The most exciting prospect of eLearning is the ability to produce nearly any dangerous, or complex situation and provide access to anyone who has the skill to click a mouse. There really was nothing like the time I had a fashion major friend of my wife user test the Virtual Knee Surgery simulation before launch.

Here was a person, who pretty much knew how to check email, and after 10 minutes of slicing and dicing, felt completely capable of performing major surgery in her own home. To hear her response and excitement over having just done surgery was inspiring, as I’d given someone who would have never in their life cut someone open, the ability to take on the roll of a med student with $400,000 in school loans, all in a 10 minute simulation.

The greatest aspect of simulation is the way you can inject novices into an otherwise dangerous or expensive situation and let them run wild. Want to go on an archaeological Dinosaur Dig? Want to drive drunk and see what happens to your reaction time? It’s all possible in eLearning simulation.

I feel there’s a good resource for inspiration (besides the real world of course) and that is the video game industry. Whether boo’d or cheered video games have been able to transport people from their sometimes stagnant lives and insert them into a fully realized world of story, roll playing, danger and overcoming huge challenges. Video games, at least these days, are also pushing tens of millions of dollars in budget size (which makes me wonder why there are so many bad ones out there… then again throwing money at something doesn’t always make it better! Uhh oh.. digression).

Simulations are definitely the top tier eLearning experience, as you really have to break out of the box to successfully pull them off. There’s nothing pre-planned or methodical about production, as these types of projects tend to be 100% custom (and therefore expensive, which is usually the deciding factor of whether a project goes forward or not). The results though, can be amazing.

I am personally tired of Virtual Knee Surgery, but it is the project that has helped define my career in this industry. Within one month of launching we had over 200,000 uses of the activity. We had to upgrade our servers just to handle the load, and the great thing is, it hasn’t slowed down since. That project was launched all the way back in 2003 or 2004 and now averages around 500,000 launches each month, and around 800,000 page views with zero ($0.00) spent on marketing… ever. Why is it so popular? I believe it’s simply the cool factor. That activity doesn’t give you a step by step guide to surgery; it invites you into the operating room, gives you the scalpel and lets you the user do the slicing.

For the most part kids and adults aren’t allowed to interact with these sorts of situations, that’s why we watch them on TV or see Bruce Willis drive a semi on 2 wheels while being shot at from a harrier jet as it bombs out the overpass as he’s eating a ham sandwich with a blindfold on.

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As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest barriers to entry into simulation based eLearning isn’t on the user’s end, it’s from a production standpoint and more specifically the cost involved. These types of projects include:

• Multiple professionals to fact check
• Around 7 teachers
• User testing with 200-300 users
• Pre and post testing
• Writing of user manuals
• Around 2 months of time

And that’s not even mentioning the amount of work that goes into Instructional Design, animation, Audio and general production and marketing. It really is a lot of work, but it has an amazing payoff. Right after I send a budget estimate off to my potential clients, and right before they never call me back (it’s a joke! Laugh, people!) they really need to consider ROI or return on investment. I believe Knee surgery in all was upwards of $60,000+ all said and done, but over the years the number of site visitors who come to use the simulation end up costing something like 1/10th of one cent each. So for the price of a magazine advertisement, you’ve now got a project that needs almost zero maintenance, which doubles in popularity each year. Once you get past the price it all starts to make sense, and the results can be amazing.

Good news for low budgets out there as well, as another great form of simulation is role playing. This form of simulation might take on what would be a more straight forward (no explosions) situation such as sales training, or ethics issues in a corporate environment. The trick is that people respond to other people, it’s hard wired in our brains. One of the best ways on a budget to engage your user is to invite them into an environment (say a background photo) and have a narrator (again, could be as simple as a photo of a person) talking over course objectives, pointing with hands and using expression and tone of voice to convey emotion, praise and encouragement. Digital cameras are very cheap these days, so a great simulation can possibly come down to the quality of the script writing and a couple hours in a photo editing program.

What? You want examples? Here are a few goodies eLearning blogger Cathy Moore has found (Hey! I’m not being lazy, it’s just that she’s done such a great job compiling a list

Click here for all sorts of eLearning samples including simulation.