A Gamification Approach for Experiential Education of Inventory Control

In this educational research project, game-based in-class and after-class learning activities are developed to teach selected inventory control strategies to undergraduate and graduate students. Students from Supply Chain Management and System Simulation courses are targeted, who are taught by different instructors. The activities include teaching the inventory control policies to students in a regular class setting, then providing an overview on a game developed on MS Excel. In the game, the lead time and customer demand variables are defined uncertain, and not given to students, which make the assignment an ill-structured problem. A 12-month planning and execution period is given to students with qualitative and quantitative information about 3 products. The students are given a 1-week period to play the game. The game simulates selected inventory control strategies with reorder point and order quantity parameters for 12 months. The learning outcomes of the course related to inventory control, and students’ experience with the game are surveyed. Survey results are statistically and visually analyzed. Overall results indicated that the proposed gamification approach is found to have positive impact in learning effectiveness in the majority of evaluation categories. In addition, the contribution of the proposed gamification approach was found to be effectively supporting the learning outcomes of the course.