I-Corps: A New Approach to Discovery and Learning in Management Education

University Of Texas At Dallas, Richardson TX

Investigators

Abstract

The continual success of an individual in today's global economy depends on the adequacy of knowledge and skills learned during both academic and professional experience. Although technological enhancements vault businesses forward ever faster, similar use of technology in higher education has been slow to keep pace with business environment. Lecture-based learning and the case-method are still the dominant forms of instruction in the world's leading institutions. To adequately meet the needs of an innovative economy, students and professors need to harness the power of interactive-learning with technology to drive engagement, discovery, and knowledge retention. Gaming presents a unique approach to facilitating a new type of interaction among students if focused on the right academic subjects. Gamification provides an environment for enhanced competition, accountability, discovery and instant feedback, which improve overall learning outcomes above traditional lecture-based methods. The games will supplement current teaching methods across academic fields and benefit both knowledge seekers and knowledge providers. This team will develop a scientific approach for 'gamification' in higher education, and to facilitate the discovery of knowledge through action-based learning. The team will design and create games covering core skills taught in business schools, starting with core disciplines, such as Operations Management, Marketing, and Finance, and eventually expand into other academic fields. The design principles will closely follow the scientific approach used to design the Forecast Sharing Game (FSG) previously created by the team PI as a means to collect field data. This I-Corps team proposes to design a portfolio of games encompassing fundamental management concepts, while learning, researching, discovering, and documenting pedagogical scientific principles required to make such games effective learning tools. The team intends to accomplish this in three stages: individual game design and build, creation of a centralized technology platform, and development of a game publishing mechanism.