Business Simulation Lab
Resources
The BSL Physical Facility
The BSL includes 3 rooms for small groups (Rooms 120A, 130A and 130B), one room for larger groups (Room 120C), and a large computer laboratory (Room 120) that can be divided into two parts (East and West). The focus group room and the south breakout rooms have their own entrances, allowing for multiple experiments to be conducted at the same time. The room layout is shown below. The lab also includes a storage room and a control room for managing computerized experiments. To schedule a room, contact Colleen Homan.
Hardware
The computer laboratories of the BSL have 21 networked computers. Twenty of the machines are for participant, while one acts as a fileserver for conducting networked experiments. All computer hardware is provided by generous grants from the HP Educational Foundation and the Intel Corporation.
The BSL also has other hardware accessories, including headphones, video cameras, VCRs, televisions, video editing equipment.
Software
Many business decisions are complex, and involve interactions between many people. The BSL is currently equipped with 21 fully networked computers, and uses sophisticated software to allow researchers to study decisions in highly complex interactive environments. Most of the BSL software has been developed internally by Robert Bloomfield, Director of the BSL, Donald Honeycutt, the first BSL programmer, and Tony Lednor, the current BSL Technology Director. The key software components currently available are Qform and Qmarket.
- Qmarket provides a flexible platform for simulations of interactive business environments, for both research and teaching. The research (or teacher) uses Access databases and Excel Spreadsheets to indicate which participants should see what information at various points in the experiment; what type of financial market participants the simulation will involve (if any), and how the decisions of one participant will affect others. The software allows a variety of financial markets, including double auctions, clearinghouse markets, and dealer markets, and allow a variety of options determining market transparency and trading privileges. Developers are currently enhancing the software to allow each participant to manage a firm (or part of a firm), choosing investment, financing and reporting policies, product lines, production and sales prices; the software will allow the firms to interact in a complex economy.
- Qforms allows researchers to implement a variety of experiments or teaching cases without reprogramming. Qform allows teachers and researchers virtually unlimited freedom in determining what participants see and how they can respond (free text, multiple choice). The path a participant takes through the forms depends on his or her responses. With very minor modification to the code (taking hours or days, not weeks), a programmer can modify a "shell" program that will allow even more options. Qmarket can also be used as a "shell program," allowing seamless interfaces between Qmarket and Qforms.
