In addition, we found we needed to have a separate person as dedicated on-call tech support, every time. When teaching the game, you must have one person doing the instruction while another monitors a chat window for questions and puts them to the instructor at appropriate moments. Online, you must have one facilitator per game. Running wargames live, a skilled facilitator can sometimes run 2 or 3 games. Running a wargame online needs more manpower than running the same game live. This is why VASSAL became, unexpectedly, our favorite application. The more you can minimize the friction of using the online game tool, the more effort you can put elsewhere. Our initial impressions of tools were frequently overturned after gaining more extensive experience with them in testing. Test your tools in online classroom settings before committing to them. (Read the detailed section for a more nuanced view of some of the other options.) In addition, it was an easier and more powerful tool to make new game modules for.
VASSAL proved to be simple, reliable, effective, and made lower demands on computing horsepower and networks – and it is free. Several of us had prior experience with VASSAL and were not very fond of it we are now converts. This is the most surprising outcome to us. Plan to explicitly teach both the online engine, and the game itself in that engine. Plan for on-call tech support during every class. Don’t assume students are ready with their technology or that they understand the online engine. Top lesson 2: Success requires scaffolding. Compared to running wargames live, it requires more manpower, time, effort, and technology from both students and faculty. Top lesson 1: Online wargaming works, but it’s harder than live.
Aftershock for the Defense Support to Civil Authorities elective (1x 3 hour class).Bitter Woods for the Art of War Scholars Program (2x 4 hour classes).For around 9 weeks, from 30 March through 2 June, we averaged one 3-hour online wargame session a day, for testing, preparation, or classes.
In addition, many of these involved numerous internal trainup sessions with each game, plus many trial runs of many games to assess their suitability for use, or in testing VASSAL modules we built for some of these games.
In total, the class events we ran totaled 10 different games, each running from 2.5 to 8 hours, each preceded by at least one 3 hour preparation session. This article outlines our key lessons learned, and then discusses some details of what we did. Army University spent mid-March through early June 2020 to prepare for, and then to conduct or support, three elective courses online using commercial wargames. The Directorate of Simulation Education (DSE) at the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), U.S. James Sterrett, Directorate of Simulation Education (DSE), U. The following was written for PAXsims by Dr.