Tentative List of Shared Prospective Questions Emerging from the SimParc'07 Workshop (NEW !)

• Objective and motivation
  • What are the exact objectives (e.g., understanding, participation, enpowering, decision support...)? and how they are related/dependent (cause/consequence, impact, dependence..)?
  • Who is (are) exactly the target public?
  • What are the exact objectives from a pedagogical point of view? (We need a specialist of science of education !)
  • Motivations for a role playing game (why all this?!) and not just using other pedagogical methods, e.g., teaching courses? How to evaluate and compare the cost/benefit?
• Design of a role playing game
  • Balance between credibility and realism
  • Balance between ludic and pedagogy
  • Balance between only objective of the player just to win and pedagogical objective
  • Balance between a generic design and specific pertinence
• Evaluation
  • What criteria (how) to evaluate the players? perception, understanding, cooperation, facilitation (e.g., for others to cooperate)
  • How to measure the quality of the proposal? (individual and collective) (different viewpoints, environmental, social, economic, legal...)
  • Problem of the time scale for evaluation (mid term effects/impacts)
  • Importance of skills and profile of players (expert, novice, learning curve)
  • Use of questionnaires? how? when?
  • Should players be publicly ranked or provided with indicators to privately auto-evaluate?
• Structure of a role playing game
  • When to finalize a phase? based on observed process? based on time?
  • How to organize (or avoid?) multiple negociations taken place in parallel?
• Impact of computer support
  • How to relate and articulate various time scales of simulation (environmental, social, economical) plus the dynamics of the players?
  • Balance between computer experts who may take advantage and timid players who may feel more at ease
  • Balance between help and intrusion of assistant agents for players
  • What kind of help assistant agents should provide or not to players? (general information? auto-evaluation? avoid suggestions for making decisions?)
  • How to measure impact of introducing artificial players?

JPB, 22/11/07