eSims Project

Overview

CG8-771: "Building academic staff capacity for using eSimulations in professional education for experience transfer"

Digital simulations (eSimulations) for student learning of professional experience have been used at Deakin for awhile, with very successful results.

For example: interviewing business people to gather system requirements or interviewing a client to provide advice on setting up a company.

Sample eSims

Blue Cut Fashions - Business Analysis

Client View - Company Law

e-Simulations are capable of immersing learners in "authentic" e-learning environments, providing innovative and valid teaching and assessment that is seamlessly interwoven in the process of skill acquisition and experience transfer. For juniors, it is the engagement, enjoyment and rich interaction with virtual artifacts that stimulate their learning. For mature students and practitioners, it is the opportunity to be introduced to and rehearse skills essential for real world practice before they are placed in the actual professional context.

Emerging approaches to e-simulations have the potential to address various issues in regard to learning subtle or complex skills normally learnt from direct experience, as well as, the dissemination of good teaching practices easily adopted by academic staff.

Dissemination of eSimulations for sector-wide improvements to flexible learning has yet to be addressed.  This project addresses this, aligning educational, technical and evaluation strengths from the universities of Deakin, RMIT and Charles Sturt (CSU), to build academic and professional staff capacities for the “local” development and use of an already successful approach to simulating “professional experiences” for student learning.

Support for this project website has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.

The views expressed in the project do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.

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