Conference 2005

NASAGA 30th Annual Conference a Hit in Manchester, NH

This 30th annual conference of NASAGA (North American Simulation and Gaming Association), titled PLAY LEARN PERFORM took place October 5-8 at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire. Close to 100 participants took part in one to four days of innovative ways to improve performance by making learning fun.

NASAGA is the premiere association for experiential learning in the United States and Canada, promoting the research and use of simulations and games for a variety of educational purposes.

“The NASAGA conference was a great professional network for sharing ideas about games and simulations that can be useful for teaching,” says Brian Remer, past president of the Association. “It’s hard to name a career that doesn’t involved some teaching of others, whether it’s in a classroom, a meeting room or a board room, he explained. “Everyone who attended benefited from discovering ways to make their work more interactive and impactful.”

Each day opened with a keynote presentation by leaders in the field of games and simulations followed by concurrent sessions in both the morning and afternoon, with titles such as Designing Interactive Lectures, The Story Circle, Get a Clue: Teambuilding Treasure Hunts, Juggling and the Meaning of Life, and Harnessing Video Games for Education.

A first at this year’s conference was the NASAGA’s Game Design Certificate Program. Participants opting for this track attended the Pre-Conference session Faster, Cheaper, Better led by Sivasailam Thiagarajan and the Thiagi Group. Then participants attended at least five specially designated sessions during the conference, invented their own learning game, and participated in an end-of-conference wrap-up workshop. In addition, they will receive on-line follow up over the next few months. Twelve people completed the program and were honored with certificates at the conference awards ceremony.

Well attended evening sessions included a panel discussion of game developers titled “Perspectives on Interactive Learning” and also Simulations Night, where conferees participated in one of several simulations and had the opportunity to discuss possible applications to their work. A highlight for some was an add-on half day trip to The Browne Center at the nearby University of New Hampshire where they experienced first hand the center’s high and low challenge courses and innovative games for teambuilding.

Keynote presenter Dennis Meadows, President of the Laboratory for Interactive Learning and Emeritus Professor of Systems Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire, spoke on systems science and its application to futures planning and educational games. Through his remarks and a series of quick activities, Meadows pointed out that we usually find ourselves confronting either hard problems or easy problems. He noted that, “Systems thinking helps people either change their goal or change their direction,” in order to work on the hard problems.

Ron Roberts, of Action Centered Training and ACT Games in Pennsylvania delighted the audience with his humorous discussion of the use of games in accelerated learning. He made many observations from the learning experiences and lectures he has developed which combine fun and learning. Roberts has taught at Temple University Fox School of Business, Eastern College and Penn State University and holds numerous patents and trademarks on a series of games that are sold across the country.

The third keynote speaker was Clark Quinn, who shared his passion about using technology to improve the ability to think and learn in his session titled, Designing E-Learning Games: It’s the Process, Silly. Quinn has designed and programmed educational computer games for business, universities, and governments in California, Pennsylvania, and Australia and has applied cognitive science to thinking and learning processes, and developed a game for investigating analogical processes in thinking. He is also the author of Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games.

As a tip of the hat to NASAGA’s beginnings some 40 years ago when academics were contracted by the military to develop wartime simulations, the banquet featured a human-size version of the card game War, in which individuals took captives if their card was higher.

Dennis Meadows received the Ifill-Raynolds Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in systems thinking and the development of games and simulations for learning. Debi Bridle of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission received the Rising Star Award, given each year to a conference attendee showing great promise in the field. A silent auction brought in over $1800 for NASAGA’s scholarship fund and the New Hampshire Teen Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of youth leadership through experiential learning.

Next year the conference will be held in Vancouver, BC from October 11 – 14, 2006, at the Pacific Palisades Hotel.