I had an interesting discussion with my colleague Boyd Watkins recently – owner of Interel (an Action-learning devices company – see www.interel.com ). We were discussing terminology as we increasingly come together with our respective businesses – Boyd sees himself as a ‘challenge’ designer: the creation of challenges where individuals and groups can improve performance in teamwork, leadership and a range of other skills by interacting with engaging and intellectually stimulating ‘challenges’. He sees a distinction between this and the (US) ‘games’ industry which maintains a whole set of specific rules about what constitutes a ‘game’ and often includes a range of  ‘trivial’ props from rubber chickens to bean bags. I must admit I agree that the presentation of such props to a group of senior executives can pose a credibility problem for even the most confident and capable facilitator/trainer! Perhaps a more important distinction is that in ‘game’ play the tendency (much like early experiential learning in the UK) is to watch the participants play the game then debrief at the end – however in challenge or simulation ‘play’ we would advocate that the faciliator can intervene as coach if and when required to aid the learning process, and make best use of the most valuable commodity that a trainer has these days – quality attentive time from learners! The other conclusion that we came to is that RSVP Design is probably best described as a ’simulation’ designer in that all of our learning tools started life as very specific response to a client need, and we design our programmes and activities for clients with their very specific needs in mind, even if the ’simulation environment’ might look very different to real life.

However does all of this matter or is it just semantics? Games, challenges or simulations – what do trainers and faciliators look for when deciding to use learning tools?

Experiential Learning, learning challenges, Learning Games, Learning Mindset, simulations, Training Tools