Education's Great Pivot

Traditional approaches to education, including workbooks, essays, lectures, and tests (WELTs), are very good at teaching facts. Dates and definitions, basic note taking, categorization of facts (basic analysis) are what education and training have been perfecting for decades. WELTs also are good for providing practice in a few skills such as writing and math.

Short Sims represent a new pedagogy, with different affordances. So when organizations use Short Sims – from military to corporate, academic, and government – they use them in topic areas different from WELTs' sweet spots.

We have been tracking usage for more than half a decade, and seeing an increasingly clear pattern. Across clients, Short Sims are being used for:

• medium-to-advanced certification skills;
• basic-to-medium project management, security, and management skills; and
• foundational leadership skills.

A Short Sim on Intermediate Certification Skills

A Short Sim on Intermediate Certification Skills

A Short Sim on Intermediate Management Skills

A Short Sim on Foundational Leadership (Leading others)

A Short Sim on Foundational Leadership (Leading oneself)

In other words, Short Sims are enabling educational organizations to pivot from a fact-based curricula around memorization to a skills-based curricula around practice. And because Short Sims integrate perfectly into WELT cultures and infrastructures, the pivot is seamless and enduring.

As the old phrase goes, the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed. Yet.