy. At the same time, on-demand print publishing was starting to get popular, so this project would also help me test out that service. Within a few weeks, my first (and only) children's book was born — ***Budding Entrepreneur*.** I gave the ebook away for free on the Apple iBookstore app. I posted it there hoping that others may find value in it. I never paid much attention to it, but I just checked the stats and it's been downloaded 5,600 times — not bad. With the subsequent popularity of self-publishing, I'm sure there are many more entrepreneurship books now available for young children — if you know of any good ones, please share them in the comments below. > To make my book more accessible, I just converted it to a PDF and you can get it for free here — GoVenture.net/be I hope you may find it helpful. And, if you're wondering why a movie triggered me to share this post, you'll have to read the book to find out. > *The entrepreneurial mindset is one of the most meaningful gifts we can give to the world.*

# I Followed The Marketing Gurus and Here's What I Learned and Did ## This is my story about digital marketing ... I've spent hundreds of hours over the past two years specifically studying modern digital marketing. I followed several "gurus" who have many followers, purchased some of their programs (thousands of $), and watched hours and hours of their video pitches trying to sell me more. I've attended the webinars where people spend thousands of dollars on pitches that suggest you can get rich fast on the Internet, or be your own boss with just a computer, have a comfortable lifestyle as a solopreneur, or sell millions of something with just one marketing funnel or app. Even when I had no intention of buying anything (which was 99.99% of the time), I still followed and watched. Sometimes these were marathon sessions of 2 to 3 hours of pitching. I even followed many of the shady people who pretend to own fancy cars, houses, and yachts. My inbox is full of real and spammy pitches. And I read them. All for my research. Yes, I was the kid in the 1980s who read all the junk mail that came home, including applying all the stickers on the *Publishers Clearinghouse* contests. Good thing for you that weird nerds like me are willing to put the work into this stuff. 🤓

I also *do* digital marketing for my various businesses. I've been doing that since digital marketing first emerged in the 1990s. But doing is often very narrow. Research beyond doing is needed to get a more complete picture. Particularly as digital marketing has expanded so much. So that's why I have been on this mission for the past 2 years. ## What did I discover from all this? You are probably wondering if it's all a sham or a scam. Most of the time, the answer is not so black and white. Yes, much of the advice has *some*value. Some of the training even has a*lot of value*. Yes, there are *some*people that actually succeed. Yes, you *could*too. But, the odds are against you. Most people will fail at this. Why? Because marketing with the objective of getting people to take some action is not easy— it's hard. It might come easy for a tiny few people who are at the right place at the right time with the right offer. But the vast majority will find it unbearably hard. And they won't have luck and timing on their side. And they will give up or fail. To clarify, the*marketing concepts*are not necessarily hard to understand. Most people can learn how to put together a landing page, video, or other content. And much of the training they buy in these programs shows how to do this. Certainly, there are some activities that are quite complex — if you've ever used Facebook or YouTube Ad Managers, you know what I mean. But, overall, progress is achievable by most people who have the time and motivation and are willing and able to recruit help when needed. But progress is not enough. All of these marketing programs are pitching a new career or lifestyle or source of income. To achieve that, you need to market and sell. So ... what is hard,*really hard,*is achieving results — profitable results. That's a monumental achievement. Few ever get there. Most fail at it somewhere along the way. ## What are profitable results? This means generating a positive return on investment(ROI). Getting more out than you put in. That's the fundamental formula for any successful business or investment. Yes, if you build a product or service and buy advertising you will win customers, eventually. But at what cost? If you spend $1,000 to win $700 in customer revenue, you are not winning, you are losing. If you spend 100 hours creating and posting content on social media to build your brand and you win $700 in customer revenue, you are not winning, you are losing. But perhaps these investments will result in more sales in the future. Perhaps you will gain enough momentum for your return on investment to switch from negative to positive. It's possible. In fact, that's how most businesses work — lose money until you make money. But will this work *for you* *?* How long will it take *for you* to switch from losing money to making money? Can *you*hold on long enough for that to happen? Will it ever happen *for you*? What else could *you*have invested your time and money doing that might have been better? (This is called *opportunity cost*.) These are the questions I do not see addressed when marketers are selling the dream lifestyle. This is not easy, it's hard. ## Does the possibility of failure mean you shouldn't even try? That's for you to decide, not for me to recommend. In fact, as an entrepreneur myself, I regularly accept these risks and the failure that comes with them. That's the choice I make for myself. After all, you can't score if you don't shoot. And all education has value, even when failing. *—* *I wrote about Failure, Gaming, and School here* Just be aware that the odds are against you. Regardless of how many testimonials of success the pitch throws at you. A high degree of failure is inherent in any business endeavor. ## But, wait, there's more! I'll share something else I discovered by observing other people who have bought into these programs. Many seem to be struggling to overcome some type of psychological barrier. Now, I'm not a psychiatrist, but I do play one on the Internet occasionally🤓 The struggle is often described as a "limiting belief" or "imposter syndrome" or some other invisible barrier that stops one from striving for more in life. People are buying into a program with a step-by-step recipe that they think will help them overcome their own personal barriers. They are not buying information, they are buying transformation. Or perhaps more accurately, the *promise* of transformation. But the recipe on its own is not enough for many. Because what they seem to need more of is another human being to cheer them on and lift them up. To tell them that they can do it. And sometimes to hold their hand while they do. Nowadays that's called a coach. And I think this is why we've seen such rapid growth in the coaching industry. There are coaches selling their services in every niche you can imagine. There are coaches selling programs to other coaches. There are coaches selling programs to other coaches to sell to other aspiring coaches. Presumably because so many of us humans need other humans to guide us and cheer us on. Is having a coach helpful? It can be under the right circumstances. Coaches can provide guidance, confidence, training, and accountability — all valuable services to help you achieve your goals. But so many coaches don't seem to have the life or career experience needed to properly play that role (and accept money for it). They bought a training program to become a coach. Is that bad — does that mean they cannot be a good coach? Not necessarily. You do you. I'm just sharing my observations here. ## So, what am I doing with all this newfound knowledge? Besides sharing it here, partway through the research process, I decided to develop a new training program of my own. And write a book. No, you will not see pictures of me in fancy cars, homes, and yachts pretending that this could be you too. My training program is not designed to help you get rich quickly. It might help you get rich slowly. Or not rich at all. Unless you consider gaining new knowledge and skills rich, then it will do that for sure. My training program is not going to give you a step-by-step recipe for how to start an Internet business. Or how to become a coach. Or how to game Facebook advertising. Nope. Instead, I noticed there was a knowledge gap in helping people understand how all the elements of digital marketing integrate together to create a cohesive strategy. People are spending time and money on training that is very narrow in scope. And they end up getting lost in the weeds of digital marketing and don't know where to start — even when they have a recipe in hand. Because understanding both the basics and the big picture of marketing is not easy to learn or teach. And that's why there are so few resources available to help with this. This discovery triggered me to create a new training product. That wasn't my goal when I started this journey, but it's where I am today. So, I worked with my team to develop a solution using gamified learning — our area of expertise. We invested thousands of hours in this project. The result is our new Digital Marketing Simulation. A simulation and video-based training experience for learning the fundamentals of digital marketing and how all the elements fit together to build a cohesive funnel strategy. The program is for personal learning and for use in schools. We also created this Digital Marketing Glossary with 179 terms — it's free if you want it here. And I wrote a book — Digital Marketing Superhero— for people who prefer reading rather than playing. The book uses a gamified learning approach where it puts you in the role of an inventor of a new product who must build out your marketing funnel to sell it.

The book and the simulation are not free but they are affordable — you can find them at https://goventure.net/dm and on Udemy.com If you like more behind-the-scenes stories, I documented how we designed the simulation program in a previous issue of my newsletter here ## What Next? I'm continuing my research, although I've slowed down quite a bit since I feel as though everything I'm seeing now is just a repeat of the same pitch formula I've seen many times over. Yes, there is a pitch formula that all the gurus use. The slide deck is full of social proof testimonials with before and after stories. And a checklist of how much value you are going to get — it usually adds up to tens of thousands of dollars — but you're getting a big discount for a limited time only. Sometimes there are countdown clocks when the discount expires. This is called "creating scarcity" to motivate buyers to buy — although it's often fake scarcity. Anyway, I'm digressing and this article has gone far too long. If you made it all the way to the bottom here, give me a thumbs up in the comments so that I can feel as though at least one person found it interesting enough to stick with it — 👍

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# 1-Hour Entrepreneur | How & Why I Created This Free Video Course *— Links to access my course for free are at the bottom of this article —* ## Many people who become entrepreneurs have no idea what they’re getting into. Some are accidental entrepreneurs while others pursue this path with purpose. Many newbies are not prepared for the tsunami of decisions that they have to make each day — and they end up making costly mistakes. Often these mistakes are basic and avoidable. Mistakes might slow you down or could take down the entire business — yikes! Check out this excerpt from *Inc Magazine:*

You might think the above happened when Branson was just starting out as a young entrepreneur in his 20s. Nope. He was in his 50s. More than 10 years *after* he became a billionaire. It seems Branson was lucky enough to have strong business models and competent employees to avoid the big mistakes that can happen when important business concepts are missed (or maybe the mistakes did happen, but they survived anyway). But most entrepreneurs are not so lucky. The reality is that this happens all the time with entrepreneurs. And the risk is that one wrong decision could kill the business. ## How To Avoid Common Mistakes I’ve always believed that the best way to prepare for entrepreneurship (and a career in business in general) is to *actually run a business*. But since that’s too costly and time-consuming to do in the real world, the best option is to play a realistic simulation. That's why pilots learn to fly airplanes using flight simulators and the military trains in simulated battles. We can do the same for business. An entrepreneurship instructor and facilitator recently shared this on LinkedIn about the GoVenture Entrepreneur simulation game: > "My students have had opportunities to test out business ideas, pitch to investors and work with several subject matter experts from our entrepreneurship ecosystem but none of those experiences compared to what they gained from running their virtual business. Video Games in Academia can change lives!" ## But what if you can’t play the game yourself? There is another option — just watch. Watching people play video games is a thing — a big thing. Twitch is a multibillion-dollar service where people watch other people play video games. While you’re reading this there are 2 million people watching videos right now on Twitch and over 50 million hours of video will be watched today. And there’s YouTube. A Google search for the “Legend of Zelda” video game returns over 18 million video results. People enjoy watching other people play video games. Equally important is that all games are educational because our brains are always learning. It doesn’t matter if we are shooting aliens, flinging angry birds, or leading a guild into battle, our brains are wired to learn — I demonstrate this in this video. ## Just Watch Some years ago, I experimented with this idea of game-watching by launching a video course that teaches accounting. The secret to this course is that I play a business simulation game while demonstrating accounting in the context of running a business. This approach enables me to teach the basics of accounting in just 29 minutes — yes, 29 minutes. Here’s a student review that captures the success of this methodology: > "Do yourself a favor and get this course. The theory taught in your classroom (at college) will deplete your mind of any curiosity you have in learning Finance (accounting). > This course is engaging and intuitive. It is immersive and your mind is actively making sense of accounting concepts dynamically. This course uses an inside-out approach to teaching accounting. As in, you already are in a business situation and accounting concepts are projected onto this situation. > Ugggh.. wish I had someone tell me 2 years ago to get this course. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you can't sit through lectures passively and want to quickly grasp fundamentals, this course is what you have been always looking for." The success of the accounting course led me to do it again — this time for entrepreneurship. My objective is to allow anyone to discover *and experience* the fundamentals of entrepreneurship in just 1 hour. And at no cost — the course is free. Here’s a list of everything I’m able to cover in that time:

The total running time of the core content ended up being just over one hour. I would have liked to have an extra 30 minutes, so perhaps in the future I'll create the 90-Minute Entrepreneur :-) To round out the course, I also included some startup guides and videos as bonus content.

