FAQ

General Questions

(1) Why use iDecisionGames?

With iDecisionGames, running exercises becomes effortless. You can use the platform to:

• Distribute role specific instructions directly to students device
• Form groups in one click (avoid problems with absences and never have students negotiating with the same person twice)
• Get real-time insight into students’ answers as they complete the exercise
• Aggregate results automatically across all students (and avoid manual calculation errors)
• Automatically graph results (by issue or across all issues) and send customized reports to students.

(2) Who benefits from using iDecisionGames?

Anyone whose coursework includes role-play exercises. Professors have found the platform to be very helpful for their courses in Negotiations, Organizational Behavior, and Leadership. But the possibilities are endless. If you, for example, teach International Relations and would like a way to illustrate the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the platform is perfect for that as well.

(3) Which schools/companies are currently using iDecisionGames?

We have over 150 schools/companies using us. A few of them are listed here:

• Harvard
• MIT
• Carnegie Mellon University
• University of Texas
• Stanford University
• Wharton
• Columbia Graduate School of Business
• Yale University
• NYU Stern
• John’s Hopkins
• UC Berkeley (Haas School of Business)
• The University of North Carolina
• Hult International Business School

(4) How does pricing work?

iDecisionGames is free to the instructor. Students pay on a per-semester basis (or the institution is invoiced on a per student basis):

Academic: Undergraduate students: $15/semester per student.

Academic: Full-Time Graduate students: $25/semester per student.

Academic: Executives and Part-time programs: $40/semester/participant or 5% of the publicly listed price of the program (Whichever is higher).

Corporate Use: $50/workshop/participant or $50/month per participant or 5% of the publicly listed price of the program (Whichever is higher).

Support Cost: Premium Support is provided at 5% of the listed price of the class/workshop/online program. For example, if the listed price of your program is $100 per student, premium support from iDG is available at $5/student. Premium support includes unlimited assistance (from our support team) in using our platform.

Regular support (via email with 1 business day response time is always free).

These charges do not include licensing fees due to the DRRC/Harvard PON/NTR/Columbia Caseworks or any external library for the exercises used. These are typically $4/student/case for academic use but might be higher for corporate use or for specific exercises. iDecisionGames can process these licensing fees for you so that you don’t have to make 2 separate payments. Harvard Business School Publishing cases can be used on our platform but you need to purchase licenses for them separately.

(5) What content does iDecisionGames support?

iDecisionGames supports any exercises from the NTR, Harvard PON, DRRC, Columbia Caseworks, HBSP, other libraries as well as any cases that you have written yourself. We can work with you to upload them onto the platform. Take a look at our case library to see the cases we have run in the past. The collection is continually expanding, as new professors request new cases. There is no charge to you to request a new case. We will build your case/simulation for free and you can publish it on our platform either as Open Source content, privately only for your classes or get paid a royalty for its use by other instructors.

(6) Can I run qualitative exercises on iDecisionGames?

Absolutely. Our platform works very well for both quantitative and qualitative exercises. In a qualitative exercise, students can respond with a short paragraph, which appears on the professor’s dashboard in real time. We also support innovative charts such as word-clouds which enable you to visualize text based responses.

(7) Can I use the iDecisionGames platform to conduct my research study?

Absolutely. Get in touch with us at info@idecisiongames.com, we’d love to discuss how we can be of help. Our standard pricing is $500/researcher per year and a premium subscription of $1000/researcher/year (case licensing fees might be additional unless you have approval to use your case without fees for research). Video Recording fees are also additional.

(8) What about technical support?

We are always available to chat with you on skype. If you require premium support we can discuss a premium support plan that meets your needs.

(9) What about privacy?

You control how much information is shared between students. By default all our graphs hide the names of students when you publish them to the students. However, you can choose to reveal names. We have found that this open learning environment works for many programs but some need more control — we leave the choice to you.

(10) I am interested in using iDecisionGames cases in my class. What are the next steps I should take?

Get in touch with us at support@idecisiongames.com to schedule a walkthrough. In preparation for your course, we will ask you for:

1. Your syllabus, so that we know which exercises you will be running when
2. Any other teaching materials that would be helpful (i.e. pre-exercise questionnaires, agreement sheets, debriefing slides, etc)

(11) What is your relationship to NegotiateUP.com?

NegotiateUP.com uses the iDecisionGames platform to run its live seminars. NegotiateUP.com brings live experiences from the world’s best professors direct to consumers. Many of the instructors that use iDecisionGames also run training's via NegotiateUP.com for private corporate training's/seminars. Contact support@negotiateup.com for more details.

Questions about Student Registration

(1) How do students register for iDecisionGames?

Students can register prior, or during your first class session. It should not take them more than a minute or two. Whenever you want them to register, you can tell them to go to idecisiongames.com and sign up with the unique access code we provided you with.

(2) What if I teach multiple sections?

