Simulation Modeling Software for eLearning

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Objective

With the support of the Russian government, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations started a project aimed at building a multifunctional situation center to increase the efficiency of educational processes by the means of real-time monitoring of economical and geopolitical information.

The online situation modeling system had to become one of the main components of the situation center. The purpose of this software was to simulate geopolitical events. This modeling system was to be used for educational purposes in order to create educational games about geopolitical issues.

Approach

Business Approach

The IBS company, a general contractor of this project, turned to BCS-IT for building the online situation modeling system to accomplish the following:

• model different situations that arise in international relations using actual economic and political information;
• create educational games for students based on the simulated geopolitical situations – each student (or group of students) playing the role of a country leader and making economic and political decisions;
• cut down the amount of preparation time for instructors though a system that saves game history (decision making history, discussion history, etc) and analyzes finished games.

The situation model is represented by a tree graph displaying all the possible variants of this situation development (all possible situation states and transitions between these states).

An example of a situation tree graph

The situation model has the following attributes used in educational games:

• a number of random and nonrandom events available in the situation;
• the list of mass media messages relevant to each situation state;
• the list of possible roles (countries) for a situation;
• preconfigured lists of resources available in a situation (such as oil, currency, electric energy, etc.) and its amount for each country;
• the list of possible discussions between different roles (including the complicated processes of the resources exchange).

Once prepared, each situation model can serve as a base for an unlimited number of educational games (i.e. an unbounded set of game situations can be created). The initial state of a model is unique, however a set of further situation states is unbounded. During a game it’s impossible to return back from the current state to any previous one. Each state determines a set of events. Each event determines a set of mass media messages. Thus a participant of a game can track its development basing on a set of available mass media messages.

The system is integrated with 3rd party database of real life mass media messages (http://www.mlg.ru).

Game situations can be configured, started, paused, resumed and finished. Each finished game is saved in the archives for further analysis (users have possibility to analyze mass media messages, game participants discussions, “resources” exchange between game participants, etc.) and used for training students.

The internet-based situation modeling system developed by the BCS-IT team has an easy-to-use graphic user interface.

Technical Approach

The situation modeling system is implemented as an Internet-based application. Functionality of its graphic user interface is enforced with AJAX and Adobe Flex technologies.

Rich graphic user interface lets a user even create a new situation tree graph.

Integration with 3-rd party software is implemented through web-services (SOAP).

Results Client Received

The BCS- IT client was provided with an innovative e-learning tool. This situation modeling software was built with modern web-technologies, and is currently used in almost all faculties to raise the level of education.

With this new educational tool the students acquire decision making skills by analyzing both hypothetical and real world situations.

Project information

• Technologies: Java 1.5, J2EE, Spring framework; Web Services (SOAP), IBatis ORM, IBM Websphere Community Edition, MS SQL 2005, AJAX, Adobe Flex
• Project duration: 6 months
• Project team: project manager, architect, developers (3), test-designer, testers (2)

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