Entrepreneurship is such a broad topic that I'm curious to discover how well this new course will be received. If you want to give it a try, it's free — here are two options: * On my website — businessXP * On Udemy — Udemy ## For Instructors If you are an instructor or instructional designer, a key takeaway here is that you can create an effective learning experience simply by having your students watch you play a game — or by having another student play the game while everyone watches. As you play, take on the role of a coach to make observations, ask questions, and spur discussion. I've done this with youth and adults. I once did it in a room with 350 middle school students — it was amazing. If you want to give this a try with one of my GoVenture simulation games, contact me for a free trial.

# My Worst Learning Experience Made Me Do This ... Sometime in the mid-1990s, I became an entrepreneur. I raised some money from a lender who had a requirement that all business owners had to attend a few training seminars. One of these seminars was on accounting. This was only a couple of years after I finished 6 years of university where I studied engineering and math — not business. I previously learned accounting basics from a book I purchased so that I could create financials for my startup business plan. So, I was looking forward to the live training. The training started in the early evening, so it was still bright outside. The training room had desks and an overhead projector — remember these?!

The trainer was an accountant. He proceeded to display a few slides (transparent sheets as they were) to define accounting. And he turned the lights off in the room so that the projected image was more visible. Turning the lights off was entirely unnecessary, but seemed to be common practice back then when using an overhead projector. After about 5 minutes, the slides stopped. The accountant kept talking about accounting. After about 30 minutes, the sun went down. It was now dark outside and in our room — except for the light from the projector. For the next 2 hours, the accountant talked about accounting. In the dark. Needless to say, I did not learn anything about accounting that evening. But I did learn how *not* to teach accounting — or anything else for that matter. Although, it should be said that this was no different from my university experience where most of my professors stood at the front of the class to essentially read our textbooks to us. Except with a bit more light in the room. Overhead projectors are not used much anymore. But they have been replaced with something perhaps even more sinister — Powerpoint slides — and Zoom — so now we can be bored at a distance 🙃

Jump forward many years and I now offer one of the highest-rated accounting courses online. And it's free. I'm still not an accountant. And that may be why I teach accounting using a very different methodology. I teach accounting while playing a business simulation. I don't *tell* students about accounting — instead, we *experience*accounting together while running a simulated business. This provides context and engagement that unlock our learning superpowers. This methodology allows me to teach the basics of accounting in 29 minutes. Yup, 29 minutes. As unlikely as this sounds, it is possible. The course has 20,000 students and many 5-star reviews and generous student feedback. Every training experience — good or bad — is a learning opportunity. Every life experience is the same. End of story. --- My accounting course is free if you want to give it a try — * Udemy.com — Udemy * GoVenture Courses — GoVentureCourses.com * Teach accounting? Check out — GoVenture.net/accounting

# Student Engagement & Commitment Soared **Ahmed Rahim** is a teacher at Kitsilano Secondary in Vancouver, Canada. Teaching Grades 8–10 business, Ahmed found it increasingly challenging to keep students engaged. He thought experiential learning might be the right solution. Ahmed’s interest in game-based learning started in college. He explains, “I experienced a political science simulation during my undergrad years which left a powerful impression on me. Many years later, I rediscovered the promise and potential of experiential learning while earning my Masters in Educational Psychology at the University of British Columbia.” As Ahmed describes, “Experiential learning is highly engaging. It immerses learners in a problem-rich context that feels real, relevant, urgent, and ultimately very personal. It unlocks individual agency and binds people together at the same time.” Ahmed discovered GoVenture educational games and simulations. He thought the **Entrepreneur** simulation looked promising, so he gave it a try. Ahmed explains, “It turned out to be exactly what I needed. The simulation is visually engaging, thoughtfully designed to progress from easy to complex, and helps students acquire not only the analytical and decision-making skills, but also the mindset of an entrepreneur.” The result — “Engagement and commitment soared! Students regularly asked if they could continue to play the simulation after school and on weekends. I had to set play limits on their accounts to keep them from jumping too far ahead. This is a welcome challenge we rarely see in school.”

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Confessions of a Project Manager or Secrets to Project Management? **Confessions of a Project Manager** or **Secrets to Project Management?** I’m not sure which title is better, so I'm going with both :-) I’m sharing my experience about how I have successfully managed hundreds of projects— software apps, simulations, board games, toys, books, video production, packaging, marketing, art, live events, and more. 30 years. Hundreds of projects. The projects were for small businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, schools, Fortune 500 clients, and for our own internal operations, product development, and sales initiatives. Some projects were high stakes, some were low stakes, and many were in between. ## All Successful? I believe it's fair to say the projects I led were all successful because they were completed as designed. But not always as planned. And not all were commercially successful — because selling is often much harder than making. I’ve never missed a client deadline, but I have missed our own internal deadlines. And I have never charged a client one cent more than expected. ## How is that possible? If you have experience with project management, you may be skeptical about my claims. Because you know that project management can be really difficult and unpredictable— particularly if you don’t have direct control over resources and budget. Success is never guaranteed. I once read an amusing and insightful comment about project management— it said that anyone who believes in global conspiracy theories has never had to manage a project with more than 5 people involved. So true— herding cats comes to mind.

No cats were injured in the making of this gif I did have a few things working in my favor. First, the projects were small or medium-sized, not huge. This allowed me to remain in the thick of things. Second, I had both responsibility and authority. Many project managers are responsible for the success of a project but do not have the authority to make leadership decisions about the project. This puts them in a difficult position. Third, I have domain experience in most of the projects I have worked on. This made it possible for me to make reasonable time and cost estimates and to make design and project decisions quickly without having to consult with too many others. If you can work on projects that match your domain experience, you will find it much easier to be successful. If you cannot, start by doing research and then try to find trusted coworkers and advisors that you can lean on. ## My Approach and Process Here’s the approach and process that I follow — not ordered in any particular sequence. 1. **Gain a complete understanding of the project.** Document the needs and risks before costing the project. I'm talking about serious risks that could create delays, cost overruns, or require alternative solutions. You need to get those figured out sooner rather than later. 2. **Know what success means.** Every project has a reason for being done. If you have a clear understanding of the purpose and desired outcome, you'll be able to make decisions that align with achieving that outcome. 3. **Documentation.** Plan the project on paper so there is a clear understanding of where you are going — text, graphics, illustration, storyboards. When it's not possible to have everything fully specified up front, keep iterating as you go. 4.** Explicitly state what the project will not include.** Eliminate any ambiguity. This is particularly important for managing client expectations. "*I thought the project also included ...*" is a phrase that signals the potential death of a relationship. Make sure it never happens. 5. **The project schedule should expect review delays.** Clients almost always take longer to review and sign off on milestones than they plan. Your plan and promised delivery schedule should account for delays like this. 6. **Ask the right questions.** When working with team members or clients to work out tasks and objectives, ask the right questions to get to the root of the issue. If you don't have a clear picture, you haven't asked enough of the right questions. BTW, asking the right questions is a deep skill in and of itself. 7. **"I will take your money if you want, but ..."** — this is what I often tell clients when they request something that is time-consuming or expensive but does not help them achieve their project objectives. Do what's right for the project. 8. **Find the shortest path to success.** I love cutting corners on projects when it saves time and money — for my team and the client. The key is to cut corners that have no implications on the success of the project. Always look for a better way to achieve the same outcome. 9. **Assign the right people to the right task.** Know your team members' individual skills, strengths, and weaknesses. Provide support where needed. 10. **Avoid meetings unless necessary.** Meetings break workflow, slow down progress, and cost money. A one-hour meeting with 5 people burns more than 5 hours of time. Only meet when necessary and only invite people who need to be there. 11. **I don't charge for our learning curve.** If my team has not done something before, we don't charge our clients for our training. That expense is an investment in our own skills. (I also make sure the client is aware of what we have experience in and what we do not, as I don't do "fake it until you make it.") 12. **Clear bottlenecks.** Projects often stall waiting for someone to make a decision. Don't be that bottleneck and help make sure that other teammates and the client are not that bottleneck. 13. **Communicate but don't overwhelm.** Give everyone access to detailed project information but only include them in tasks and updates that are relevant to their work — otherwise important things will get lost in the noise. 14. **Micromanage when you need to micromanage.** Delegating, of course, is critical — but so is knowing that things are getting done properly. I don't need to be in control of every task, but I need to know that every task is under control. Sometimes that requires rolling up my sleeves and taking a deep dive to get things back on track. 15. **Revisit priorities.** Review project progress frequently and reorganize priorities as needed. And make sure everyone knows what is important and what is not. 16. **Be Kind.** Projects don't do themselves. You need people. Be the person that reduces stress, not causes it. I'm sure I've missed something, but let's move on to tools. ### Tools 1. **Project Communication**— if you are still using email for project communication, stop. That’s crazy inefficient. I’ve been a faithful user of *Basecamp*since the early days. There are many choices nowadays. 2. **Chat**— we use *Google Chat* but there are many other apps that you can use. 3. **Time Tracking**— we built our own app and you can use it too at TimeSpark.me 4. **Documentation**— *Google Workspace, Office 365, Coda*, etc. Use online apps for easy collaboration and sharing, instead of offline documents. 5. **Specs and Storyboards**— I’ve used docs, slides, hand drawings, and other systems. My current preference is *Adobe XD*. 6. **Feedback**— I use screenshots with annotations and screen capture tools for this — like *Techsmith Capture* and *Snagit*. 7. **Personal Task Management**— *Workflowy.* 8.** Project Management App**— as useful as these tools can be (*MS Project*, etc), I've never had to use one. Maintaining these systems takes time so unless you are a full-time project manager, you can probably get by without them. ## What's Next? With all this experience, my team and I decided that we should help others learn how to manage projects, so that's what we are doing as I write this (June 2023). ## What is the best way to learn Project Management? Learning how to manage a project is like learning to ride a bike — you have to actually do it to get good at it. Teaching project management is equally as difficult because when you have dozens of students doing project management activities, you end up spending a lot of time reviewing and assessing practice projects and providing technical support (how to use *Microsoft Project*, *Excel*, etc). So, my team and I decided to help by creating a realistic Project Management Simulation. The simulation puts you in the role of a project manager who has to manage a project from start to finish. The experience is realistic for the student and fully automated so instructors can sit back and watch the grades come in. The header image of this article is a scene from our internal storyboard (minus the cat :-) I'll share more about the new Project Management Simulation as we get closer to launch. Message me if you want to be added to our notification list. ## Other tips? If you have your own tips on how to successfully manage projects, please share them in the comments below. UPDATE Dec 2023 — The GoVenture Project Management simulation is now available at GoVenture.net/pm

# Business Simulations for Education VS Forecasting VS Entertainment? When designing or choosing a *business simulation*, there are three categories to consider, based on the objective of the program: * Entertainment * Education * Forecasting ## Three Categories *Entertainment*simulations are games designed for fun. Some of the most famous have been Capitalism, Sim City, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and more. Keep in mind that this article is about *business simulations*, not other subjects. *Educational* simulations are designed to teach business. My GoVenture line of games and simulations falls into this category. *Forecasting* simulations are designed to predict the future — or perhaps to model or identify possible outcomes. Process simulations may also fall into this category. ## Interchangeable? A business simulation designed for one objective may indeed be used for another. Although you may be less likely to achieve your core objective. For example, I have written about how All Games Are Educational — even if they are not designed for this purpose. I have also written about the benefits and challenges of Using Entertainment Games for Education. But what about forecasting? Can educational or entertainment games be used for forecasting? Yes and no — it depends on what you want to predict. For example, playing my GoVenture Entrepreneur business simulation has been shown to predict how well students will do with creating new venture business plans (they do better). Similarly, students playing my GoVenture CEO simulation do better on standardized tests. And I'm certain that anyone who starts a real business will be better prepared to avoid common mistakes and increase the chances of success. But there is another type of forecasting which I will illustrate with this question that I often get asked about our restaurant simulation: > I'm thinking of starting a new restaurant. Can I plug my numbers into your simulation to see how well I will do? The answer to this question is "not really." Our GoVenture simulations are designed for learning, not forecasting. As realistic as our simulations are, and as beneficial as they may be with what I've described above, they are not designed to *predict* the future. They are designed to *prepare* you for the future. And there are two things that we do to prepare learners for the future that do not align with predicting the future. 1. First, we *accelerate* the consequences of the business. Our simulations are so realistic and comprehensive that they can take several hours to play the full experience. Most players only run their virtual businesses for several simulated months — not years. So we must speed up the consequences of certain actions so that the player can experience them. This may include having employees underperform or not show up for work sooner than they might in the real world. Or your personal health dropping fast due to overworking. 2. Second, we *exaggerate* the consequences of the business. If the result of an action is too subtle to see, then the player is unlikely to learn from that consequence. So, sometimes, we make a result more impactful so that it is easier to identify and learn from. One might argue that these design methods make a business simulation less realistic. That may be true from a forecasting perspective, but not necessarily for learning. For example, the educational objective may be to teach you that *price affects sales* — but not necessarily that a 10% price increase equals a 12% reduction in sales. The latter would be a forecasting objective — but it's too specific and unpredictable to be a learning objective. ## The Right Tool For the Job As with many other things, success depends on choosing the right tool for the job. Choose the right simulation to achieve your objective.

