Our Special Interest Groups focus on specific topics and work on them in small groups of interested people. They have half yearly symposiums with project meetings in between.
There are currently three active SIGs:
– SIG Facilitation
– SIG Game Science
– SIG Sustainability
ISAGA Special Interest Group Online Symposium, Friday, November 13, 2026 | 10:30 to 12:30 am CET | Online
We would like to develop the symposium together with you. Do you have:
- a presentation,
- a simulation or game you would like to test,
- a research idea,
- a facilitation challenge,
- or a topic you would like to discuss?
Please let us know! We warmly welcome suggestions and contributions.
Planned theme 1: Live Lab: Can AI Become an Adaptive Facilitator?
Artificial intelligence is increasingly finding its way into education, facilitation and decision support. But can AI actually facilitate a simulation game? During this interactive session we will put this question to the test. Using the Adaptive Facilitation Framework (AFF) as the underlying design framework, we will instruct an AI to take on the role of facilitator during a simulation game. The participants will experience the session as players while simultaneously observing the facilitation process. Rather than evaluating the game itself, our focus will be on the facilitator.
Together we will explore questions such as:
- How natural did the facilitation feel?
- At which moments did AI add value?
- Where did it perform surprisingly well?
- Where did it fall short?
- Which facilitator behaviours can AI support?
- Which aspects still require human judgement, intuition or experience?
- How could the interaction between AI and human facilitators be improved?
The objective is not to determine whether AI can replace facilitators, but to explore where it may complement facilitation practice and where human expertise remains indispensable. To make the experiment as realistic as possible, we are looking for a simulation game that can be facilitated during the session. All game suggestions are welcome.
One possibility would be to use Jagoda’s Dream Game on workload and well-being, which several participants experienced during the Stockholm conference.If feasible, we would also like to integrate a process-oriented evaluation alongside the session. This would allow participants not only to experience AI facilitation, but also to see how learning and facilitation processes can be studied during gameplay, providing richer evidence than relying solely on post-game evaluations.
Estimated duration: 90 minutes.
Planned theme 2: Professionalising Simulation & Gaming Professionals
Elyssebeth Leigh has kindly offered to lead a session on the professionalisation of simulation and gaming practitioners. This session will combine a short presentation with an interactive workshop, allowing participants to exchange experiences and ideas about professional development within our field.
Estimated duration: 45 minutes
Parallel sessions? Depending on the number of participants and proposed contributions, we may organise parallel sessions, allowing people to choose the topics most relevant to their interests. We’d love your input. Please let us know:
- whether you expect to attend;
- whether you would like to contribute a presentation or workshop;
- whether you have a game that would be suitable for the AI facilitation experiment;
- or whether there is another topic you would like to see included.
We look forward to another inspiring and highly interactive SIG meeting.
Contact: Marieke de Wijse-van Heeswijk mariekedewijse@hotmail.com
This event is part of the International Day of Simulation and Gaming.
ISAGA Mini Symposium, Friday, May 22, 2026 | 1 to 3.30 pm CEST | Online
Program
From the Evaluation & Facilitation SIG
13.15- 14.45 h Facilitation in a Business Simulation, Dr Vinod Dumblekar, 45-60 minute presentation followed by a Q&A of 30 minutes
The facilitator’s role in a learning game is to engage and guide players to learn from interactions and other game experiences. Within this role is debriefing where the players are guided to revisit the game events and draw conclusions for them to understand concepts and theories and/or apply to solve real-life problems. MANTIS has designed, developed and facilitated business and other simulation games since 2003 for management and engineering students and employees of universities and business firms. The presentation will describe the facilitation practices that evolved across more than two decades. It will show the instruments and documents used, and how they are rooted in the learning theories of Kolb, Bandura, Csikszentmihalyi and Knowles.
14.45 h break
From the Sustainability SIG
15.00- 15.30h introduction to Enroads by climate interactive, simulation that can be played without licence, all materials are available on the website. From 15.30-16.30 opportunity to play in a group or by yourself
Playing the free online enroads climate interactive with different goals and play formats
- It is a system dynamics based simulation, the model is updated regularly by new insights on climate research around the world
- The game offers great insights into different policy effects that can impact co2 emissions and also offers insights in the political behavior in this system (every country wants to lower the co2 emissions but not at the cost of their own welfare)
- Different workshops and play formats are possible and you will gain insight into what is needed to actually reduce co2 emissions globally.
