An award like Mine

The ICARUS Business Simulation won

Gold in the 'Best use of simulations or

virtual environments for learning'

category at the 2017 Learning

Technologies Awards

ICARUS is the name of the simulation that

was developed by Unicorn Training with

LearningAge Solutions (LAS) to form part of

the University College London's (UCL) MSc in

Professional Accountancy. It was praised by

the Learning Technologies Awards judging

panel for its immersive, multi-layered, and

above all, realistic nature.

Peter Phillips CEO Unicorn Training explains

why it proved such a success.

"We at Unicorn Training are big supporters of

action-based learning, learning by doing.

Unicorn has developed and run business

simulations for many years, largely in the

classroom.

The big difference here is that UCL was

launching a distance learning MSc covering

150 countries and involving over 2,000

students in the first year."

So very different from 20 people in a

classroom. UCL wanted a hands-on activity;

Unicorn Training already had an airport

simulation and used that as the basis to

develop ICARUS.

This was for MSc students - relatively mature

and in work - that would be running the

simulation over five weeks. Each week they

made a set of decisions as a team before the

simulation moved the world forward a year.

The simulation was a major part of the study,

used alongside more traditional teaching

inputs including on research methodologies

and a case study assignment at the end of the

course. ICARUS was the glue in the middle.

It had to be realistic; the students had to do

real world research about the airline industry

and the business of airports and apply that to

the case study.

Peter Phillips

CEO

Unicorn Training

Read more

Share: