Choices and Scoring in Your Simulation

Choices, Points, and Scoring Settings

Choices are fundamental to Simulations on Simulations.net. When a participants select a Choice, it's used to tabulate their score, show them feedback, and, (potentially) to trigger side effects. All of these elements are what make participating in the simulation interesting and enable participants to make progress on their learning goals.

Two Scoring Options: Basic and Scenario-weighted

When you add a Choice to a question, you have to determine, at minimum, what score will be associated with that Choice. You can either cause Simulations.net to score the Choice simply (basic scoring) or cause it to include randomness in how its scored (scenario-weighted scoring).

Basic Scoring: Keeping it Simple

Basic scoring is pretty straightforward. It will cause the Simulations.net to add the value of the Choice to the participant's total score when they complete the Simulation.

Scenario-weighted Scoring: Adding Randomness

When you set up scenario-weighted scoring, you associate multiple potential outcomes with the Choice. Each potential outcome must have point value and percentage likelihood that it will be realized associated with it. When a participant makes this Choice, the Simulations.net app randomly assign an outcome based on the percentage odds you've set.

Example: Sarah is building a Simulation to train managers of quick service restaurants. In one of the Rounds of the Simulation, she adds the question "Your discretionary budget for the quarter is $5000. What will you do with it?" Sarah adds these Choices:

1. Hire an online marketing company to promote the restaurant
2. Repaint the interior of the restaurant
3. Buy a new espresso machine

From experience as a restaurant manager herself, Sarah knows that Choice 1 can sometimes pay off big and sometimes fall short of expectations. So, she scores Choice 1 with the following scenario-weighted approach:

• 35% chance the online marketing campaign is a flop, resulting in 10 points
• 50% chance the online marketing campaign does okay, resulting in 100 points
• 15% chance the online marketing campaign is a big success, resulting in 400 points

Note that the probabilities of the above scenarios collectively have add up to 100%, which is required by Simulations.net.

Then, when Katie selects Choice 1 while participating in Sarah's Simulation, the Simulations.net app will randomly assign an outcome to Katie's selection based on what Sarah has set. In this instance, let's say that Katie landed on the 50% chance the online marketing campaign does okay, which results in 100 points. Next time she might hit that 15% jackpot!

We encourage you to use scenario-weighted scoring in your Simulations. This feature adds randomness and a feeling of the real world to your Simulation which participants love. Using scenario-weighted scoring also helps create the desire in participants to go through your Simulation multiple times, which is exactly the kind of energy you want around your learning experience.

Customizing "Points" for your Simulation

Simulations.net enables you to determine what "points" mean for your Simulation and whether the goal of the Simulation is to maximize or minimize "points." The following features can be managed by clicking the gear icon to access the Simulation settings from the Simulation editor view.

Why you would change the point title

You have the ability to cause Simulations.net to use any title for "points" when it shows participants their results. For example, let's say that Sergey is creating a Simulation that's designed to train event promoters for a company that produces large events. In this Simulation, Sergey may change the point title to "tickets sold". Then, any time a "point" is accrued by a participant, they're simulating the sale of a single ticket rather than gaining a "point". Veronika, a new hire, may be going through Sergey's Simulation and generate a score of 3250. In her results, Veronika will see 3250 tickets sold.

When to optimize for fewer points

There may be instances when it makes sense for your Simulation to optimize for fewer rather than more points. This is supported by Simulations.net. For example, let's say that Maria is Head of Compliance for a financial services company and she's creating a simulation designed to help her team reduce fraudulent transactions in the system. Maria then:

1. Changes the Simulation's point title to "fraudulent transactions"
2. Changes the goal to "fewer points" from "more points"
3. Causes choices in her Simulation that would result in fraudulent transactions to add to the participant's score (in this case, a bad thing!)

When to turn scoring off

There are some cases in which scoring just doesn't make sense. For example, you might be helping people walk through a technology or a new process and you want to use Choices to gauge understanding or preferences. In this case, we enable you to turn scoring off altogether.

Choice Tags

What's a Choice tag?

Choice tags can be used to associate a Choice with some kind of category that's useful to the Simulation designer, the participant, or both parties. Choice tags are, by default, displayed to the participant in their Simulation results. Paid members subscribers can hide choice tags in participant results in a Simulation's settings area if desired.

Choice Tag Use Cases

• Designers who are using their Simulation to gain insights into what kinds of choices a participant makes (e.g. job simulations and other assessments)
• Enabling a participant to identify any patterns that might exist in the Choices they've made
• Connecting certain Choices in your Simulation with something outside the Simulation itself
• ...and others