Creating Pathways to Personal Resilience Through Classroom Simulations

Abstract

Background. College or university classroom simulations have the potential to create valuable educational outcomes that are difficult to achieve by other means. Personal resilience is one outcome that has achieved significant attention in the literature. Personal resilience is the ability to bounce back, learn from, and move forward after adverse experiences. Aim. This study posits that student personal resilience will increase following participation in university undergraduate management courses that use simulations that are grounded in a proposed teleological process model that includes six causal relationships. Method. Eighty-four students participated in either a Capstone strategy course using the Capsim simulation or a semester-long classroom as organization open simulation called XB that involved student management of all course aspects. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC 10) survey instrument was used to measure personal resilience at both the beginning and end of each course. Results. In several cases, student personal resilience was significantly increased after courses utilizing simulations involving specific features. Conclusions. Participation in these kinds of experiences (with faculty support) may significantly increase levels of personal resilience among students. Recommendations. Simulations with the specified causal attributes might be used to foster student outcomes such as personal resilience, which typically are not a part of traditional course objectives.