Best Practices in Games and Simulations
William Horton, Consultant, William Horton Consulting

Learning games and simulations can seduce reluctant learners, add context and realism to abstract subjects, and teach higher-level skills.

If you need to teach rote procedures or simple information, you do not need learning games or simulations. But if you need to teach people how to deal with complex situations, apply heuristics, or develop productive work habits, this workshop is for you. You will:

• Learn when to use games and simulations. We will talk about the difference between games and simulations, how can they accomplish learning objectives, and where they are appropriate.


• See a variety of learning games and simulations. We will look at examples of a wide range of educational games and simulations, such as software simulations, quiz-show games, puzzles, environmental simulations, interpersonal simulations, and mathematical simulations. And you will decide where each type fits into your educational plans.


• Learn to tell good from bad simulations. We will answer such questions such as, “Is a 10-minute screen capture of someone performing a procedure an adequate simulation?” “Do effective simulations require lengthy development and expensive media?” “How “realistic” do simulations need to be?”


• Build a game. In this workshop activity, you will build a game to accomplish a simple learning objective. You can use templates we provide or your own tools and templates.

Quick Instructional Design
Katherine (Kit) Horton, Consultant, William Horton Consulting

Traditional instructional design is too slow, expensive, and cumbersome for today's projects, budgets, and deadlines. As a result, many instructional developers skip this vital design phase. In addition, much instructional content, especially e-learning, must be developed by subject matter experts and instructors without formal instructional design skills. Even experienced instructional designers have little experience developing reusable learning objects.

In this workshop we will look at a simple, flexible procedure for developing learning programs. This easy-to-understand procedure can reduce the size of projects 50 to 90% while better accomplishing instructional objectives.

• To design instruction to meet enterprise goals.
• To identify specific learning objectives.
• To select learning activities to meet objectives.
• To create necessary assessments.
• To teach just what matters.

Teaching in the Virtual Classroom
Katherine (Kit) Horton, Consultant, William Horton Consulting

How do I design and deliver instructor-led e-learning? What forms of collaborative learning activities work? How do I design brainstorming sessions, role-playing activities, team-design activities, polling questions, and discussion activities? Which activities should be synchronous and which asynchronous?

In this workshop, you will see the world’s worst example of virtual classroom training and collaborate to make it among the best. Learn how to:

• Replace boring bullet lists with engaging interactivity.
• Make occasional and amateur presenters effective online teachers.
• Prevent 99% of the problems that affect online meetings.

You will get tips from an the co-author of E-learning Tools and Technologies on how to plan, prepare and deliver effective training in the virtual classroom. And, you will see several popular virtual classroom tools demonstrated live.