If you’re teaching multiple sections, we will give you an access code for each section. Be sure to provide each section with the correct access code. So long as students sign up with the right access code, they will appear in the right class on the platform.

(3) After registering, how do students access iDecisionGames?

Students register, they can login anytime by going to idecisiongames.com and entering their email and password. The platform lives on a website, so they do not need to download any app. They can access the website from their laptop, tablet, or phone.

(4) What if some students didn’t bring a laptop?

Students can access iDecisionGames on their phone. However, most exercises are easier to do on a laptop, so we do advice you to encourage your students to use those.

(5) How does iDecisionGames deal with the fact that students will drop and join my course during the first few sessions?

For the first couple of sessions, you can allow students to read instructions in-class, and form groups only after taking attendance. With the platform, you aren’t forced to plan ahead for the entire semester, you can work with the students who are attending any particular session. Even if some walk in and haven’t registered on iDecisionGames yet, that’s not a problem. You give them an access code, and they can sign up on the website in 30 seconds.

(6) How does the iDecisionGames platform deal with attendance and absences?

iDecisionGames solves the problems associated with absent students by separating role assignments from group formation. This way, you can send out role instructions before class, but wait with assigning pairings until you know who is present and who is not. You can use the system to take attendance at the start of class, and then click to form groups. This way, students who did not show up are not included in group-formation.

Questions on Sending Out Role Instructions

(1) When and how do I send my students instructions?

Whenever you want students to be able to read their instructions, publish the exercise to the relevant class. This will enable those students to click into the exercise, which automatically assigns them a role, and provides them instructions specific to that role. Students can read the instructions in the platform, or download the pdf and make a printout for their convenience.

(2) What if I have my own version of instructions? Can I use those?

Yes. Send an email to support@idecisiongames.com, attaching the instructions you would like to use, and specifying which exercise they belong to. A member of our team would be happy to upload your version of the instructions.

Questions about Exercise Customization

(1) How can I make sure I like the way iDecisionGames has represented the exercise on the platform.

Use the demo player to do a walk through of the exercise with dummy accounts. This way, you’ll be able to see both the student experience, and the professor experience, for all stages of the exercise. A tutorial on how to use the demo player is available here.

(2) How can I add in or adjust pre- or post-exercise surveys?

Send an email to support@idecisiongames.com and share your survey materials. Be sure to specify which exercise(s) you would like the survey to be added to. A member of our team will be happy to add them, after which they will always be available for you to use.

(3) How can I change the outcome form?

If you’re not happy with the outcome form, send an email to support@idecisiongames.com, and specify which exercise you’d like to customize, and how you would like for the outcome form to change. A member of our team will make the adjustment.

Questions on Group Formation

(1) How are groups formed?

Groups are formed randomly, as soon as you click Form Groups. The system will automatically put the appropriate roles together in a group, and minimize people negotiating with each other more than once in a semester.

(2) Can I tell the platform who should be paired up with who?

If you want to be in control of who is paired with who, you can first let the system make it’s random allocation, and then enable edit mode and change everyone’s groups around until they match what you had in mind.

(3) Can I adjust groups if needed?

Yes. As a professor, you can always override the platform’s decisions. If you want, you can manually change role assignments, group formations, absences, and students’ answers to the questions in the exercise.

(4) Can I group people based on certain characteristics? (e.g. gender)

The only way to do this is by enabling edit mode and manually adjusting the groups until people of certain characteristics are grouped up. We are working on automating this process.

Questions on Debriefing

(1) Can I anonymize results?

Yes. Before publishing the debriefing charts, you can choose whether or not to make results anonymous. If you leave it to the default mode, students will not see anyone’s names.

(2) Can I save the graphs and tables for future reference and analysis?

Yes. You will always have access to exercises after they have already concluded. Even if you clean up your dashboard by archiving exercises, you can still open them in the archives.

Question on Teaching Online

(1) Can I use iDecisionGames for my online course?

Yes. The platform works great for in-person classes, blended classes, as well as fully online courses. Our platform has video chat capability, and can support both synchronous and asynchronous exercises.

(2) If I want to coach my online students through the exercise, how can I best do that?

If you enable live class, all your students will be able to see and hear you. You can explain them the concepts of that day’s session, and students can ask you questions via chat messages.

(3) If all my students are negotiating in their groups, am I able to listen in on groups of choice?

Yes. As a professor you can drop into the video chat of any of your groups.

(4) Can the conversations my students have over video chat be recorded?

Yes, video chat conversations that take place between students are automatically recorded. They are organized by group, and available to view from your professor account.

(5) How can I debrief online?

You can use Live Class to allow all your students to be able to see and hear you. You can then publish the debrief, which makes all the automatically-generated charts available for your students. By speaking to them through Live Class, you can point to the interesting features of the customized graphs, and answer any questions your students have.

If you have more questions or need further assistance please email us at: support@idecisiongames.com