Multidisciplinary Enjoyment and Learning in Simulation & Gaming

Simulation & Gaming (S&G): An International Journal of Theory, Practice and Research has served a community of scholars and researchers since 1970. The journal prides itself on being not only an international journal where authors contribute from around the world, but also for serving as a means to present work across multidisciplinary fields and academic disciplines. Very often, good things come from work in one field that are not discovered in another until some later date. The discovery may be the awareness of how reflection during and following a simulation/gaming experience may enhance learning or how proper instructional design practices can create better learning experiences. This all sounds so simple, but note the vast amount of literature in the past 8-10 years giving attention to the importance of the reflection process that includes debriefing. When I conducted a simple search on Google Scholar using the search terms reflection and learning, Google returned about 2,980,000 results. Debriefing as a search term brings back 177,000 results, with many of them stemming from the areas of psychology and the social sciences. Not long ago and still today, debriefing might have been used as a way to synthesize the learning experience or

help research participants make sense of deceptions that might have been used in the simulation or experiment (Brock & Becker, 1966). In a third search using this same search engine, Debriefing and healthcare as search terms brings in 41,200 results, which can be explained by the heavy expansion and additional interest in healthcare simulation in the past ten or so years. However, we can see that as we limit ourselves to looking at a simulation/gaming concept through one discipline, our search results lessen, giving us less literature to consider when looking for learning or research opportunities to improve our own work.

It is important for us to look at the seminal work of Jean Piaget, Kurt Lewin, Maria Montessori, Chris Argyris, John Dewey, Donald Schön, and so many others to explore and understand the basic foundations of individual and organizational learning that includes learning through the experience and a reflection process. Equally important, it is valuable to look at what researchers/practitioners are doing in other fields and disciplines to observe what worked well and not so much.

In this issue, the editors bring together a collection of recent articles that emphasize how growth, learning, and development, often coupled with some level of enjoyment and satisfaction can be used in simulation and gaming ( Figure 1 ).

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Figure 1.

Multidisciplinary enjoyment and learning in Simulation & Gaming.

Whether its board games, digital games, simulations, role play, older or younger participants, grade school or higher education students, or a number of other variables, our authors show us that the value of learning is often located in more than one field, discipline, or academic setting. Further, sometimes learning does not come from one source or venue of gaming/simulation, but instead, from many forms and techniques. My Simulation & Gaming co-editors and I believe it is for this reason that people turn to this journal as a source of ongoing learning to apply the many lessons-learned to their own work.

As editors, we are also continually improving our own practices. Visiting our website, one will notice that we have expanded our editorial team with some great names in simulation and gaming. These are not figureheads, but rather, valuable contributors and managers of our articles and special issues. With special thanks to our invaluable reviewers, whose performance we will recognize at the end of the year, we feel that we are on the path to continued success. In addition, our readers may have noticed with this issue (and the last issue as well), a section titled, Gaming Material Ready to Use (GMRU) can be found in the table of contents. These brief articles report on existing games and how they may be used in the learning process. While GMRU articles do not go through a peer review process, they do go through heavy scrutiny by our editorial team dedicated to ensuring that the GMRU article is not used as a means to advertise one’s commercial game. The editorial team also ensures that the GMRU has educational value that can be applied across disciplines.

Learning can be an enjoyable event in a number of ways. It is fulfilling and nurturing to the soul, especially when both learner and facilitator reach that ah-ha moment that changes practice. We look forward to bringing to publication even more articles that help us all to reach those moments.