A case study and method development research of online simulation gaming to enhance youth care knowlegde exchange. Youth care professionals affirm that the application used has enough relevance as an additional tool for knowledge construction about complex cases. They state that the usability of the application is suitable, however some remarks are given to adapt the virtual environment to the special needs of youth care knowledge exchange. The method of online simulation gaming appears to be useful to improve network competences and to explore the hidden professional capacities of the participant as to the construction of situational cognition, discourse participation and the accountability of intervention choices.
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When it comes to hard to solve problems, the significance of situational knowledge construction and network coordination must not be underrated. Professional deliberation is directed toward understanding, acting and analysis. We need smart and flexible ways to direct systems information from practice to network reflection, and to guide results from network consultation to practice. This article presents a case study proposal, as follow-up to a recent dissertation about online simulation gaming for youth care network exchange (Van Haaster, 2014).
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A building block approach to simulation uses modules that are easily reusable and therefore speed up the simulation process. The authors assume that this approach can enhance complex decision making between stakeholders on infrastructure planning and design. The authors combined insights from process management and a simulation building block approach into an experimental interactive decision-making procedure and developed a simulation building block tool. The authors tested the procedure and the tool in the game CONTAINERS ADRIFT. Evaluation results indicate that the simulation tool is fast and easy to work with and that the combination of simulation building blocks and process management contributes to the quality and process of negotiation and generates mutual understanding.
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Hoofdstuk in Frontiers in Gaming Simulation. Design thinking, design methodology and design science gain much attention in the domain of gaming and simulation and their theories offer parallels to knowledge exchange in youth care services. Design science research covers context independent engineering and constructionist creativity in pursuit of general values and is built on the synthesis of what already exits and of what might be. Design thinking and design methodology address questions that show similarities to youth care problem solving and future scenario development. The core business of youth care workers is to support positive change and to develop beneficial opportunities for child-rearing. Effective knowledge exchange in networks is the key to successful intervention and simulation gaming might help to study its processes and outcomes, however, we need appropriate validation tools and methods. The author argues that the design and analytical sciences complement each other in research of network exchange. Analytical approaches might develop and test theories about knowledge acquisition and transfer, while design approaches could enhance the exchange of situational, interactional, and interventional expertise. This proposition is explored in a multiple case study in which an analysis tool has been used to structure and study knowledge exchange in youth care networks through simulation gaming.
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In this paper, the authors explore the possible contribution of serious games for advanced academic and/or professional learning in particular to support the decision-making andmanagement of complex infrastructures, such as utilities, ports and wind farms. The developments of the computer industry make it more attractive to add computer technology into simulation games to make the results of the game more realistic and so achieve more learning with the participants. In the future this will be more important to make the games still attractive for the players, because they are grown up with computers, e-learning and online communication. An example of a case study of SIM Maas, a simulation game about the development of the Port of Rotterdam (PoR), will be given. This case illustrates the use of computer-based simulation-games for professional learning.
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Background: Revealing tacit knowledge often is seen as very valuable for organizations, although it is usually challenging to enunciate and share this type of knowledge. Methods: This study uses a participatory design and the application of a board gaming simulation as instruments to extract tacit knowledge. To illustrate this application, the gaming simulation is played with entrepreneurs from horticulture. Horticulture represents a complex social system where tacit knowledge plays a major role in the trade process. A participatory design process is used to explore whether the design and play of gaming simulations enable participants to explicate their tacit knowledge. Participants’ participation in designing the gaming simulation explicated that reconstructing reality was a prerequisite for their commitment. Results: The results from playing simulation sessions show that participants were able to: (1) narrow down the anecdotic behaviour to a few factors; (2) to structure these factors; (3) explore how these factors relate to trade barriers and (4) to explain which tactics are applied to foster trade. Conclusion: The educational value of this study is that it helped entrepreneurs in understanding complex real-life situations.
