Interactive learning through gaming simulation

Prof Christo Venter

Lecturers in the Department of Civil Engineering and the Department of Town and Regional Planning have initiated a unique approach to the teaching of integrated land-use transportation planning at an undergraduate level through the use of gaming simulation.

Preliminary research in the field of interactive teaching and learning revealed that simulation-based approaches particularly benefit students who prefer visual and active learning. The lecturers therefore developed a computer game – UPTown – as a bespoke application that integrates commercial software with a locally developed interface to simulate the development of a hypothetical town over a 30-year timeframe. Students take on the specific roles of either a public sector planner or a private sector real estate developer during the game. This allows them to explore the problems of conflicting objectives and to discover the value of cooperative planning in the land use and transport development process.

The game was designed specifically to help students explore the linkages between infrastructure investment, land development, and city efficiency and equity outcomes by guiding the spatial and economic development of a hypothetical city over time. Its innovation lies in the way it asks students to simulate the decisions of both public sector planners and profit-seeking developers, and the interactions between them. This allows them to discover the value of collaboration and integration, not only across professional disciplines, but also between the public and private sectors.

The students who take on the role of planners are forced to consider land-use development and transport demand, and are encouraged to start the game by developing a spatial development strategy for managing the growth of the town for the coming decade to ensure the coordination of zoning and investment decisions. The developers, on the other hand, have the ultimate objective of maximising the profits to be derived from developing and selling or renting out building stock. The programme simulates land values and construction costs based on the size, type and location of new development, and then calculates the developers’ profits based on the floor space that is actually occupied.

It is precisely the linkage between public sector planning and private sector investment decisions that gives the game its collaborative nature. Neither the planners nor the developers can control each other’s actions. The actions of a third group of role players – private households and businesses – are not controlled directly by either group, but are simulated externally.

A key feature of the game is that it takes the performance of both planners and developers into account when determining the overall performance score for the town. Thus, each group benefits from the other group reaching its objectives.

The game is included in the curriculum of the final-year Infrastructure Planning course. This allows it to build on prior knowledge of technical topics, such as traffic engineering, engineering economics and numerical methods, while drawing on a more mature, complex understanding of societal issues.

The course is presented as a mixture of lectures, and discussion and practical sessions, with six contact hours a week spread over 13 weeks.

The classes, which are cotaught by lecturers from both the Department of Civil Engineering and the Department of Town and Regional Planning, introduce theoretical concepts and start to explore their implications for planning practice in South Africa. The in-depth exploration of issues is left for the practical sessions, which is where the simulation game plays an important role.

The assessment of the students’ performance reveals that the game

has significantly enhanced their mastery of the course content. Students who faced more complex and open-ended tasks, such as those of a planner, as opposed to those of a private sector developer, performed better, reaching higher levels of competence earlier on in the game. It appears that being forced to grapple with complexity and a larger action space leads to a better grasp of the material and an improved achievement of the learning outcomes.

The lecturers have found that the game’s insistence on cooperation as a mode of interaction between private and public sector actors is particularly useful as a learning strategy.

This is also a key innovation over existing urban simulation software as it allows the students to experience the benefits of collaboration with those who have different objectives from their own. This is a key skill that is required in a multidisciplinary environment such as that in which graduate civil engineers will find themselves when they enter the world of work. In the process, they learn syncretic thinking, clear communication and compromise. The role-playing simulation approach allows students to explore experientially what it means to be a planner or a developer, thus preparing students for their eventual entry into a community of practice.

Computer-based simulation is considered to be a promising tool to enhance classroom instruction and to respond to the changing learning styles of contemporary students, including a greater preference for social and active learning methods. Similar initiatives can be emulated by educators who wish to develop new approaches to respond to contemporary students’ preferences for more active and social learning styles.