🟢Game & Instructional Design🟢

# Game Design Worksheet *TLDR — Download our helpful worksheet to design your own game.* I find it amazing that so many people want to design their own board game, card game, or tabletop game. I've been designing (and selling) games for 25 years and it's a very fulfilling experience. But certainly not easy to do, and it's hard to know how to get started. Even if you never publish and sell a game, the journey is interesting and helps you build amazing skills. It's also a great STEAM activity for students. So to inspire more people just get started, my team and I have created a Game Design Worksheet that makes it super easy to follow a step-by-step process. I can't promise that you'll design a great game, but I'm sure this will make it easier for you. ## The Worksheet is free and you can print it or fill it out in your browser If you have any suggestions on how the Worksheet can be improved, I would love to hear them so we can keep making it better! Download the PDF ## More Design Templates We have many more templates for designing game components and they are all available in our free businessXP community at joinbxp.com ## Game Maker Kit If you want a box stuffed full of gameboards, cards, dice, components, and guides, check out our Game Maker Kit.

# The First 5 Things I Do When Designing An Educational Experience I've created hundreds of educational resources used by millions of people around the world — books, videos, activities, board games, card games, mobile apps, video games, software simulations, massively multiplayer worlds, and more. Regardless of what I'm designing, the process always starts the same way. Here are the first 5 things I do. Perhaps this may help with your work. 1️⃣ **Change in Behavior** I identify the change in behavior I want to trigger in the learner. This can be broken down by high-level learning outcomes identifying specific knowledge and skills. **2️⃣ Learner Profile** I consider the profile of the target learner — location, language, age, background, prerequisite knowledge and skills, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to learn, etc. And the level of human facilitation available to deliver the experience. **3️⃣ Time** I consider the time available and required for the experience, and potential scheduling constraints. Learning takes time. Deep learning takes more time. **4️⃣ Effort, Skills, Budget** I consider the level of effort, skills, and budget available to build a solution. There's no use designing something that is too difficult to build, takes too much time, or is unaffordable. 5️⃣ **Learning Methods** I identify the best and most feasible learning methods to achieve the objective. This could be an activity, card game, board game, software game, software simulation, or blended experience. What comes next? ---------------- Hundreds or thousands of other tasks that fall under these categories: * Develop design specifications. * Assign tasks to individual team members. * Team works on tasks related to information design, instructional design, graphic design, programming, writing, and more. * Build prototype, alpha, and beta versions. * Test and quality assurance reviews. * Build user and instructor guides, videos, marketing materials, and more. When all is done, I feel good about our accomplishment for a few minutes and then stress about all the things I would have done differently if I had more time and money — _the curse of the creator._

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# How To Design An Experiential-Learning Activity, Game, or Simulation _**What should the learner**_ _**do**__**?**_ That is the key question I ask when designing an experiential learning activity, game, or simulation. Notice the "do". This is different than when designing a textbook, video, or page-turn elearning. With these types of conventional learning resources, the question being asked is this: _**What should the learner**_ _**know**__**?**_ "Know" is very different than "do". "Know" leads us to create a list of content items to be covered in the learning. The content is then created and presented in its required form (book, video, elearning, etc). Some type of assessment, like a quiz or basic activity, may also be included to confirm that the learner has reviewed the material. It's all basically a list of things to know. Experiential learning is different. Learning By Doing ----------------- Experiential learning is often called _learning by doing_. We must design what we want the learner _to do_ — to achieve the desired learning outcomes or behavioral change. But, before we address this question, there are 5 other steps we must first process to understand our instructional goals, learner profiles, time, level of effort, and methodology. I describe these 5 steps in a previous issue of this newsletter — The First 5 Things I Do When Designing An Educational Experience After completing those 5 steps, we are ready to tackle the big question! What should the learner do? --------------------------- To illustrate how to answer this question, I'll use examples of real products I've created. Let's say I want to teach the learner _**how to run a business**_. Then I will have the learner run a business — like the restaurant simulation shown below. The learner manages a menu of products, sets prices, manages inventory, hires and schedules employees, and more.

If I want to teach _**accounting**_, I have the learner experience accounting in the context of running a business — perhaps the same business as above. I start by guiding them to discover the purpose, importance, and value of accounting. Then, I have them follow the methodology of how accounting is done. I may also have them post debits and credits, like the accounting window shown below.

If I want the learner to improve their ability to _**ask good questions**_, I put them in a situation where they must ask questions and assess the responses. Below is a leadership simulation where the learner gathers information from various simulated stakeholders in order to make evidence-based decisions. This example uses a business theme but I also designed a scenario with a space theme.

If I want the learner to improve their ability to _**answer questions**_, such as in a job interview, I put them through a simulated job interview process. Shown below is a job interview simulation where the interviewer asks a question and the learner chooses a response. The response is scored and the interviewer discloses what they think of the response, revealing important feedback to guide the learner.

The examples shown above are mainly software simulation games, but the same design approach can be used when designing live role-playing scenarios, board games, virtual reality explorations, and other types of activities. If you have trouble visualizing what you want the learner to do, then look at it from a different perspective and ask yourself this question— _What problem should the learner solve?_ Then put the learner in a scenario where they have to solve the problem. Literal or Metaphor? -------------------- Once we decide on the main activity for the learner to do, the next consideration is whether we want the environment to be _**literal**_ or based on a _**metaphor**_. For example, we could take a literal approach and have the learner run a real business, similar to McDonald's, Wal-Mart, or Tesla. Or we can use a metaphor where the learner is doing business with aliens in space. Which approach is better? It depends on the first 5 steps I mentioned earlier in this article. Theme? ------ Theme is also a factor in the design decision. With a _literal_ approach, we could design the experience based on present-day Hong Kong or a Texas western from the 1800s. With a _metaphor_, we could simulate working within a colony of ants. Imagination is at play here — but bridled to make sure that the instructional objectives and learner profile are always considered. One Main Activity With Subactivities ------------------------------------ Once the main activity and theme are chosen, the next step is to identify the subactivities to be integrated within this main activity. These subactivities make sure the learning experience covers everything necessary to achieve our instructional outcomes. This is somewhat equivalent to drafting a list of content items that I described earlier when creating a textbook, video, or page-turn elearning. But, with experiential learning, we are designing activities for the learner to do, not just content to know. To illustrate this concept, I'll use the _Food Truck Entrepreneur Board Game_ that I recently designed.

My objective with this educational game is to help youth and adults learn the very basics of running a business. * I chose a literal environment of running a realistic business in a present-day city. * I chose the food truck theme because it's a micro business that is easier to understand and the mobility of the truck adds a fun game dynamic. So the main activity here is running a food truck business. For the subactivities, I want the learner to do the following: * Move a truck to different locations in the city. * Compete with other food truck businesses to win customers. * Earn rewards for selling food to customers who prefer a specific type of food. * Manage product inventory. * Earn money and pay bills. * Win by earning experience points (XP). There's much more to the experience, but as you can see from the short list above, the key learning outcomes of running a business become revealed through the gameplay. Filling the Gaps ---------------- One of the challenges with designing experiential learning is that it's much more difficult to create than conventional learning. And so it requires much more effort, skill, and budget — perhaps 10 to 100 times more. This means that it's not always feasible to deliver learning content in this way. That's where text, graphics, and video can be used effectively. Not as the main activity, but as subactivities or supplemental resources. When I have a lot of content I need to deliver as supplemental resources, my current preference is to use one of these methods: * **Microlearning** — Short video, followed by summary text for reflection, followed by a short activity or quiz. I describe this in detail here — Converting a Book Into Microlearning Modules * **Narrative Story** — Using text, I guide the learner through their own personal story and journey of discovery. I describe this in detail here — How to Design a Narrative Story For Experiential Learning Feedback -------- A key component of experiential learning is feedback. Every decision a learner makes should have a visible consequence. Indecisions should also have consequences. This has to be integrated into the gameplay. Many decisions may have both negative and positive consequences. This forces the learner to consider the complexities of the real world, where the best decisions are not always easy to identify. Sometimes, the consequences are revealed immediately, while others might be revealed later in the gameplay. Often, we need to accelerate and exaggerate consequences so that they are more visible. Because a consequence that is too subtle to be noticed won't influence learner behavior. Repetition ---------- The gameplay design should consider how to allow the learner to repeat the primary and subactivities many times. This rote method of learning can be very powerful in building the muscle memory of the brain. I've written about this in another issue of this newsletter — Rote Learning Builds Your Brain's Muscle Memory Progression ----------- When designing activities that offer deep learning, consider how to include progression in the gameplay. Progression allows the learner to take on challenges that increase in difficulty as the learner gains new skills and demonstrates competency. Without progression, the learner may get frustrated early on if the gameplay proves to be too challenging. Reflection ---------- Reflection is an important exercise to include with experiential learning. Allowing the learner to reflect on their experience triggers connections to be made with the decisions and consequences experienced in the activity, while adding context for personal real-world alignment. One of the best ways to accomplish reflection is for the instructor to host a debrief session. During the debrief session, the instructor makes observations on everyone's performance and asks questions to trigger discussions. Participants listening to the discussion learn from each other while reflecting on their own personal experiences. I describe reflection and coaching in this video — An Instructor's Role Changes to a Coach When Using a Simulation Assessment ---------- When designing a learning activity, we must consider how the learner will be assessed. Did they complete the activity? How well did they do? Did they gain specific skills or competencies? Assessment in experiential learning, particularly with games and simulations, is based on actions and results. Results are based on demonstrated behaviors, skills, and performance — not just knowledge or memorization. This is powerful because: * Assessment is more authentic and accurate. * Assessment is personalized. * Assessment is less prone to cheating. * Assessment may be automated for both students and instructors. * Learners can monitor their own performance in real-time and improve if needed. * Eliminates the anxiety triggered by high-stakes tests and waiting for grades to be revealed. Bringing It All Together ------------------------ Consider how we might teach someone to ride a bicycle. Certainly, we would _not_ start by having them read a book or listen to a lecture. We might have them watch someone demonstrate how to ride a bicycle — live or on video— as long as it's brief and focused on the basics (or on how exciting it may be to ride a bicycle). We intuitively know that the only way this is going to work is to get the learner on a bicycle right away. They have to experience riding a bicycle in order to learn how to ride a bicycle. Riding the bicycle is the main activity. The subactivities may include how to maintain balance, how to pedal, how to stop, how to take turns, and how to change gears. All designed with progression in mind to keep the rider safe and engaged from start to finish. We'll have the learner repeat all of the above many times to build muscle memory. We'll occasionally pause and reflect on what has been learned, individually and collectively. Once the learner has directly experienced how to ride a bike, they are now ready for more. To fill in the gaps, we may then provide videos, books, and lectures on how to ride a bicycle more efficiently, or how to repair a bicycle, or build muscle mass for high performance. And we'll assess the learner by having them ride a bicycle along a path that demonstrates their skill and competency. **Success!**

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How To Design a Board Game & 5 Challenges to Overcome ===================================================== Everyone should try designing a card game or board game — it's fun and it's all upside, no downside. I've designed a number of **board games** and **card games** over the years. Collectively these are sometimes called **tabletop games**. The most successful board game in history is often considered to be _Monopoly_ — most likely because it's been around forever. I don't love _Monopoly_ (more on this below). In terms of tabletop games in general, _Chess_, _Checkers_, _Backgammon_, and likely some card games may top the list as most popular of all time.