Interested in taking part? Please send an Email to Marieke: marieke@isaga.net
Shaping the Future of Simulation & Gaming – ISAGA SIG Symposium – Fall 2025
Online | Friday, Nov 7, 2025 | 09:00–13:00 CET
We had a well-attended meeting with 30 participants from around the world. After a brief introductory round, Nettie created a Miro board where participants could introduce themselves further. You can view some of these introductions here: Miro Board
We reflected on the successful ISAGA conference in Stuttgart, highlighting the strong interaction between practitioners and researchers thanks to the diverse program. We hope for more such engaging events in the future.
Next, we discussed the Adaptive Facilitation Framework, which will be published open access in the Simulation & Gaming journal this month. It offers a systems perspective on learning and facilitation, helping facilitators decide when and how to intervene. A short intro presentation is available, and a recorded version will follow soon. Presentation
Marieke de Wijse then shared her research using QCA and the Scripted Facilitation Framework to explore factors contributing to successful learning in SGS. Her findings will be published in Instructional Science. She also offers an English evening course starting in the new year: Course Info
SIG Facilitation – Special Interest Group on Facilitation
This SIG meets twice a year. The next tasks are a setup for an online Train-the-Facilitator webinar series and also research and practice exchange. The next dates you can always find in the calendar.
Here you find a report on the last meeting on Friday, January 17th 2025:
Joining forces in the combined meeting of the sig facilitation and sig sustainability was a great success. We shared a lot of common interest in how to gain more transfer of our SG design and facilitation approaches. I send you a summary of our wonderful research meeting (if you want to have a look how we transferred our (personal) ambitions and plans to 2 important research projects (joint cooperation in research and data gathering for both academic publication purpose and practical use for practitioners), the option for a sustainability games mini conference and special issue (I will make a call for this in the newsletter but if you are interested email me marieke@isaga.net). Furthermore Elyssebeth called for cooperation in making infographics on how to approach facilitation and debriefing for example.
Below I added a free academic proof transcribe tool you can download on your computer, see the link. Because we often want to capture discussions for research data this is an excellent tool you can use safely because it is all only on your computer and not on external servers. It was developed by the university of Zurich.
Here is the link to the free transcribe tool: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n15q44szns2?hl=en-US&gl=US
Furthermore, you find Elyssebeths Facilitation book (to the book) and also a link to the new upcoming book of Gaming and Transfer (eds Toshiko Kikkawa, Willy Kriz, Junkichi Siugiura and Marieke de Wijse- van Heeswijk). This is both an academically sound but also a highly practical book with many examples, cases and description on how to gain even more transfer.
If you want to join either of these projects contact the project leader so you are on their mail list.
SIG Game Science – Special Interest Group on Game Science
Feel free to join this SIG for future publications that are aimed at creating scientific fundaments for SGs as research tool and intervention, as well as the science behind facilitation design and the role of the facilitator.
The special interest group game science is working on a new publication on the role of the facilitator in multiple types of SGs and learning contexts. A publication on the fundamentals of Game Science is under review at the Simulation and Gaming Journal. The aim of this publication is to support researchers in taking Game Sciences as a multidisciplinary well established science. The publication on game science “Positioning Game Science: a reflection on philosophical, epistemological and ontological underpinnings” by Sebastiaan Meijer, Marieke de Wijse-van Heeswijk, Heide Lukosch and Jan Klabbers will soon be published.
SIG Sustainability – Special Interest Group on Games for Sustainability!
The SIG sustainability had a meeting in February and June 2024 on the role of modelling in game design and learning from SGs. Also a new tool was tested called Broad View that is an easy to use tool with a great adaptive interface that can store lots of data (either quantitatively or qualitatively) , links, interconnections in an interactive way. more info www. broadview.nl (sorry English translation is on its way). participation and joint sense making are important processes that happen in and around game interventions and then a tool that can store data in an organized visual form can help greatly to provide structure and overview.
We decided to have half yearly symposia with multiple themes of interest and of course we can always organize extra meetings on request. This way a larger audience can choose to participate and bring in meeting ideas. Based on the input the session will be planned. On average there is 45mins time for each topic.
1 Grant writing and research together
2 Sustainability in practice, examples on how sustainability with SGs can be brought into society on different levels
3 Modelling and Frame games by Thiagi and formative assessment mechanics
4 Findings on longitudinal evaluation of SGs in sustainability and how to improve longitudinal measurements workshop!