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The real-time simulation of human crowds has many applications. In a typical crowd simulation, each person ('agent') in the crowd moves towards a goal while adhering to local constraints. Many algorithms exist for specific local ‘steering’ tasks such as collision avoidance or group behavior. However, these do not easily extend to completely new types of behavior, such as circling around another agent or hiding behind an obstacle. They also tend to focus purely on an agent's velocity without explicitly controlling its orientation. This paper presents a novel sketch-based method for modelling and simulating many steering behaviors for agents in a crowd. Central to this is the concept of an interaction field (IF): a vector field that describes the velocities or orientations that agents should use around a given ‘source’ agent or obstacle. An IF can also change dynamically according to parameters, such as the walking speed of the source agent. IFs can be easily combined with other aspects of crowd simulation, such as collision avoidance. Using an implementation of IFs in a real-time crowd simulation framework, we demonstrate the capabilities of IFs in various scenarios. This includes game-like scenarios where the crowd responds to a user-controlled avatar. We also present an interactive tool that computes an IF based on input sketches. This IF editor lets users intuitively and quickly design new types of behavior, without the need for programming extra behavioral rules. We thoroughly evaluate the efficacy of the IF editor through a user study, which demonstrates that our method enables non-expert users to easily enrich any agent-based crowd simulation with new agent interactions.
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While educators teach their students about decision making in complex environments, managers have to deal with the complexity of large projects on a daily basis. To make better decisions it is assumed, that the latter would benefit from better understanding of complex phenomena, as do students as the professionals of the future. The goal of this article is to evaluate the relevance of the use of simulation games for learning about the complexity of large-scale socio-technical projects. Relevant concepts from complex adaptive systems will be introduced or described. The conjecture is that complex adaptive systems can be simulated by games, in which players are able to experience the system workings, and retrieve more insight in their complex behaviour as a result. The multiplayer computer game SimPort-MV2 illustrates this by simulating the decision making process revolving around Maasvlakte 2 (MV2), an extension of the Port of Rotterdam into the North Sea. The game has been played by hundreds of students of higher education. Based on this study, we present preliminary indications of learning and conclusions on how simulation games can provide insights in a complex adaptive system and be used to educate both students and professionals.
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From the article: "Project execution in the construction industry faces major challenges, e.g. difficulty in coordination and cooperation. Operational procurement during project execution is no exception. In this paper we construct a maturity model, based on earlier work, consisting of six dimensions (goal, control, process, organization, information, technology) and five maturity stages (transactional-oriented, commercial-oriented, coordination, internal-optimized, external-optimized). The model can be used to determine the level of procurement maturity for each of the dimensions, and for the determination of a strategy for growth in the construction industry. With input from a major construction firm in the Netherlands, through simulating tooling, the model is evaluated for its contribution to growth in operational excellence. Results of the simulation show support for a relation between maturity growth and increased operational excellence." Recommended Citation Xing, Xiaochun; Versendaal, Johan; van den Akker, Marjan; and De Bevere, Bastiaan, "Maturity of Operational Procurement in the Construction Industry: A Business/IT-Alignment Perspective" (2011). BLED 2011 Proceedings. Paper 22. http://aisel.aisnet.org/bled2011/22 Affiliation: Xing Xiaochun - Swets Information Services, Netherlands; Johan Versendaal - Utrecht University, Netherlands; HU University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands; Marjan van den Akker - Utrecht University, Netherlands; Bastiaan De Bevere - Ballast Nedam, Netherlands.
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Standard mass-production is a well-known manufacturing concept. To make small quantities or even single items of a product according to user specifications at an affordable price, alternative agile production paradigms should be investigated and developed. The system presented in this paper is based on a grid of cheap reconfigurable production units, called equiplets. A grid of these equiplets is capable to produce a variety of different products in parallel at an affordable price. The underlying agent-based software for this system is responsible for the agile manufacturing. An important aspect of this type of manufacturing is the transport of the products along the available equiplets. This transport of the products from equiplet to equiplet is quite different from standard production. Every product can have its own unique path along the equiplets. In this paper several topologies are discussed and investigated. Also, the planning and scheduling in relation to the transport constraints is subject of this study. Some possibilities of realization are discussed and simulations are used to generate results with the focus on efficiency and usability for different topologies and layouts of the grid and its internal transport system.
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