Designing Board Games --------------------- Board games are fun to design and play and can provide a structure for achieving specific learning outcomes. With a board game, the instructor can serve as a facilitator, coach, or observer. If you are considering designing a board game, here is an infographic I created to help —

Educational Board Games ----------------------- Some of the board games I design are primarily intended to be used in schools, while others are designed for corporate clients with specific training needs. Here's a game board I created to train people on tourism marketing —

"Opoly Style" ------------- Many educational games I've seen over the years tend to follow the conventional "opoly" style — named after _Monopoly_. This consists of a game board with spaces on a set path, roll dice, do what the space says. Here are a few reasons why many opoly-style games fall short: * Luck plays too big of a role in success (random good, luck bad) * Waiting for your turn (boring!) * Zero-sum competition (for me to win, you have to lose) * Only one way to win (more luck) Modern board games have evolved considerably from the original opoly style. But, I have also played modern games that were very well funded (crowdfunding) and well designed but were too superficial in their learning value. You could play them repeatedly for hours and gain less educational benefit than other learning methods. Design Challenges ----------------- Designing a board game to be an effective learning experience is quite challenging. Here are 5 of the biggest challenges I have experienced: 1. **Keeping it fun** (or engaging) while achieving specific learning outcomes. Whenever a game has an objective other than fun, it's much harder to also make it fun. 2. **Time —** games for education, particularly in schools, have to be playable (or segmented) into 45-minute or less sessions. That's a very short period of time to achieve several meaningful learning outcomes with a board game. 3. Making the game engaging enough to offer **repeat play** without requiring too much depth. More depth means more complex rules. 4. Maintaining **proper balance** in the gameplay so that no action is too powerful and that all players progress through the game as equally as possible. Close games are always better to play. 5. **Writing the rules.** Using the proper language to make rules easy to understand, yet brief to read, while leaving absolutely no ambiguity in the gameplay is harder to do than writing a complex legal contract (but not as hard as writing a software patent :-) Give It a Try ------------- The great thing about board games and card games is that anyone can design and build a prototype. Sure, your first prototype — or 10 or 30 — may not be great, but you'll have fun doing it. Give it a try! P.S. My latest board game (April 2023) is Food Truck Entrepreneur

# How To Design Artificial Intelligence in Games — Simplified! Have you ever wondered how games are designed? How monsters and characters are given intelligence? I'll show you the basics with an example that's super-easy to understand. Your kids might even think you're cool again (no promises) 🙂 Check it out in this video ...

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Designing Balanced Gameplay — Using Math, Yuck! 🙂 One of the many challenges game designers face is ensuring the gameplay is balanced. No action should be so strong as to overpower player strategy. Otherwise, players will feel the game is too random and unfair. Math to the rescue! Don't worry, this is easy to follow and you can use AI to do it for you. ## Powerups Here is one example of a simple powerup I designed for our upcoming new Lemonade Stand Board Game. Players roll a die to compete to sell lemonade to customers — highest roll wins the sale.

Players can gain an advantage by purchasing one of the powerups shown here:

## Balance To keep the gameplay simple, each player may only have one powerup and they all cost the same amount of money. So we must make sure that each powerup provides an equivalent benefit — in a random situation of a die roll. To determine balance, we have to use math: * "Add 1 to your die roll" means the result will be 2,3,4,5,6,7. Adding them up totals 27. The average = 27÷6 = 4.5. * "If the die roll is 1, 2, or 3, change it to 4" means there are 6 permutations — 4,4,4,4,5,6. Adding them up totals 27. The average = 27÷6 = 4.5 * "Roll the die twice and choose the highest result" means there are 6x6 = 36 permutations (1 and 1, 1 and 2, 1 and 3, etc). Adding up the highest of the two rolls for each of the 36 permutations totals 161. The average = 161÷36 = 4.472 With all three powerups at or close to 4.5 means we have balance — success! Don't like math? No problem — ask AI to calculate the numbers for you.

# Luck, Skill, and Engagement in Educational Games Luck, Skill, and Engagement — how do we design the right balance of these elements in games and simulations? It can be a fine line, but you have to get it right to maximize learning. Check out how in this video ...

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Quick & Easy Way to Create Board Game Paths A time-consuming aspect of designing board games is prototyping the player path. It takes a long time to set it up in a graphic design program and then more time as you tweak the gameplay. In this video, I'll show you a magical way to improve this. I'm using Adobe Illustrator, but other graphic design tools may do the same.

Watch Full Screen

# The 2-Step Process I Follow When Inventing a New Product When I invent a new product, I follow a 2-step process. Do I ask customers what they want first? Not exactly. **Customers often don't know what they want or need until they see it.** And that's the challenge that many inventors face. I've invented toys, board games, card games, software games and simulations, mobile apps, and more. My preferred approach is to build and commercialize quickly, and then refine based on real customer use and feedback. > It's risky, but the only trueway to know if a customer will want your product is to build it and ask them to pay money for it. And the only true way to know if your product is serving the customer well is for them to use it successfully. No amount of research can reveal this information. I describe my 2-step process in this video.

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# How To Write Game Rules ### Writing rules and instructions for a tabletop game is very challenging It’s like writing a legal contract where you have to capture every possible scenario, but must do so using brief and clear language that anyone can understand. I find it to be the most difficult of all the writing tasks I’ve done over the years — business plans, project proposals, teaming agreements, legal contracts, books, design guides, technical specifications, and more. The good news is that I’ve created a style that makes it easier — not easy, but easier — and I’m sharing it here. Some people may not agree with all of my style choices, but hopefully each choice creates awareness of what you need to consider. I’ve read many rule books that could be improved if the writer or layout designer had at least considered an alternative option. --- ## Rule Book Style Guide ### Writing #### Bullets Vs Paragraphs I write using bullets instead of paragraphs. Paragraphs are good for narrative story telling, but not so good for rules and instructions. I also find it much easier to get ideas out of my brain and properly organised when using bullets. Give it a try and see. Another benefit is that it makes it easier for players to find a rule when it’s in bullets instead of buried in a long paragraph. ### Person and Pronouns I use second (“you”) or third person (“player”), never first person (“I”). I choose which to use based on the gameplay. For example, I created a game where all players play every turn, so it was better to use third person. But for a game where players take turns, then “on your turn” is a better approach. Sometimes I have to use both second and third person. ### Contractions In the old days, I never used contractions — it’s it is, won’t will not, etc. I wanted my writing to be professional. But times have changed. Many people want a more informal experience, and using contractions can make text more conversational. So now I use contractions when I think it's useful to do so. I also tend to use the one-word versions of words that could be written with one or two words — gameplay, gameboard, faceup, facedown. ### Consistent Language I try to use simple terminology and the same terms consistently throughout for better clarity — minimize the use of synonyms. ### Use of Uppercase I use uppercase for game components so that it’s clear when the rules refer to a physical object — pawn becomes PAWN, dice becomes DICE. I might also use uppercase when referring to gameplay actions. ### Em & En Dashes I avoid using colons and semicolons and instead use Em — and En – dashes, both of which are longer than the common hyphen - ### Examples I use examples to demonstrate important or complex actions, like this: *Example — This is the example.* I don’t use a colon and I don’t include the word “for” as in “For example,” so the text is shorter and without a comma. ### Capture Every Scenario Every possible scenario that can happen in the game should be addressed in the rules. This makes the rules harder to write and longer, which is not great, but it’s better than leaving players uncertain as to what to do. ### Use AI I find AI very useful to check my grammar and to request suggestions on how I can improve the clarity of my writing. But be sure to check the AI response for accuracy. --- ## Layout ### Columns When creating a rule book that is more than 7” wide, I prefer to use 2 columns per page. When text sentences span across a wide page, I think it makes the document look dense and harder to read. The 2 columns also work well with my bullet style of writing. ### Justification Consider the justification of all of the text layout — left, center, right, full. Anything with more than one or two sentences should be left justified. Use indenting to show hierarchy. ### Large Font What’s worse than reading a book of rules? Reading it in a tiny font. I prefer to use 14 and 16 point for body text. A larger font also provides a more welcoming first impression for the reader. Yes, this does require more pages. ### Spacing I prefer the text line height to be 1.2 to 1.4 as it provides the right amount of white space to give the text some breathing room. Too much space breaks the flow and uses up more real estate. Bullets should also have 0.5 to 1.0 full lines of vertical space in between — don't squish your bullets. ### Headings I typically use a different color for the main headings than subheadings and body text so there is clearer distinction of where sections start and end. ### Strong Contrast I tend to use a clean white background for text. Alternatively, solid black with white text. Far too many rule books use a color background which makes the text difficult to read. Put images around the text, not behind it. ### Margins Documents should have sufficient white space around all edges of the paper and in the gutters (center spine). ### White Space White space is our friend. It calms our mind and makes text appear easier to read. Don’t be afraid to have white space in your rule book. But you don’t want white space if it leaves such a large gap that the reader thinks something is missing from the print. ### Visuals I use graphics in two ways — to add clarity to what the text is describing and/or to make the book more visually interesting and on theme. ### Multiples of 4 If you are printing a book, keep in mind that the number of pages in your book has to be a multiple of 4 — 8, 12, 16, etc. You can’t have a 5-page book. ### QR Code I always include a QR Code to direct players to the game website and tutorial video. And I show the website URL with the QR Code. --- ## Gameplay ### Gameplay Summary I start the rules with a visual summary of the gameplay so that players have a big picture understanding of how the game is played and the related components before they start reading the details. ### Gameplay Setup I try to sequence the set up in the most logical and efficient way possible and visually show the optimal placement for all the components. ### Glossary For complex rules with a lot of terminology, a glossary can be helpful. ### Tutorial Video I think people prefer watching videos instead of reading rule books. I also think it makes it more likely that players will understand the rules clearly. I always include a tutorial video and it usually follows the rule book. But I’m increasingly thinking that also including a video where you can watch people play the game may be more effective. --- ## Sample Rules You can see most of the above styles in action in these rule books (follow the linksto find the PDF versions): Food Truck Entrepreneur Board Game Lemonade Stand Board Game Game Maker Kit

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# How to Design a Narrative Story For Experiential Learning I frequently write about **experiential learning** and how to use this methodology effectively. I'm going to share my design thinking behind a very basic **narrative story**\-based activity. One of the challenges with designing experiential learning is that it's much more difficult to create than conventional learning. It requires much more effort, skill, and budget — perhaps 10 to 100 times more. This means that it's not always feasible to deliver learning content in this way. That's where text, graphics, and video can be used effectively. Not as the main activity in the learning experience, but as subactivities or supplemental resources. When I have a lot of content I need to deliver as supplemental resources, my current preference is to use one of these methods: * **Microlearning** — Short video, followed by summary text for reflection, followed by a short activity or quiz. I describe this in detail here — **Converting a Book Into Microlearning Modules** * **Narrative Story** — Using text, I guide the learner through their own personal story and journey of discovery. I'll explain how I do this in this article. Narrative Story Example ----------------------- I'm going to show you an example of this methodology using an activity I designed to teach the basics of _personal financial literacy_. This activity is designed to be completed before the learner plays a highly-realistic personal finance and investing simulation. The simulation is very comprehensive, so it helps to have some foundational knowledge before playing. **Watch the video below to see the narrative story activity in action.** Then keep reading to discover the design thinking behind this simple, but effective, learning activity. Note that the video does not have any audio other than button clicks. The actual activity is not a video, it is a clickable app — I'm only using video to make it easy for you to watch.

