Beyond replicating the classroom experience: Why online simulations work
People value in-person business simulations because they are practical. People are engaged. Decisions feel real. There’s energy in the room, there’s pressure from the clock, and even though it’s a simulation, there’s a sense that your actions matter. For many organizations, this combination makes simulation worth the time and expense.
Those qualities are no coincidence. They come from being together, simultaneously navigating uncertainty and reacting to outcomes we didn’t fully anticipate. Classrooms provide conditions that support learning without anyone explicitly designing them.
So if the question arises, can this be done online, it is often expensive. The concern isn’t really about technology. What matters is whether these practical qualities survive the transition. Will people still care? Do decisions still feel connected to outcomes? Will learning still stick? This is where the conversation often goes off the rails.
Description, results and feedback
In the classroom, explanations play an important role because they can be adjusted in real time. The facilitator explains things to the group as a whole or to individual teams based on what they see in the room. They notice confusion, engagement, hesitation, or momentum. This feedback ensures that explanations are given at the right time and in the right amount.
Online, these signals are less visible. Silence can mean understanding, distraction, or indifference. It becomes difficult to reconcile explanations as events unfold. This doesn’t make explanations any less important, but it makes it harder to rely on them as the main driver of learning.
It is the results that carry over well from the classroom setting to the online setting. One has to make a decision, watch and learn what happens, and then make the next decision in a slightly worse situation. Online environments can support this as well, as long as the results are built into the system rather than being provided by a facilitator.
As the explanation becomes less reliable, the design problem changes. The question ceases to be how to explain things better. It becomes a way to force the system to do more of the explanatory work.
Design matters more online
In the classroom, facilitators often fill in gaps without realizing it. They pause activities in the room, rephrase questions, and help teams get stuck. Online, the gap is easier to see. When the model is unclear, people get stuck. When feedback is delayed or feels vague, people disengage. The system must be clear in a way that the classroom does not have to be.
Online, repetition feels different. In the classroom, repeating similar decision-making cycles is effective because it feels like action. The team talks, debates, and reacts to each other, and even though the structure is the same, the energy in the room keeps things moving.
Online, repetition can feel flat. Without physical cues, side conversations, and shared urgency, repeated actions start to feel mechanical. What may seem active in person may seem busy on screen.
So moving simulation online is not about reducing the number of decisions per round. It’s about paying attention to how clearly people can understand what changes from one round to the next and why those changes are important. Diversity needs to come from results and context, not from asking people to do more.
Facilitation, Tone, and Engagement
Further online transitions include the role of facilitator. In the classroom, facilitators are often the center of activity. They set the pace, point out mistakes, direct attention, and decide when to move on. Much of the learning flows through that being.
Online, it’s harder to maintain that preference. Facilitators are still important, but they can’t be everywhere at once and can’t see what the system isn’t showing them. Providing the same level of real-time attention online requires many facilitators supporting many teams simultaneously. It quickly becomes costly and difficult to maintain.
This does not make facilitation any less valuable. It changes where that value is. When the system makes progress visible and results clear, facilitators can step back and focus on reflection rather than continuing the experience.
Tone is also important. A purely abstract or sterile interface can make online simulations feel distant, especially if people are working alone. A few quirky ideas can help lower those barriers and encourage engagement.
However, if it’s too outlandish, it’s distracting. When visual or story elements compete with the underlying model, attention is drawn away from the decision itself. The goal wasn’t entertainment, just enough texture to grab people’s attention without hiding the financial structure.
We paid equal attention to comparison tools such as leaderboards. When used lightly, it can help you understand patterns and results across your team. If used too often, attention will be diverted from logical thinking to ranking. The question is not whether they are motivated by competition. It’s about whether it helps people understand what’s going on.
Things revealed by going online
The transition to online has brought to the surface strengths that are hard to see in the classroom. Distance becomes unimportant. There will be no more travel. Schedule management becomes easier. These advantages are certainly there, but they are not the most interesting.
Online environments change the way people show up. Less visibility can reduce pressure, especially when it comes to economic topics. Just like in the classroom, some people are willing to try things, fail, and adjust when they don’t feel exposed.
Online simulation also allows you to flatten hierarchies. In the classroom, senior voices often carry more weight, even when it’s not intended. Online, decisions are more likely to be made individually or in small teams before being compared. This can reveal patterns and differences that are difficult to see when the debate is dominant.
Reproducibility is also a quiet strength. Online simulations are easy to run multiple times with small changes. People can view the same structure under different conditions without having to regroup in the same room. Learning moves from a single event to a series of encounters, and awareness grows over time.
What hasn’t changed is how the reflexes manifest themselves. In both classroom and online settings, teams made sense of the results by discussing what happened, questioning assumptions, comparing interpretations, and deciding what to do next. The medium has changed. The learning process was not.
In retrospect, the most useful outcome of building the online version was not deciding which format was better. I now have a clearer understanding of what the simulation itself has to do and what the environment has been quietly providing all along.
The goal is not to recreate the classroom online. It was about designing an experience that worked under online conditions. It relies more on structure, outcome, and repetition than on explanation or presence.
When you think about it this way, the question of whether classroom simulations can be moved online disappears. A more useful question is whether the experience can stand on its own. Difficulties arise online when learning relies on explanation and facilitation. Relying on decisions, feedback, and results increases scale. This difference is easily overlooked, and ignoring it can be costly.
