Research shows that the quality of leadership is a critical factor affecting student achievement, teacher performance, and school culture, yet recent changes in educational policies and economics have often left school and district leaders more isolated and responsible for increasingly broad and complex roles and responsibilities. This has contributed to the growing frequency of leadership turnover, which is further complicated by the anticipated increases in retirements over the next several years. The loss of important, tacit knowledge that experienced leaders have gained in dealing with real-life challenges on the job poses a serious threat to educational quality and could have devastating effects on our schools. This session will focus on a simulation driven approach that we are taking to accelerate the development of new or less experienced principals and superintendent– and in particular, to help them acquire the complex set of contextual understandings and skills that they need to make challenging decisions in the face of uncertainty and time pressure.

1. K E N S P E R O
J U L Y , 2 0 1 4
Experience Design
Methodology and Simulation
for Professional Development
EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST
TEACHER

2. Today’s Session Outline
1. Why use Simulation
2. Play a Sim
3. Experience Design Methodology
4. QA

3. Why use Simulation?
Experiencing Best Practices Enables Critical Thinking
# 1

4. Tendency towards Mindlessness
Noel Burch - Gordon Training
International (Abraham Maslow)

5. Tendency towards Mindlessness
Noel Burch - Gordon Training
International (Abraham Maslow)
Really?!?

6. WHY USE SIMULATION?
Leaders and Faculty face
Extreme overlapping challenges
Today’s Job
Interview for
a New
Principal
# 2

7. Why use Simulation?
 We have far more data, evidence, and
computer models to make decisions
today, but that also means we have far
more information overload and
excessive choice proliferation. The
number and complexity of choices
seem to be growing beyond our
abilities to analyze, synthesize, and
make decisions. The acceleration of
change reduces the time from
recognition of the need to make a
decision to completion of all the steps
to make the right decision. … Many
of the world's decision making
processes are inefficient, slow,
and ill informed.1
1The Millennium Project, “15 Global Challenges. Facing Humanity,”
last modified 2009, http://www.millennium-
project.org/millennium/challeng.html.
# 3

8.  Assessment (Evaluation)
 What & How
Vs.
 Development (Resilience)
 Why & When
“Good judgment is the result of experience.
Good Experience is often the result of bad judgment.”
Why use Simulation?
# 4

9. “We are all about practicing all the time,
only deliberate practice leads to mastery.”
(Ferdi Serim, New Mexico)
Why use Simulation?
# 5

10. Play a Sim – Dress Code
 Play Simulation
 Debrief –
 What scenario did you find most compelling?
 Why?

11. Play a Sim – Other titles
 Faculty Bullying
 Angry Parent (Coaching accused of swearing at
kids)
 Switching Lesson Plan to Common Core

12. Experience Design:
Creating Experience
 Narrative flow – Power of Story Telling
 Choice Options – Encourage Critical Thinking
 Consequences – Make it Memorable
 Scorecard feedback – Make it realistic / measurable
 Narrative feedback – Repetition / memorable
 Small Group debriefings and opportunities to share /
expand the experience / consequences
 Large Group debriefings to establish additional connections
with larger initiative and/or subject matter

13. How does Simulation Provide Experience
to Improve Decision Making?

14. Why use
Simulation?
Experience
is the best
teacher
 Sims provide experience - emotional
engagement
 Sims expand the evocable experience base,
they become part of your experience
portfolio/“gut”
 Sims encourage a Systems Thinking approach
– Cause & Effect
 Sims consequate Mindlessness and
encourage Mindfulness
 Sims provides an opportunity for participants
to learn from failure, to Fail Forward
 Sims enable time acceleration to feel affects of
delay
 Sims provide a bridge between:
Engagement  Retention  Retrieval
 Sims leverage the power of Storytelling

15. Setting the Stage
Learning Continuum
Learning Continuum Revised
Instructional Design
Instructional Design
Narrative –
Experience Design

16. The Cynefin Framework
Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader's framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 69-76.
It explores the
relationship
between man,
experience, and
context and
proposes new
approaches to
communication,
decision-
making, policy-
making, and
knowledge
management in
complex social
environments.

22. Why use Simulations (Cont’d)?

23. Experience Design:
Authoring Simulations - Scorecards
 “As we sail thru life, don't avoid rough waters, sail on
because calm waters won't make a skillful sailor.”
(Annonymous)
 “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my
ship.” (Louisa May Alcott)

24. Experience Design:
Authoring Simulations - Scorecards
 Observable behaviors that demonstrate/manifest
the Learning Objectives
 Specific considerations/Effects that Tradeoff of
each other – Critical Thinking
 Affected Stakeholders – Ripple Effect (Double)
 Time
 Capturing flow on timeline
 Timing of consequences
 Time to make a decision

25. Experience Design:
Scorecards – Ripple Effect

26. Contact Info:
Ken Spero
humentum@gmail.com
• 25 years of experience with Simulation
• CEO, Ed Leadership Sims LLC
• Adjunct Faculty at Penn GSE –
Experience Design & Simulation Technology
(Penn CLO and MedEd)