Watch Full Screen

Effective? ---------- As you can see, this activity is as basic as it gets. Just text on screen. Compared to the complex educational games and simulations that I normally design and write about, this is not in the same league. But — that doesn't mean it's not effective. This is about using the right tool for the job. And never underestimate the power of simplicity in learning. Let me break down the design thinking behind this activity ... Tell a Story ------------ Our human brains are wired to pay attention to stories. So the script is written as a story — not just a presentation of information that I want you to know. (Consider this the next time you are preparing a slide deck for a presentation). It's About You -------------- The story is about you. You are the subject. It's your experience. It's personalized — or, at least, I make it feel like it is. More on this below. Text Only --------- I only use text — one font style with large text and high contrast. Few words per screen. No visual distractions or cognitive overload. Narrated -------- The story is narrated. It's not a dialog or conversation. It's easier to write and follow a narrated story than a dialog-based story. A dialog is better when using characters and voices (I'll share an example of this type of story in a future issue of this newsletter — subscribe to be notified). Narrative --------- According to Merriam-Webster, a narrative is "a way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values." I'm trying to teach something, so I do have a particular point of view or set of values that I'm trying to impart to the learner. In this case, related to personal financial literacy. So, this is a narrated narrative (I made that up, not sure if this is literary accurate or not). Perception of Choice -------------------- To make the story feel more personalized, I occasionally allow the learner to make a choice. But it's not a real choice. The story remains the same regardless of what choice is made. It's a linear experience without appearing to be a linear experience. I could make the choice real by taking the story in different directions based on the choices made. That's not hard to do. But it requires much more writing and development work. Even easy tasks require effort and I don't need this activity to be any deeper or more interactive than it is because the learner is about to play a highly-realistic simulation. This activity is the prep, the warmup. Maintaining Engagement ---------------------- Reading screen after screen of text can eventually become tedious, even if it's a story about you. So, I use two methods to re-engage the learner: * **Choice** — Near the end of the video example above, you are given a choice of three jobs. I use the same mechanic at strategic points in the activity, such as choosing a place to live and how to invest money. I prefer to present three options for each choice because it's just enough to encourage engagement without requiring too much commitment from the learner. And our brains like choices in threes. * **Anticipation or Mystery** — In the video example above, I build anticipation by having you try to find a job. And then I create mystery by disclosing that you did not get a job — and later reveal the reasons why. I don't consider myself a creative writer. My writing experience is more factual. So, if you are a creative writer, you can run with these concepts to create very compelling learning experiences — likely much more so than I have demonstrated in this example. Audio ----- The example I shared in the video above has button clicks and a few sound effects, but the text is not narrated with audio. There are two reasons I chose not to include narrated audio: 1. **Budget** — this is a warmup activity to a highly-realistic personal finance and investing simulation. The simulation was very time-consuming and expensive to build. So, it was not feasible to invest more time and money in a supplemental warmup activity (and this is only one of several other supplemental resources created to support the simulation). 2. **Design Choice** — this activity takes nearly 2 hours to complete. That's a lot of narrated text to have to listen to a single voice, slide after slide. Even though the script is written as a story, it's not quite the same as listening to a novel or non-fiction audiobook. So, I wasn't confident that adding audio would boost engagement enough to justify the extra time and cost of doing so. (If it was a dialog with multiple characters, I would rethink this decision.) Simple Can Be Effective ----------------------- That's all there is to it. As I hope I have illustrated here, delivering content in a simple way can be effective — as long as we put some design thinking into the process. The next time you have to present some information to a group of people, consider this methodology. Another Example Coming Soon --------------------------- In this article, I've shared my design thinking behind a simple narrative story activity.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Designing a Digital Marketing Simulation I'm designing a **digital marketing simulation** — I'm going to share what inspired the idea, the instructional-design thinking I'm applying, and the reasons why. I hope you may find this helpful in your work. > _Update Dec 2022: The program described in this article is now available at_ _GoVenture.net/dm_ Experiential Learning --------------------- More specifically, I'm designing an experiential learning activity that teaches digital marketing using: 1. Narrative story 2. Microlearning 3. Simulation These are three design methods I have written about in detail in previous issues of this newsletter. Now, I'm going to illustrate how they can all be integrated together. Why Digital Marketing? ---------------------- I'm developing this product at risk — meaning we're funding it completely without a customer ready to buy. I chose digital marketing because it's a topic that's in demand, and which has become sufficiently complex to benefit from a better training method. Some aspects of digital marketing seem easy at first because the individual concepts are simple to understand. But become complex when combined. The main challenge for new marketers is trying to create a holistic and cohesive strategy for a digital marketing campaign — how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. This is sometimes called a _digital marketing funnel_ — and that's the main concept that inspired me to create a simulation-based training program. What's So Hard About Digital Marketing? --------------------------------------- Some people feel like they are "good" at social media (and by extension digital marketing) because they spend a lot of time posting and consuming content. They measure success by views, likes, engagement, and other common metrics. What many fail to understand is that social media marketing, like any other marketing, becomes very difficult when your objective is to get people to take high-commitment action — like buying a product. There's a huge jump, of Grand Canyon proportions, between getting someone to engage with your content versus paying money to buy what you're selling. And even if you are successful at getting some of your immediate followers to buy what you're selling, scaling that success to a wider group of people is a monumental task — unless you have millions of dollars to invest in advertising. But then how do you spend all that money while still remaining profitable? No Right Answers ---------------- The other challenge with digital marketing is that many of the key concepts do not have clear answers. It's difficult to teach concepts when there are no right answers. And, it certainly doesn't help that we all grew up with old-school learning methods that graded us on right-and-wrong answers, instead of preparing us for the uncertainty of the real world. For example, the performance of an ad is dependent on many variables, including the offer being made, headline, text copy, imagery or video, time of day being seen, targeting, and more. No one knows how to design the _perfect_ ad for a particular offer, for a particular type of customer, at a specific time. This means: * I can't teach you what the best headline is. * I can't teach you what the best copy is. * I can't teach you what the best imagery is. * Or the best offer. * Or the best people to target. * Or where to place the ad. * Or how many times to place it. What I _can_ teach you are the generally-accepted principles. But there are plenty of other training resources that do that, so that's not what I want to do. And, even if I were to perfectly teach you the generally-accepted principles, the reality is that your ad with the pixelated graphic and typo in the headline that breaks all the "rules" may actually perform better than anything else. This is the uncertain nature of modern advertising and marketing. The solution? The common practice in modern marketing is to place and test multiple pieces of content and ads. Then identify the top-performing elements and optimize based on the results. This is the **objective science of digital marketing** — and this is what I need to teach you. > The objective science of digital marketing Digital Marketing Funnel ------------------------ The thought process described above helped me determine which aspect of digital marketing _needed_ to be simulated and _could_ be simulated effectively. The key learning challenges I need to help people with are: 1. There are no right answers — testing and optimizing are critical. 2. Putting all the pieces together to create a holistic and cohesive strategy for a digital marketing campaign. I concluded that simulating the Digital Marketing Funnel would accomplish the above. A digital marketing funnel is a visual representation of the path that a person takes from the point of discovering that your business or product exists to the end goal of becoming a customer. Below is an illustration that we created to form the core interface of the simulation module. It guides the learner through this flow: 1. Using a fictitious product, identify consumer profiles to target. 2. Define your brand and messaging then create a variety of content. 3. Distribute that content through nine different traffic channels to drive people to a destination store and then through a shopping process so they become customers.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# How To Create Realistic Consumer Behavior In a Simulation Game In a previous video article, I shared How To Design Artificial Intelligence in Games — Simplified! In this article, I show how consumer behavior can be modeled. You may be surprised at how simple this is, yet how versatile and realistic the end result can be. ## Purchase Decisions Consumers are people who buy things. Typically, consumers make their purchase decisions based on three factors: Price, Features, and Brand. * **Price** is the cost of the item. * **Features** are the properties and benefits offered. For example, for a smartphone this may include display size, weight, battery life, camera quality, reliability, app ecosystem, and more. * **Brand** is how we feel about the company offering the product. Do we know, like, and trust the company? Pretty straightforward so far. One may argue that *emotion*should also be a factor, since humans are more emotional than logical. And that may be true — this methodology can be expanded to include any factor we want. Let’s continue … ## Consumer Profiles Consumers have varying concerns that are a mix of the three factors above. Let’s consider some consumer profiles (personas): * **Preston** is a price-conscious consumer. He wants to buy the lowest-price product and will not pay more for features or brand. Preston = 100% Price. * **Febe** wants the most feature-rich product and is willing to pay more for it. Febe is also willing to take a chance on an unknown company. Febe = 100% Features. * **Brandy** is a brand-conscious consumer. She wants to buy from the brand she knows, likes, and trusts and is willing to pay more and have fewer features. Brandy = 100% Brand. In reality, consumer buying behavior tends to be a bit more complex than the above. So, let’s create a few more personas: * **Cameron** wants a smartphone with the best camera she can afford. She is willing to pay a bit more for this and buy from an unkown company. Cameron = 50% Price + 50% Features + 0% Brand. * **Pablo** loves Apple products and wants to buy the best Apple phone he can afford on a limited budget. He knows he can get more features with an Android device at a lower price, but he is loyal to Apple. Pablo = 30% Price + 0% Features + 70% Brand. The method above allows for thousands of permutations to capture a variety of consumer profiles and behaviors. ## Products Consumers buy products. Businesses make and sell products. Players running a business in a simulation have direct and indirect control of their products and the three factors described above — Price, Features, and Brand. Players set the selling Priceof their products and can invest money to build Featuresand Brand. For example, if a player invests in improving smartphone battery life and has the best in the marketplace compared to all other products, they can be assigned a score of 100% for that feature. If another player has a product with battery life that is half as good as the best, they can be assigned a score of 50%. The same can be applied to Brand. If a product has the highest brand awareness and loyalty, it can be assigned a Brand score of 100%. All other products can be assigned lower scores based on how close they are to the Brand leader. Assigning 100% to the best in any one factor allows us to use simple math to create mathematical comparisons. Although, this does get trickier with Price — because a low Price is better for the consumer than a high Price, so low price means higher score. And we can’t always create a linear comparison with Price — for example, how much more attractive is $500 versus $510 or $550? But I don’t want to get too much into the weeds here, so let’s move on. Using the approach above, Product A may have scores for Price, Features, and Brand = 30%, 60%, 100%. Product B may be 70%, 20%, 80%. Other competing Products can be any combination of 0-100% for each of the three factors. ## Affinity Once have our consumer profiles(personas) defined and ourproduct scores, we can now determine how well each product aligns to the preferences of each consumer profile. We do that by comparing the consumer profile numbers with the product numbers. * Pablo\= 30% Price + 0% Features + 70% Brand. * Product A\= 30% Price + 60% Features + 100% Brand. For simplicity, I won’t work through this math here, but the result is a number that represents how closely a product matches a consumer profile. We can then award the sale to the product that best matches what Pablo is looking for. And then repeat this process for every consumer. To achieve even more realism, we can add other factors into the mix, like inventory availability where a specific consumer lives. The possibilities are endless.

