Muzzy Lane and McGraw-Hill: game-based simulations in Connect

On April 23, 2018, McGraw-Hill Education said it was adding more than 50 game-based learning simulations and scenario-based activities to its digital course materials for the following fall. The first courses were Principles of Economics, Introduction to Business, Principles of Marketing and College Success, and the company planned hundreds more across course areas in 2019. The simulations were developed with Muzzy Lane Software and sit inside the McGraw-Hill Connect digital learning platform.

One example puts an economics student in the role of adviser to the Federal Reserve chair during a financial crisis. The student uses real economic data visualizations to pick a policy action and then sees how it would affect the economy over several months. Muzzy Lane said that embedding the simulations in Connect gives instructors and students single sign-on, gradebook integration and analytics.

The simulations were built on findings of a research study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, into the benefits of simulated learning. Muzzy Lane's Author platform, which lets subject matter experts create activities for online courses, was described as mobile first, compliant with WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility requirements and compatible with the popular learning management systems.

An instructor at the University of Utah who tested a marketing simulation said it reinforced how interrelated marketing decisions are, because students could change many variables from product design to promotional spending. McGraw-Hill described itself then as a learning science company with offices across North America, India, China, Europe, the Middle East and South America, offering solutions in more than 60 languages.

Muzzy Lane's website is online and presents the company around Author, a platform for instructional designers that builds roleplay assessments to measure real skills and publishes them to learning management systems such as Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, Moodle and Open edX. The site lists higher education, enterprise and publishers as its industries and reports 6.2 million students served, 53 million assessments completed and 531 million decisions made, all company figures. It says the company draws on more than 20 years of experience.

The home page does not mention McGraw-Hill or Connect, and the McGraw Hill site, mheducation.com, is online. Whether the 2018 titles remain in Connect courses is therefore unconfirmed.