Work, Costs and the Unexpected in the academic’s creation and use of Games and Simulations in Teaching and Learning

Experiential teaching and learning activities such as games and simulations are increasingly popular in management education. The research has evolved specific clusters of concerns, principally; correlates of performance, the effectiveness in management courses, and what they can possibly teach. However, O’Flynn (2021) states that “the teaching viewpoint has been widely neglected.” In management education research, costs, human or financial, of games or simulations, specifically towards the creator, the academic do not seem to be considered. Recent systematic reviews show the literature prioritising the effects of experiential learning, games or simulations and ‘future research’ guidance calling for more of the same. This leads to a simple research question “What are the actions, unexpected events, costs and risks in using experiential teaching and learning techniques, from the lived experience of academics?” This paper uses data from a British Academy of Management/Management Knowledge & Learning Division-funded project into the lived experience of management academics creating and using games and simulations. It presents an analysis of three cases that exemplify the categorisations created by this research to uncover costs, risks and emergent events that are generally unreported by the serious games and simulation literature.