# Converting a Book Into Microlearning Modules The Future is Micro ------------------- The Internet is conditioning us to want our content in short micro-doses instead of longer experiences. We want to learn exactly what we need to know when we need it. This is sometimes called "**just in time**" learning versus the conventional approach of learning a bunch of stuff in advance "**just in case**" we may need it. We already know that the old-school "just in case" approach doesn't work well, because we forget everything by the time we actually need it. So, how can instructional designers repurpose long-form content into just-in-time learning? There are a variety of ways to do this, and I'm going to illustrate one specific way I repurposed a business book into microlearning modules used to supplement a business simulation. Perhaps this may help give you some ideas on how you can apply microlearning in your work. From Book to Microlearning -------------------------- The book is called **Business Superhero** — a clear and concise guide to the basics of business and entrepreneurship. It covers 144 topics in over 200 pages. Here's what it looks like when printed ...

The book is a supplement included with the GoVenture business simulation games. Here's a screenshot of running an ice-cream kiosk business in a small city ...

While playing the simulation game, students can access the book (in PDF format) as a reference to help them learn fundamental business concepts and terminology. But accessing content through a book in this way may not be the best approach. And, there is no way to monitor student access and engagement. So, we converted the book to microlearning modules. Here's how ... ### Step 1 — Video We used the text from each topic in the book to create short videos of the same content. We took the quick and easy approach of displaying text on screen with audio narration. It's not very creative, but each topic is only 1 or 2 minutes long, so fancier imagery was not critical. Here is what a typical video frame looks like ...

### Step 2 — Reflection After the video ends, we present a reflection slide which is a summary of the video content displayed as a bulleted text list. This helps reinforce what was watched in the video to make sure the key takeaways are identified.

### Step 3 — Quiz After the reflection slide, we post a multiple choice quiz with 3 or 4 questions. This helps validate that the learner has reviewed the content. We score the quiz with 2 stars if all questions are answered correctly, 1 star if one question is incorrect, and 0 stars otherwise.

### 144 Microlearning Modules We package all the above together in what we call a _**microlearning module**_. With 144 topics, there are 144 microlearning modules that follow the same format. Each module only takes a few minutes to complete and can be accessed and repeated at any time. ### Instructor Dashboard Instructors use a special dashboard to choose which of the 144 modules they want to assign to students. All are scored automatically with the results instantly available. Instructors can also create different collections of modules in case they want to assign different modules to different groups of students.

For some instructors, this microlearning approach has allowed them to replace their conventional textbook. For others, it gives them confidence that students have access to everything they need to be successful when playing the business simulation. Rigorous? --------- Multiple choice quizzing is certainly not the most rigorous way to assess knowledge or competence. But, we have applied this method in this instance because it makes the most sense. Why? Because the core learning in this experience is with the highly-realistic business simulation game. This simulation game offers the most rigorous type of assessment possible. The microlearning modules are supplementary learning. What's Next? ------------ As noted, there are other ways to apply microlearning. I expect that micro games and micro simulations will likely be widely used in all sorts of training in the near future. But not everything has to be as advanced as a game or simulation, as illustrated in this example. I hope you found it helpful.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Using Goals for Student Assessment in a Life & Money Simulation **Assessment** of student progress and achievement is an important requirement in education. But how do we assess students in a simulation game when the path and outcomes are personalizedfor each student? This is a challenge that we had to overcome when we designed a highly-realistic life and money simulation to help students gain personal financial literacy skills. We believe the best way to teach personal finance (and change behavior) is to allow someone to live their life virtually in a simulation. Allow them to make realistic life and money decisions and experience the consequences for decades into the future. **But once we have such a realistic simulation experience, how do we determine success?** What should the outcomes be in such an experience? * Should students be required to amass a lot of money? * Should students be forced to go to college? * Should students be required to own a home? The answers to these questions vary for each student. And we should not attempt to tell anyone what their life goals should be. > Instead, the role of education should be to help equip students with the knowledgeand skillsthey need to identify and achieve their own personal goals. So, how do we accomplish this while also making it possible for instructors to assess student success? I'll show you how we solved this challenge in the video below —

As a bonus, the assessment methodology demonstrated in the video above has these key benefits: * Personalized * Measures behavior * Data driven * Real-time monitoring * Fully automated I'll share more assessment methodologies in future issues of this newsletter.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# Waiting For Your Turn Is Boring — Here's How to Fix It When playing games, I suspect most people are like me and don’t like waiting for our turn. It’s not that fun waiting and wondering if another player’s turn is finished. Are you done? Done now? Ok, how about now? I prefer a game that keeps me engaged even when it’s not my turn. And, I like a clear signal when a player starts and ends a turn, so we don’t have to keep asking if they are done. With our GoVenture Card Game, we fixed this issue by having a player pick up a card to signal the start of a turn and pick up another card to signal the end of a turn. And, to help with the "waiting for your turn" issue, we use a game mechanic that I describe in this video ...

**Action Cards** Another game mechanic to combat "waiting for your turn" is the use of Action cards. Action cards are used in many modern games to give players special powers that affect the gameplay. Action cards encourage players to monitor what other players are doing so that they can play an Action card at the right time. Here are some examples from our new Food Truck Entrepreneur board game.

**Play!** The best way to come up with ideas to improve gameplay is to play games yourself. Or, watch game tutorials or other people play games so you see various game mechanics in action. There are lots of videos online for you to level up your gaming experience. Have fun!

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# How To Make Your Website or App Accessible to People With Disabilities Let's consider **accessibility** on the Internet. Accessibility means making your website and apps usable ("accessible") by people with disabilities. I'll explain the three disabilities you need to consider — vision, hearing, and physical. I'll show you an example of how we added accessibility to a business simulation with a visually rich and complex interface. And a free tool you can use to easily test your own website or app to determine how accessible it may be. All in this video ...

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

# 30 Years of Tech I Used to Develop Educational Apps Here's a walk down memory lane of the technology platforms I used to develop educational games and simulations since I started my ed tech company in 1994. ### Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook I started with Multimedia Toolbook by Asymetrix. It was a really good and well-refined program. The company was founded by Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft. But it was for Windows only and Apple Macs were becoming too popular in schools to ignore so most developers jumped to Macromedia Director. ### Macromedia Director Director by Macromedia was also a great program, but not as well refined as Toolbook. I pushed the envelope with Director creating my first super-realistic business simulation. It won an award at a Macromedia developer conference. I created all sorts of apps with it, including one that communicated with satellite data systems to identify the location of locomotives. ### Adobe Director Director was eventually acquired by Adobe. My team and I continued to use Director for many years but, to the disappointment of many, Adobe did not continue to develop the program well and their customer support was terrible. I presume they kept it alive as a cash cow to fund other projects, but I'm just speculating. All I know is that the change of ownership was not good. ### Adobe Flash Adobe also acquired Flash from another company. Adobe did invest in developing Flash further and it became a capable platform used widely around the world. We developed several educational games and simulations with Flash. And lots of other people developed annoying websites that forced you to sit and watch Flash animations before entering the site :-) Steve Jobs of Apple single-handedly killed Flash by banning it from Apple devices. This forced developers like us to incur very high costs to rebuild our products using other platforms. On a positive note, it did clean up those Flash websites :-) ### Unity Unity by Unity Technologies is a widely-used game development platform. It is much more complex than the platforms noted above. It is also more capable and modern (in most ways but not all). But there was a period of time when Unity apps would not run at all online — they had to be installed on your computer. This was a serious limitation as much of the world was moving to software as a service. But web technologies were not mature enough to support Unity. We did create a few apps with Unity and those apps are still good today. Unity continues to be a popular platform that most game developers should consider. ### HTML 5 HTML 5 is the internet standard that made it possible to create more feature-rich apps that play online. It took many years for the Internet (world wide web) to mature enough for this standard to be possible. Once all the major Internet browsers supported it, developers like us were able to build educational games and simulations without being bound to a specific software platform owned and controlled by a third party. And our users did not have to install any software as everything became playable online (software as a service). ### What's Next? Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Realty (MR), Web 3 ... I have a helpful chart of these technologies here — Metaverse VR AR MR Web3 — Which Should You Choose?

# A Better Way to Present Character Dialog in a Book ## Narrative Story In previous issues of this newsletter, I shared how we use narrative stories in experiential learning. In this issue, I'm going to show you how we visually format a narrative story in a book so that it looks good and is easy to read. I hope that sharing this may trigger some new ideas for you. > Narrative Story — Using text, I guide the learner through their own personal story and journey of discovery. ## The Book This is the book I'm demonstrating — Digital Marketing Superhero — which I describe as a powerfully clear and concise guide to the basics of digital marketing.

## A Story About YOU Our human brains are wired to pay attention to stories. So the book is written as a story — not just a presentation of information that I want you to know. In this book, the story is a dialog where you, the reader, are the main subject and you are having conversations with other people. The other people are marketing advisors and your role is that of an inventor of a new product that you are about to market and sell. We don't show "you" in the book, but we do show the other characters. We do this by using illustrated images in a circle, as shown in the example below.

Notice that we also use a speech bubble, similar to what you might see in a comic book. But there are some key differences with our speech bubble: 1. It's visually simple — just a thin line. 2. There is no background color — because most of the 200-page book is a dialog, so having background colors would make it harder to read. 3. There is no closing line for the speech bubble — because it would add unnecessary visual clutter. The next character speaking is identified with another circle as shown below.

Here is a two-page spread:

Compare the style above to this conventional text-heavy layout of a conversation:

Excerpt from "The Wealthy Barber"

And there you have it! ### These are the newsletter issues referenced earlier in this article: How to Design a Narrative Story For Experiential Learning Designing a Digital Marketing Simulation

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# The Largest Role-Playing Game In the World Is Not What You Expect Forget about **Dungeons and Dragons** or **World of Warcraft**. The largest role-playing game in the world is and has always been politics. Politics is more artificial than it is real. There’s more acting than in most Hollywood movies. It’s no secret. We all know how it works. The goal is to get your message out while stifling competing messages. To appear to be more likable. To be more popular. To win that all-important vote. It’s big business in many parts of the world. And, it’s a zero-sum game in most circumstances – for me to win, you have to lose. There are badges: Councilman, Mayor, Congressman, Senator, Governor, Premiere, Member of Parliament, Minister, Secretary, President, Prime Minister, etc. There are points: media pickups, debate wins, bills passed or killed, votes, etc. There are levels: Congressman to Senator to Governor to President. And, there are winners and losers. Like chess, there are even pawns (or redshirts for *Star Trek* fans). If you are a voter, you’re a pawn. If you are a nonvoter, you are still a pawn (that’s a vote the other guy didn’t get). It’s a massively multiplayer game on the grandest scale. In fact, it’s a cohesive network of interconnected worlds … but we call them countries with trade, travel, ambassadors, military, and such. The players include the politicians themselves, and an army of staff, assistants, marketing, PR agents, party members, pundits, bloggers, media, and more. All posturing and positioning to capture more attention than their rivals. And, in many cases, repeating message points they may not even understand, let alone sincerely believe in. It’s role-playing at its finest. It’s a game with big stakes. And, it’s real, sort of. Those who wonder if a game can actually influence human behavior on a massive scale need to look no further than the game of politics.

