The Training Room platform offers an environment where trainers can define there own on-line role playing scenarios and provide the opportunity for learners to apply factual knowledge and to gain experience through the digital world. Trainers can define new games or adopt and modify sample games without any programming skills. The platform provides a variety of communication means within the scenarios; players can communicate with the use of discussion forums, text and voice chat modules as well as through multi-user video conferencing. An important feature of this product is the collaborative learning design, which allows participants to exchange information as well as to produce ideas, simplify problems, and resolve the tasks. In this product, the teacher can be an active partner, moderator and advisor of the educational process, or take a passive role and just observe.
The teacher or instructor defines the overall game theme. Playing time can fluctuate from several days to many weeks and depends from the difficulty of the theme and basic skills of the students. Game flow and various stages of the game are presented to the players in the form of an introduction. In the game, basic stages can be distinguished as follows: role assignment, teamwork and team preparation and research time, general discussion, player feedback, and discussion of the game in the debriefing room. All rooms are presented in the form of a multi-user Flash based system allow for access from any computer with a internet connection and browser software.
In order to play a game, learners are assigned into or form several teams. Each learner can also select a particular role within a team which the can build upon and teams are able to communicate by entering the team rooms for discussions, text chat or audio/video. Each team has to create a strategy for the discussion. Each member of the team takes a subject that he/she is responsible for. Because each team has to discuss all proposed subjects, within the team each player is responsible for at least one subject. This player will discuss the defined subject in the Virtual Conference Room. Every player of the team has to participate actively in a discussion at least once i.e. at least for one subject. The trainer defines the duration of teamwork i.e. time necessary for preparation for the Virtual Conference, as well as the time allowed for each discussion.
During the teamwork phase, players develop a game strategy, collect and select valuable information and prepare for argumentation. Teams communicate and exchange information in the Team Space (Team Forum, Virtual Conference, Content Library, Player Profile). The speaker, i.e. team member responsible for the particular subject, posts a position statement on the subject and all relevant collected information into the Content Library of the Team Room. The Content Library caters for audio and video postings and well as URL bookmarking. When the search for information is completed, the team must to organize a Team common session. This session enables students to discuss all the problems of each subject and have all information for argumentation (for the case that any of the students will be unable to attend the General discussion). At the end of the team preparation time, teams have to present a final position statement within the game platform where they will outline their general standpoint.
The next phase of the game starts with allocation of the points. Each team has to decide which subjects are more important for them and where they want to allocate points and how many. Each team will allocate points to the three or more subjects depending on the scenario. This must be done within a specified time. All game time limits are displayed within the game status panel of the screen. During the game, the points allocated to the subjects can be seen by the players, but the players do not see the points allocation of other teams. The moderator has all the information about allocated points of all teams.
During the general discussion, all teams meet in a Virtual Conference Room to discuss subjects within a given time. Discussions can be moderated or freeform. The platform automatically includes a bad words filter and a player kick/ban facility for the moderator if needed. The aim of discussion is to reach a consensus on each subject or goal within the scenario. In a moderated scenario, the role of a moderator is to formalize the reached consensus and to support the constructive discussion. In a free form scenario, the moderator takes a passive role. The team that wins most points, ie: consensus is reached in the topics where their points were allocated, is a game winner. However, more than one team can win the game depending on how the scenario is structured. A win-win situation is permitted.
A general discussion is followed by detailed feedback from each player and debriefing is carried out within the team, and by the moderator in the Virtual Debriefing Room. Other team members provide feedback of each player’s performance. The debriefing should also provide some general feedback on issues like information gathering, discussion, argumentation, consensus and some theme related issues related to consensus that has been achieved. The moderator also receives logs of player participation, along with archived forums and content libraries if requested.
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