MIT brings video game battle to the public

MIT's simulations often bait students into 'price wars.'

Anyone with a web connection can engage in the marketplace maneuvering, the pressure-packed decision making, and the inevitable price wars that break out among business students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

For four years, students in John Sterman’s business management courses have gone toe to toe in simulated business arenas, with the latest being a concocted world of video game companies looking for an edge in marketing and selling their game consoles and software.

The university announced Nov. 30 that the simulation, known as “Platform Wars,” would be freely available on the MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources (MSTIR) website, following the lead of MIT’s OpenCoursWare program, a seminal experiment in higher education’s sharing of open source material.…Read More

Open-source advocates: Academia, industry must play nice

Open-source software allows even students to contribute code.

Compromise between the Ivory Tower and industry, IT experts say, is the future of open-source technologies in higher education.

Mainstreaming open, collaborative technologies in colleges and universities will require a delicate balance of vendor involvement and experimentation among campus technology decision makers who are willing to stray from the technological old school.

Combining academic ideals with the prowess and resources of industry has become a reality already, as campus IT leaders move freely from one sector to the other—blending the best of academia and business to create software that is open for tinkering and supported with corporate capital.…Read More

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