# A Day In the Life of an Educational Game Designer | Podcast Rob Alvarez Bucholska has interviewed over 200 gamification gurus, experts and practitioners of education on his **Professor Game Podcast**. I'm pleased to be the guest of episode 251, where I answer the questions listed below — timestamps included for your convenience. ### **What a regular day with me looks like — 00:00:44** Busy. And how I micro-read throughout the day. ### The story of my favorite failure — 00:04:55 Hint — it's about a board game. ### The biggest challenge I solved using game-based learning — 00:09:25 Hint — it's about farmers in Nigeria playing a board game to improve their lives. ### Process I follow to create a game-based solution — 00:16:04 I'll be sharing more about this in an upcoming issue of this newsletter (subscribe to be notified). ### Features that can improve most game-based learning experiences — 00:21:37 I identify 3 features (and they may not be what you expect). ### Games that I find nostalgic and interesting — 00:30:38 I list a few board games, card games, and video games. ### And more! Rob and I talked about more topics, all of which you can hear in this short podcast.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at Georghiou.com

🟢Help Me Design a Board Game🟢

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 1 I've been picking away at a new board game for a few years now. I made some progress early on but got stalled with other priorities. I'm now going to push to get the game done. I think it might be a fun experiment to share my design progress here in my newsletter — and create a better game with live feedback from you — where you can influence the design. If people choose to follow and post feedback in the comments, I will take your direction with the design of the game and continue to post my progress with gameplay refinements and design sketches, and continue to ask for your feedback. ## About The Game This will be an *educational* board game to help players learn personal finance — but more broadly about life, money, and happiness. I know what you are thinking — *The Game of Life!* Wikipedia says this game was created in 1860 with the more modern version in 1960. The game has an iconic three-dimensional board with a colorful spinner in the middle.

This game is exciting to look at and nicely tactile. It's a vivid childhood memory for many of us. But, to be honest, in IMO, it's not a great game to play. The gameplay is dated. I have no intention of duplicating any part of this game. Our game will have a fresh start (as I try to do with all of my games). I have already designed board games for personal finance, so I have a good foundation for our new game. I want this game to be like a simulation that recreates realistic decisions people make in the real world. ## Player & Customer Profile The primary target customers will be schools. But if we can attract home users that will be great too. Designing a product for education first, instead of entertainment, is particularly challenging. It's even more challenging to design a game that crosses over from schools to homes. But we'll give it a shot! (I've written about this here — Using Entertainment Games for Education). Knowing your customer is super important when designing a product. To refine the player profile further, the target age range is likely to be 14 to adult. This encompasses middle schools and high schools. The game may also play well for 11 and 12-year-olds, but here's an interesting fact — we can save thousands of dollars in production costs by setting the minimum age to 14. Why? Because toys and games for ages 12 and under (in the USA, 13 in Canada) require comprehensive materials testing for child safety. Of course, we always source and use safe materials for our games, but when costly double-testing is not necessary, then we should consider our options. ## Goals The first step — choosing the goals of the game. This is an interesting challenge with personal finance — because there are no clear right and wrong answers — everyone has their own path in life. Some may choose to pursue financial wealth over everything else, while others focus on personal lifestyle or relationships with friends and family. Some may try to have it all. Our game goals must reflect this reality of personal choice. We must refrain from applying our own biases in an educational product. With this in mind, here is what I'm currently thinking — ![1723042733090.png](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/1723042733090-9MmYk2.png) The overall goal should be *Happiness*. I feel like this is a good term that can be applied on a personal level regardless of individual life goals. The player with the most Happiness Points (HP) wins the game — although "win" may not be the right term here as we still have to decide if this will be a cooperative or competitive game or something in between. *Reminder — the educational objective of the game is to help you gain the personal finance knowledge and skills to achieve your definition of happiness.* Next, we have to define Happiness — my current thinking is that it should be made up of three metrics — **Financial Wealth** + **Lifestyle** + **Friends & Family**. Each player may put more or less emphasis on any combination of these three metrics. BTW, our brains like to work in threes. Fours become too complicated. Two is even better but may be too restrictive for the gameplay we want to design. You will see the word "Relationship" in my graphic above because I don't like that "Friends & Family" uses two words, so I'm thinking about alternatives. Where is Health? I carefully considered if health should be one of the three metrics since it is perhaps the single most important influence on happiness. But I decided not to include in the three metrics because: * Everyone wants good health (even if they may not make healthy choices). * Health influences all of our life goals. * Adding a fourth metric breaks our 3-metric rule. So the best way to include health is to have it applied throughout the game as various choices and events, such as personal care, nutrition, fitness, routine checkups, health insurance, etc. There you have it ... that's where we are so far. I have more to share in the next post. My direction will be influenced by the feedback you provide. ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 2 ## Part 1 In Part 1 of this board game design experience, we: * Defined the target player and customer. * Identified the concept. * Set the overall goal of the game to be Happiness, which is made up of three metrics = Financial Wealth + Lifestyle+ Friends & Family. Nothing is finalized yet, but we have enough to move on to the next stage of the design. Game design is an iterative process where we might make a tentative decision to allow us to move on to the next stage to see how things play out. Then we can reevaluate and adjust as we go. ## Part 2 — What will players do? This stage involves identifying what players will *do* in the game. To determine this, we must consider the main concepts we want players to experience and learn about personal finance and life. When I was thinking about this, I considered that there are different *phases*in life that typically happen in sequential order (although not always) — 1. Youth 2. Education 3. Career 4. Family 5. Retirement And within these 5 phases of life, there are choices we make — all of which are repeated many times. After a few iterations, I landed on these 6 choices: ### 6 Choices * Nutrition— how do we maintain our biological needs? * Housing— where do we live? * Commuting— how do we get around? * Income— how do we earn money to live? * Savings— how do we save or invest our money? * Free Time — how do we spend our free time? These are the choices most people have to make in the real world when managing life and money. At least that's what I think — perhaps I'm missing something? Let me know in the comments.

Part 2 design notes on my ReMarkable Tablet

## Rules & Time From a gameplay perspective, having fewer phases and choices is better because it requires fewer rules and may provide shorter gameplay. This makes the game more flexible and versatile. A lot of board games take 1 or 2 hours to play, which may be ok for entertainment, but for schools, this can be problematic as many classes are less than one hour. A game that requires multiple hours (and classes) to play provides teachers with less flexibility. And, requires us to build a way for an unfinished game to be continued on a different day — this is an inconvenience for everyone, but is easier to do nowadays as everyone has phone cameras that can be used to record the current state of the game. I don't yet know how long this game will take to play — we are too early in the design process. If we can keep it to less than one hour that will be ideal. It may turn out that a 2-player game will take less than one hour, while a 3 or 4-player game will take longer. This could be a good compromise as a school typically has to have multiple copies of the game to accommodate all students in a class. ## Gameplay The next step will be to determine how all of the 6 Choices can be integrated and repeated in the gameplay. That's not going to be easy because of the rules and time issue I described above, while also trying to make the game somewhat fun (even though education is the objective). I've got some work to do here before I post the next update. ## Health In Part 1, I mentioned that the reason Health is not one of the 3 metrics used to determine Happiness is because Health underlies everything in life. As I make more progress on the game design, I'm also thinking that Health can be used as a *super metric*where Health points earned during the game can be applied to any or all of the three Happiness metrics. The premise here is that the healthier we are, the more flexibility we have to devote our time and focus on whichever of the three Happiness metrics we choose. ## Other Considerations I'm still considering using the term "Relationships" to replace "Friends & Family." Here's why: * For simplicity, one word is always better than two. * Relationships can be more encompassing to include colleagues at work and volunteer activities, acquaintances, and more. * The only problem with the term Relationships is that it is not as self-explanatory as Friends & Family. Although, everything in a game should be defined in the instructions, even if it seems self-explanatory. Other concepts I want to consider in the gameplay as we go: * Budget * Net Worth * Credit and Credit Score * Insurance ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 3 ### Parts 1 & 2 In Part 1 and Part 2 of this board game design experience, we: * Defined the target player and customer. * Identified the concept. * Set the overall goal of the game to be Happiness made of 3 metrics. * Identified 5 Phases of life — Youth, Education, Career, Family, Retirment. * Identified 6 Choices that are repeated — see below. Nothing is finalized yet, but we have enough to move on to the next stage of the design. Game design is an iterative process where we might make a tentative decision to allow us to move on to the next stage to see how things play out. Then we can reevaluate and adjust as we go. ## Part 3 The next step is to determine how all of the 6 Choices can be integrated and repeated in the gameplay. Here's what I have come up with:

Sketch on my ReMarkable tablet

Use a game board with a path that players will follow. This is a common "opoly" style game mechanic. This is not my typical go-to preference, but it seems to be the best option here where we have to a number of specific actions. * The path will have two main types of spaces that are repeated multiple times — (1) The 6 Choices we identified previously; and (2) Events. * The letters in the sketch above correspond to the 6 Choices (the use of single letters is temporary for the sketch). * The letters with a bold circle identify the 6 Choices, whereas the other letters are Events related to the 6 Choices. For example, the bold Income space (marked as I) will be where players choose a job or earn money for the job, whereas the non-bold Income space will be an event related to the job, such as earning a big tip or losing a shift. ## Progressing * There will be one pawn to move along the path — for all players. This means all players will progress through the game at the same pace. Consistent pacing is useful in an educational environment and speeds up the gameplay without "waiting for my turn." Remember, that we need time to accomplish learning objectives, so faster gameplay is very helpful. * Players will take turns rolling the die and moving the pawn. When a player rolls a 6-sided die, they can choose to move the pawn the number of spaces rolled or less. For example, if you roll a 4, you can move 1,2,3, or 4 spaces. This provides some personalization with the pawn movement and can encourage dialog and negotiation among the players. * The pawn must always stop on a bold circle space. This ensures that important actions are never missed, like earning money for a job, paying housing expenses, etc. * When the pawn stops on a space, all players must do the same action. The result may be the same or different for each player, allowing for further personalization (and some controlled randomness). ## Spaces * The spaces may be grouped by the 5 Phases of life and money — Youth, Education, Career, Family, Retirment. This allows us to adjust the actions by phase. * The spaces on the board represent actions that must be taken. ## Cards * The actions will be marked on cards, not on the board. This gives us two benefits: (1) Randomized gameplay for better engagement and repeat play; and (2) More space to explain the action, providing greater clarity without having to refer to the instructions.

Sketch on my ReMarkable tablet

## Next Steps The next step will be to design sample cards for the 6 Choices and Events. ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 4 There is much to cover in this update so I recorded a video to show the storyboards I've been working on and the thinking behind them. If you need to catch up on the Parts 1,2,3, find them here.

Watch Full Screen

### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 5 Lots of progress being made now. Watch this video to see where we've landed for the gameplay and components. If you need to catch up on Parts 1,2,3,4 find them here.

Watch Full Screen

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 6 Very little progress made since my last post. So why post this instead of waiting until I have progress to share? ## Because this is part of the design process. Sometimes we make a lot of progress and sometimes we don't. We all have competing priorities in our work and life. Slowing down is not a bad thing when it comes to design. Because it allows us to return to our creation with fresh eyes. And bring new ideas to it. One reason I have not made much progress on this new game is because I was working on finishing two other board games and a software simulation. An interesting thing I have learned about designing new products is just as you feel like you are getting close to finishing, a lot of new tasks seem to appear. So you end up spending more time at the end than you expected. But it's all good because some of the thinking I had to do for those other games may find its way to enhance this new game. And, any problems I had to solve with other games are problems I no longer have to solve with this new game. ## What's Next? The gameplay is far enough along that my next step is to do some testing, so I printed these sheets and cards. The sheets represent the gameboard and list each of the main spaces. Very rough, as you can see, but that's all we need to do some quick testing to see how it flows. Stay tuned for the results in my next update.

