Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

22 – Computer-Based Resources for Learning
• Properties of physical objects such as a comet in its orbit
• Rules and strategies such as in war games, making
predictions about forest fire behaviour or avalanche
potential, or building a city
• Processes such as laws of supply and demand
• Procedures such as diagnosing illnesses
• Situations such as teaching instructors how to deal
with student behaviour and attitudes
Simulations are often used when real situation training is:
• Dangerous (e.g., nuclear power plant procedures and
police maneuvers)
• Expensive (e.g., landing a space shuttle)
• Unethical (e.g., when it is not appropriate to use humans)
• Not easily repeatable (e.g., avoiding a run on a bank)
• Unavailable (e.g., historical events such as the economics
of the Great Depression, how to respond in a
robbery, or operating a business)
• Not conducive to learning (e.g., when learning is difficult
because the learner must consider too many stimuli
at once, such as in the cockpit of a modern airplane)
• Affected by reality such as time (e.g., simulations can
provide genetic data about successive generations
immediately, where reality could take months or years)
• Inconvenient (e.g., experiencing Arctic survival, undersea,
and outer space conditions).
Figure 22.1. Drill and practice sample
Figure 22.2. Tutorial sample
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