Short Sims by Clark Aldrich: simulations of five to 15 minutes

Clark Aldrich, founder and managing partner of Clark Aldrich Designs and a long-time designer of educational simulations, spent five years developing short sims before he launched a website for them in early July 2016. His case was that serious games and educational simulations had grown from experiments into dependable tools, used by organizations as different as the US Army and global corporations, but that the usual build was too expensive, too slow, tied to one platform and hard to update.

A short sim is his answer. It can introduce a topic, let the user play with a concept, or run a basic role-play or lab experiment. It can stand alone, or sit inside a longer HTML document next to text, charts and short videos. Aldrich listed several advantages: faster creation and updating, independence from the platform, richer content than traditional media, compatibility with Section 508 accessibility rules, and more flexibility than a full serious game.

Aldrich also argued that short sims keep what multiple-choice tests do well and reach areas they cannot. A student can be placed in a social situation with many options, such as a doctor interviewing a patient or a police officer interviewing a witness. A sim can ask for a multi-step process, such as rebuilding an engine or working through a math problem, remember earlier decisions and give diagnostic feedback or partial credit.

Interactive diagrams are a third use: picking the right piece of equipment for a task, or the right place on a map in two steps, first the state and then the region. Short sims can also adapt, shaping later situations to a student's earlier results.

In 2016 he was scheduled to present a session called Teaching and Learning with the Short Sim at Revolutionary Learning in New York, held August 17 to 19 at the Roosevelt Hotel. He had also just finished a year of work on short sims for the Gates Foundation's open education Economy 101 textbook series.

The site shortsims.com is online in November 2026 and says that short sims are designed and built by Clark Aldrich. It describes a short sim as a compact form of simulation-based learning that compresses the essential mechanics of a full simulation into a short, reusable experience.

Three offers are listed. A Short Sims Workshop, a course on building your own short sims, costs $75. Ready-made short sims on self-management and team management, and custom short sims built with Aldrich for an organization, are priced on request. The page also presents three narrated examples. Pricing for other formats is collected in the cost overview.