## Catch Up To catch up on Parts 1,2,3,4,5 — [find them here.](https://books.playgoventure.com/3/newsletter) ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 7 Watch this video to discover the results of the first paper prototype. If you need to catch up on Parts 1 to 6, find them here.

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# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 8 Big step forward since my last update. Here is what I accomplished: * I have a draft design of the main gameboard. * I further simplified some of the game mechanics. * I wrote the instructions — and achieved my objective of making them "read as you play". Need to catch up with Parts 1 to 7 — find them here. ## Gameboard Path Here is the latest design. * It uses a snake path and I horizontally aligned the blue phases of life. * Many of the spaces are repeated multiple times, so to save space and make the gameboard less cluttered, I'm using a legend on the left side of the board that has icons and text descriptions. This saves me from having to repeat the text on every space. Whether this is a good gameplay decision or not remains to be seen. * Some of the spaces have text that identifies some special action that needs to be taken at that time.

Here are the previous iterations that I tried.

## Full Gameboard Here is the full gameboard with all of the main components. * I used to have a board with containers for tracking Health, Job, and Education XP. I simplified this by combining Education and Job XP into one metric named Skill. The premise here is that education and on-the-job experience both contribute to increasing your skill, which in turns provides you with career advancement. This saves us from having to struggle with explaining what education means — is it a diploma, degree, apprenticeship, personal learning, etc. — it could be a mix of all of these things and there is no value in getting stuck in the weeds with this for a board game. * As a container for Skill I'm now having players place their tokens on top of the INCOME (job) card. * I now have containers for the INCOME cards and NUTRITION & HOUSING cards, whereas before they were to be placed loosely near the gameboard. (In earlier versions I had exlored the idea of placing the cards in stands). With the simplified gameboard, I have more space to work with and since these cards have tokens on them, providing containers makes sense. * I eliminated the HEALTH container as we will now have players immediately assign their health points (tokens) to one of the other containers — Lifestyle, Relationships, or Skill. Previously, they could save up their HEALTH points (tokens) and apply them in the future. * I simplified the SAVINGS board by removing the BANK container since holding money in the bank is similar to holding it in a low risk investment, so now we have 3 continers instead of 4 for SAVINGS. I also stacked the containers from low to high risk. * The one LOANS container is now three containers where each container designates a specific amount of loan principal — $10,000, $50,000, $100,000. This allows players to take out larger loans without having to track far too many tokens. I may replace this with different sized tokens, to be determined. * We have to find a spot on the gameboard for the EVENT cards since they are drawn frequently. All other decks can be set aside until they are needed. * Players will hold a few cards — Character card (which has their goals), Life Partner and Children cards, and any SHOP items they buy, including commute options like an automobile.

## Instructions * In order to properly test the game, I felt I had to write out the instructions. It took me several hours, but mission accomplished. * As I noted in previous updates, the more depth a game has, typically the more rules and instructions that are needed. This makes it harder to start and play the game because players have to read a lot of text and remember a lot of rules. To minimize this problem, I wrote the instructions in a way that players only have to read a little bit and then immediately start playing. Then as the pawn lands on a space, they can read the instructions for that space. Once they have played each unique space once, they will have a good sense of how the game plays and will only need to refer to the instructions occasionally to clarify or remember a rule. * As a reminder, the current design has all players playing every turn. So the instructions have each player facilitating the actions on the turn. For example, when player A moves the pawn to the Event space, that player reads the instructions out loud for all players to hear and then draws the Event card for all players to play. * The instructions are currently 6 pages, but that's full width text and no images, so when they are properly designed, they will likely be double that. This includes explanations of personal finance concepts so that players learn key terms and decision points as they read the instructions.

## Card Decks Here is a list of the card decks in the game. This is more than I typically would want in a game. But it's necessary in this game and I think I can make it manageable. * CHARACTER * HOUSING & NUTRITION * INCOME * ECONOMY * EVENT * SHOPPING * FAMILY ### Next Steps I have to design a few cards for each deck as this will allow me to actually play the game somewhat properly. I'm feeling good that I have all the main educational concepts captured well. What I don't yet know is how much work I need to do to make the gameplay engaging. ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 9 Since my last update, I did a quick playtest using the components I shared previously. The test went well and it helped me identify a few important changes which I describe below. Catch up by reviewing Parts 1 to 8. ## Playtest? I should note that these early playtests are very controlled. With the game components being very rough and the rules not fully defined, it's not useful to just have a bunch of people try to play the game on their own or with some guidance. They would not be able to get far enough to provide meaningful feedback. Instead, I play the game with one or two other people to directly experience the gameplay in its roughest form. I watch the other player(s) and ask very specific questions along the way to get a sense of how they feel about a particular idea or concept. It's not so much playtesting the game as it is playtesting specific concepts, actions, or mechanics. More conversation than playing. I expect things not to work at this stage ... but when something doesn't work, the key is to determine if it's not working because of the reason I think — or is it something I did not think about. This can be difficult to explain in text, so I'll move on. ### Observations & Changes Made **(1) The read-the-rules-as-you-go concept seems to be working.** But, I need to space out the actions so that you learn one new action then do a familiar action (that you already know how to do) before doing another new action. So it looks like this: NewAction, Familiar Action, NewAction, Familiar Action, etc. This allows the game to move along faster and not get players bogged down learning something new each time the pawn is moved forward. Here's what the start of the game now looks like —

**(2) Moved some actions (spaces) later in the game.** Some actions work better to appear later in the gameplay so I moved those spaces further on the gameboard. Examples are Investing, Loans, and Taxes. This also provides better spacing for players learning new concepts. **(3) DEBT — new space on gameboard.** The SAVINGS space combined Debt and Investing but that seemed to be too much for one space, so I now have a separate space on the gameboard for Debt. Debt is an important personal finance concept and we want players to keep it top of mind.

**(4) Combined COMMUTE and FREE TIME into the one FREE TIME space.** This has a couple of benefits — saves us from having to track players Walking status at the start of the game and removes the uncertainty I had about maybe needing a COMMUTE Deck (with automobiles, etc.) — those are now in the SHOPPING Deck.

**(5) New Scoring Method.** Previously, HAPPINESS POINTS were to be awarded based on achieving certain thresholds for MONEY, LIFESTYLE, and RELATIONSHIPS. This method was useful in that it required players to properly align their goals to earn points. But it was more complex to manage and increased the likelihood that players would score the same. So now HAPPINESS POINTS are just a total of all the points earned for MONEY, LIFESTYLE, and RELATIONSHIPS. This simplifies things.

**(6) No need for a ME Character card.** With the new scoring method, there is no need for a ME card where players define their own custom goals. Choosing to play as a Character should be enough.

### Next Steps I have to implement the changes above and do another playtest. This also requires cards that are more refined in terms of their content. ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 10 Since my last update, I was working on some other projects, including taking a deep dive in real-time board game mechanics. This delayed my work on this Personal Finance Board Game, but I'm back at it and did another round of testing on my own with the latest version. The video below shows what the prototype looks like and how it plays. Catch up by reviewing Parts 1 to 9.

Watch Full Screen

### Next Steps Further refine the gameplay and start the graphic design process. ### Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 11 It's been many months since my last update. A couple of reasons: - I’ve been working on multiple games and projects at the same time. - The tariff rollercoaster of uncertainty has made me reluctant to rush into manufacturing a new physical product. In any event, we continue to move forward — no stopping now! Catch up by reviewing [Parts 1 to10](https://books.playgoventure.com/3/newsletter). ## Here's where we are now I completed a draft of the gameplay and rules and we have started creating design drafts. This is the part I enjoy the most. Why? Three reasons: 1. It makes the game feel real. 1. Designing the gameplay is constant problem-solving and that's hard work. As I've shared before, it's particularly difficult when desiging to achieve an educational objective. 1. Someone else does the heavy lifting — our graphic designer. ## Design Samples Below are early design samples that we use to start the process and help with: - Choosing a visual style — including illustration style, colors, fonts, etc. - Making sure all the content is laid out well so it's easy to read and fits in the available space on each component. ![image (17).jpg](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/image-17-n8KXU6.jpg) ![image (18).jpg](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/image-18-TrjOC7.jpg) ![PFBG-BOARD-Proof1-20250901 small.jpg](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/pfbg-board-proof1-20250901-small-eYzf3q.jpg) Character illustration styles. ![image (19).jpg](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/image-19-8oYL9N.jpg) Rough card layout options to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. ![image (20).png](https://books.playgoventure.com/u/image-20-B6jHMG.png) ## Next Steps Our next step is to continue to iterate on this process until we are happy with the result. How many iterations? As many as it takes. ## Share Your Thoughts Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.

# Help Me Design a Board Game — Part 12 It's been 5 months since my last update but we have continued to make progress. Part 1 of this series started way back in August 2024, so it's looking like this is going to be a 2-year project from start to launch. Catch up by reviewing **Parts 1 to 11 here**. **Here's where we are now** --------------------------- We have refined our design style and components. The style might be described as a modern, semi-realistic, comic book or graphic novel. We recently determined that including a black stroke (outline) aligns better with our preferred style, so previous work had to be updated. We applied the style to the gameboard and icons you see below. * The same action spaces are repeated several times as play progresses. They are all color-coded, which required several attempts at color selection. * To avoid having descriptive text on every space, or a separate legend to define each space, we only show the text on the first instance of a space. * We tried several backgrounds and are leaning towards a black and white treatment because the rest of the board is already very colorful. We are not sure if we will settle on the background shown below or not — more variations will be tested. * The product logo is a temporary placeholder.

We compared small details like the stroke (outline) on the icons — we chose the middle one.

We then applied that same stroke style to the scenes that appear on the game cards. In the image below, scenes on the left are too photorealistic. The scenes on the right have the black stroke added and they align better with our chosen style.

We tried different fonts to find ones that best align with our chosen style. And which have spacing that accommodates the amount of text we need to include. This a sample image we created to compare a specific font treatment.

We explored whether text titles should be all caps, small caps, or title case. We settled on small caps. And determined that we prefer the numbers matching the color of the card — green card, green numbers; blue card, blue numbers.

We finalized card layouts and how bonuses and rewards are displayed —

Here is the prototype from which we started working —

**Play Testing** ---------------- If you follow my updates, you may wonder why there hasn’t been more play testing earlier in the process. Play testing is typically very important in games designed for **entertainment**. Early play testing of the core gameplay can help assure the game will be fun — before much work is invested in components and graphics. And you can collect feedback on the theme. The reason is that we are designing an **educational** game. The theme was set from the beginning — personal finance. It’s the sole purpose for creating this game. And we are using a literal implementation for maximum realism, not a metaphor. That was never going to change. For the core gameplay, our imagination is bridled because we have to achieve specific learning outcomes in a short period of time. This is what makes designing educational games particularly challenging. In a game designed for entertainment, there are no limits on our imagination. If the game was designed for entertainment, we could have taken it in many directions — play testing would help identify the best path. But we don’t have that luxury. Very early in the process, careful consideration was given to the type of gameplay that would allow us to achieve our instructional objectives. More robust play testing has to happen later in the process when the full experience is available. This means we have to be confident in our gameplay design early on. Having years of educational game-design experience helps with this. **Next Steps** -------------- * Continue to refine and complete the visual design of all components. * Create and complete game content and refine through play testing. * Get the design files ready for press. **Share Your Thoughts In the Comments** --------------------------------------- Post comments in our Teaching Superhero Community Am I on track? Am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions? Should I keep posting about this game? PS: Please only share ideas if you are willing to allow me or anyone following this discussion to use them for free without any obligation. If you contribute an idea that has a significant influence on the design of my game, I will be pleased to gift you a copy of the game.