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• An Overview for Teachers
• Exercise #1 - Preparing
• Exercise #2 - Planning
• Exercise #3 - Organizing
• Exercise #4 - Decision Making
• Exercise #5 - Controlling

All of us who teach or conduct research in the area of Management know the value of experiential exercises. Creativity and innovation are the hallmarks of business educators. Role plays, case studies, taped interviews are common in our classes. Nonetheless, most of us have seen that students and executive trainees very often master a skill when it is isolated in a focused exercise only to fall back on old habits as soon as the focus is on other things. Traditional paint-by-numbers simulations don't help much because they place overwhelming emphasis on data analysis and planning and completely ignore the problems of information gathering and post-analysis execution.

The Pillars virtual simulator is an ideal experiential learning tool for bringing together the principles and skills of Management into a single, integrated business experience. It is complex but not complicated. It emphasizes planning, organizing, control systems, leading, decision-making, and execution. The only real-time simulator on the market, Pillars avoids the download-upload-download herky-jerky problems of spreadsheet simulations that are so poorly suited for teaching Management skills.

Pillars is simple for the teacher to execute. You register the course on this web site, selecting the specific times (can be easily changed) you want the class to be in the simulator. This allows you to set the world spinning at any time you choose (usually during three or four consecutive class sessions of 50 to 75 minutes near the end of your course). Students log on to this web site (usually early in the course) and register for your particular competition. At registration, they each receive their own SOLO simulator that they use to practice on their own time, sharpening their mechanical skills against artificial intelligence trainers in preparation for your course competition. You too can download your own free SOLO.

In this section of the web site, you will find some student introductory materials and five Management exercises you can use as assignments during your course. These assignments assure that students are getting familiar with the simulator, reinforce the concepts you are teaching, and start students thinking about how they should use the knowledge and skills you are giving them in a competitive marketplace. The exercises are designed to fit easily into your course, no matter what text or other materials you are using.

During the course competition (conducted near the end of your course, either in the computer lab or in a wireless environment of your choosing), you can wander the room(s) and observe how well individuals and groups put into practice what they have learned in your course. To get the most out of the experience, the teams need to compete for three to four one hour sessions. When the competition is over, a "winner" is declared and financial statements are compared, the teacher should conduct a "debriefing" during which students share what they learned about applying Management knowledge and skills in the simulated setting.

The Pillars simulator can also be used as a research tool for the enterprising teacher or graduate student.

If you have not yet read the article on the role of tools like the Pillars simulator in the formation of the future business teaching, you will find it here.