The existing literature on the application of serious (or educational) games in project management and decision-making tends to ignore the effect of project complexity levels on decision-making performance. This research fills this gap by conducting an experiment whereby two similar project management decision-making games with different complexity levels are applied in teaching students. Our findings suggest that these games can improve players' decision-making skills both in the less complex and in the more complex project scenarios. We also discover that the simulated project complexity levels do not affect players' decision-making performance improvement.
The purpose of this paper is to identify the principles governing successful project management serious (educational) game design and implementation by identifying lessons learned from implementing such games. This paper applied a triangulation method that qualitatively blends the perspectives of project management practitioners, game designers, and learners. The findings of this paper suggest principles of game realism, context, display, gameplay clarity, target audience, feedback, setting, debriefing, communication mode, and personalization. The main potential beneficiaries of this research include project management educators, trainers, students, training participants, and game designers. The study provides a comprehensive project management game design and implementation guideline that could help improve the quality of project management serious games. This paper is the first exploratory study to blend the perspectives of learners (students), serious game experts, and experienced project management practitioners in order to identify the key principles of delivering successful project management educational or serious games.
Purpose -This research aims to help project management game designers and educators in simulating complexity in project management games and in assessing the effect of simulated project complexity levels on students' learning experience. To achieve this aim, we attempt to design and evaluate two computer-based project crashing games with different complexity levels, namely Project Crashing Game (PCG) and Program Crashing Game (PgCG).Design/methodology/approach -A literature review is conducted to identify serious games design principles. These principles are then manifested in the design of PCG and PgCG. The latter is a more complex version of the first. Students' reaction after playing both games are then analyzed quantitatively.Findings -We discover that students' learning experience is affected by how complex the simulated project is. The more complex the project is (i.e. as in the PgCG), the more realistic the game is perceived. Nevertheless, we also discover that the less complex game (PCG) offers significant value to students, particularly to teach basic project management principles to those with minimum or no practical experience. This game is perceived as better in increasing students' learning confidence as its content is perceived as more relevant to their existing knowledge.Originality/value -We adopt a project complexity perspective when designing and evaluating the games.
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