In today’s world, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (otherwise known by its abbreviation VUCA) are undeniably ubiquitous and prevalent in the business world. Essentially, VUCA refers to the constant and often unpredictable changes and shifts that’s now typical in certain industries and aspects of the real-world business environment.
The Importance of Soft Skills in a VUCA World
To prepare graduating students against this VUCA in the business environment, the traditional and outdated learning methods towards management and leadership lacks effectiveness.
Not just possessing content and theoretical knowledge, it is now crucial for students and would-be employees to develop and be equipped with soft skills to achieve career success in the workplace. The ability to adapt and be flexible with new situations grows increasingly relevant and vital, particularly to combat the VUCA in the work environment.
With such conditions and challenges, this places greater emphasis on experiential learning to facilitate and push for integrated development within students, and one fruitful way to do so is through employing business simulation and gamification education, such as MonsoonSIM’s platform, into one’s curriculum.
Experiential Learning: A Solution for Integrated Development
The experiential learning process distinguishes itself from the usual, typical classroom learning, where it’s often a one-way knowledge transfer from teachers to the students. Experiential learning seeks to improve the quality of teaching and learning, even within the confines of the classroom, through encouraging self-directed learners to play a more active role in their engaging learning process. Students won’t just absorb theoretical knowledge, but also be able to practice and apply the learnt business concepts, understand the consequences of their entrepreneurial decisions in a real-world-based simulated business environment, and ultimately, conduct self-reflection and initiate personal improvement and development.
Based from a World Economic Forum report, “The Future of Jobs” (WEF, 2018), ten skills have been presented as vital to thrive in the workplace, namely creativity, complex problem solving, critical thinking, coordination, negotiation, judgement and decision making, as well as cognitive flexibility. What’s glaringly apparent in these ten stated skills is the emphasis on how to better equip the workforce to deal with a growingly VUCA business environment.
At the same time, most common teaching models and pedagogies are not geared towards cultivating and developing the ten aforementioned traits. In fact, more often than not, education systems stamp down on the VUCA exposed to students and learners, directing them instead under “static, idealized and theoretical conditions”.
Whilst it’s true that during the early stages of education, where more focus on demonstrating theoretical frameworks and understanding of theories and concepts are needed to build a strong knowledge foundation within students, the same cannot be said for higher education. Given that students in higher education are expected to be more mature and in tune with the realities of the real-world working environment, it would be more beneficial and conducive to simulate a VUCA environment and develop the students’ adaptability skills.
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) in Practice
Experiential learning can be summed up in Kolb’s ELT cycle, which highlights learning by doing, experimenting, interacting and exploring, where students apply the knowledge and concepts learnt in class towards real-life situations and issues. The immersive and engaging experiential learning process focuses on experience and our own self-reflection over it, through four areas: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimenting.
As opposed to the more common and direct teaching approach, the experiential learning process places students in the role of active experimenters that discover knowledge on their own volition and intuition instead of passively listening to instructions. Furthermore, students develop the ability to sort through and test out their learnt business concepts and theoretical knowledge through reflective observation instead of simply following inherent biases. Additionally, students are given the opportunity to revisit prior concepts and challenge their assumptions, as compared to a one-way learning method. The experiential learning process exposes students to the innerworkings of the simulated business environment and its dynamic operations, allowing students to learn from observation and not just absorb second-hand information.
Enhancing Learning Through Active Participation
MonsoonSIM provides students with an integrated and holistic learning experience that brings further awareness and depth of the learning processes and external (environmental and structural) influences towards the typically static business concepts and theories.
As the unique experiential learning pedagogical platform for learning business concepts and applications, MonsoonSIM enables students to run their “virtual” companies and directly manage thirteen interconnected business departments, which support integrated development. Learners will be able to demonstrate higher engagement towards learning and educational interaction with their peers and heightened ability to apply business concepts to business problems with a critical entrepreneurial mind and sharp decision-making skills.
Supporting students in a way where there’s more to learn, easier to learn, MonsoonSIM ensures that students are able to make the most of their experiential learning journey and facilitate their integrated development to face a VUCA work environment!