▶ Short Sims are designed and built by Clark Aldrich
More than two decades ago, in his award-winning 2005 book Learning by Doing, Clark Aldrich identified four dominant types of simulations:
- branching stories
- interactive spreadsheets
- virtual products
- game-based models
Each had strengths, but also significant weaknesses. Over the following 15+ years, Aldrich refined, combined, and pressure-tested these simulations in real organizational settings, with real constraints. What emerged was a single, coherent pedagogy, SCORM compliant and buildable using industry standard tools.
The result is Short Sims.
About Clark Aldrich: Aldrich is a global expert on growing leaders, who has worked with C-level executives from scores of the world’s most influential organizations, including at the NSA where he served on the board and held Top Secret Clearance. The former Gartner analyst who founded their eLearning coverage – and Training Magazine columnist – Aldrich also has written six books on pedagogy (several of which are taught at the post-graduate level).
His published written work has been at the forefront of: eLearning (Gartner Research, starting 1997); simulation- and game-based learning (Simulation and the Future of Learning, 2003); microschools (Unschooling Rules, 2011); and action-based learning (Short Sims, 2020).
His award- and patent-winning work around actionable and experiential learning, which has been covered extensively including by The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NPR, ESPN, and CNN, focuses on media-based experiences that role-model meaningful alternatives to today's workbook-essay-lecture-test model. It has two branches:
• Aldrich has created dozens of educational simulations and computer-based serious games. This work culminated in the revolutionary, democratizing pedagogy of Short Sims, which makes simulation design accessible to any creator for any learner on any topic.
• Aldrich also creates real-world based experiential learning. His latest and most transformative is Socratic Cards, which role models and enables the next generation's vision for education and work.