OSP Con 1 Review
From OSPDocs
September 24th to September 26th nineteen participants and several facilitators met at the USIP to help move written simulation materials into the USIP OSP and to become more familiar with the tool.
Contents |
The Most Important Stuff - Our Community
Many new friendships were formed, many things were shared, great learning occurred, and we got a tremendous amount of work accomplished. While there was some room for improvement, participants were universally pleased with the event and happy for having attended it.
Events
Below is a break down of some of the more important events and comments that we received.
Solo Simulation
Participants worked through a solo simulation meant to introduce them to the player's and facilitator's perspectives. This was found to be insufficient. For our next event it was recommended by many people that we begin the event with a multi-player simulation.
Sim Authoring Tutorial
Participants worked through a tutorial on simulation authoring. This was found to be useful, but also lacking. Advanced tutorials need to be completed to allow exposure to the more advanced concepts such as injects, announcements and timelines.
We play tested a simulation made on the spot. The simulation was on 'The Prisoner's Dilemma' and was written by Tarek Maasarani at the OSP Con. Play testing revealed a few issues but they were quickly fixed.
Simulations Worked On
A dozen simulations were worked on. A list of these is here: USIP OSP Simulations in Development
The process for developing them was as follows: The simulation text was copied out of the original simulation text and placed into a spreadsheet. This helped stage the data for final entry into the USIP OSP. The data was then entered into the USIP OSP.
Circles
The work week-end was broken up by circles to answer questions, and a bit of yoga and the activity known as "Whaaaaa!"
Comments
Below are some comments from the Event, especially comments that were repeated by many.
Bug Wall
We received the following in the form of post-it notes posted on our bug wall.
- 16 questions
- 69 bugs
- 61 suggestions
We are in the process of moving these up to our 'issues' site and getting them in the pipeline to be addressed.
Our Vocabulary We are going to discuss these more in our user's group. People seemed unanimously agreed that 'tab' is a better word than section.
Other words (and there counter proposals) are shown below:
- Inject / Event
- Object / Tool / Prop / Element
Other Topics The following questions will be raised to the User's group and the answers recorded on our wiki:
- Where to get Images to use?
- What good books are there on simulation design?
Preparing For OSP Con 2011 (OSP Con 2)
- There was strong agreement that the Con should start off with the participants playing in a finished simulation.
- In the future we should clarify that by 'authoring' we meant putting data into the OSP.
- We should clarify that no special technical knowledge is required for authoring simulations.
Next Steps
Finishing Our Work The group discussed taking the sims we worked on and playtesting them over the Internet. No one wanted to see the work they had done go to waste, and several people indicated a desire to keep working on the sims even after the event.
Preparing the Simulations for the Wide World Some of the historical simulations developed depart from reality in significant ways. This was done for teaching purposes. So far the
- A Disclaimer is put on the front of each simulation that it is for teaching purposes and may not reflect historical realities.
- A list of significant changes is provided with each simulation to prevent students learning falsehoods.
The Need for a Guide It was discussed at several points during the conference the need for a guide that discusses how and when to use these kinds of simulations in the classroom.
- The manual for a good simulation should highlight that 2 kinds of expertise are needed, subject material and facilitation.
- The manual should highlight what can't be done online.File:Example.jpg
