Business games and simulations: Which factors play key roles in learning

The paper reports the results of an empirical study on the effects and impact of a specific business game, which is also a team competition, treated as an innovative teaching tool in learning. The paper starts by introducing business games and simulations as methods able to improve learning experiences and goes on by dealing with the specific business game simulation used for the aims of our research. Considering the most relevant empirical studies on business games and simulations, the following four factors were extracted in order to test their importance for learning: Decision-Making Experience (DME), Teamwork (T), Simulation Experience Satisfaction (SES), Learning Aims (LA). Each construct has been investigated by using a questionnaire administrated to 48 participants of the Stock Market Learning Simulation divided into 10 teams. Results show the importance of these factors in detecting critics aspectal of learning using a business game simulation