Reports & communications written debriefing: The next vital step in learning with simulations

Simulations are exciting, fun, emotional, entertaining, and educational. In a dramatic way, they drive home a main idea. They also demand a great deal of preparation, work, and planning to accomplish their goal. Energy abounds from the participants and the facilitator. When simulations are finished, oral debriefing focuses participants' attention on the purpose. But why do most simulations end here? Why do we not extract more knowledge? Why do we stop at this springboard of understanding? Why do we not discover what everyone individually has comprehended? Why do we not move to the next essential step in the learning process? Why do we not write about our experiences after we have had a chance to reflect on them and connect them to our lives and theories? After working in the field for the past 25 years, one of my most significant discoveries is that students learn much more by writing about the simulations than just by playing or orally debriefing them. Dewey (1913, p. 66) wrote extensively about "self activity" and strongly believed that the core of education was not just doing something but seeing the new meaning