Introducing Sessions: A better way to manage your games

We know organizing a learning game event can sometimes seem like a daunting task. At Zensimu, we are always trying to make this process more accessible - by creating the best experience for instructors and trainees.

Our team has been working in the past couple of weeks to revise the way games are handled in the platform. Today, we are proud to announce a major new step in this work: Sessions Management.

From now on, we recommend that you use "Sessions" to host your future Beer Game and Lean Game events, because it brings many advantages (see "Why" below). We have updated our Documentation to reflect these new menus/functionalities.

But no worries: the previous way to create and manage games is still available, and works exactly like before. So if you have already prepared an event using the "Games" menu - it's okay. You will always be able to access your previous games and templates.

The templates that you created previously can even be converted into Session templates easily. To do so, go to the "Templates" menu of the instructor Dashboard and click on "create template", where you'll be able to import your old templates as rounds.

A Session groups together all the games for a single event. Inside a session, players are assigned to a Team and advancing through one or several Rounds.

Many instructors host several consecutive rounds with their audience.

For example in the Beer Game, instructors often host a first round with the default setup, and a second round with shared information/communication between players. In the Lean Game, trainees typically play three to six rounds and implement Lean improvements progressively.

We wanted to make it more obvious/quicker to create these multi-round events. It is no longer necessary to create separately the games for each round. With sessions, all the rounds/games are created at once.

If you want to modify the scenario afterwards, no need to update each individual game like before. Simply adjust the Session Settings, and all the games/teams will be updated accordingly.

Players are also better followed-up as they advance through the games. They can directly join the next round directly from the debriefing of the previous one. They will also see how their performance improved from round to round.

This is made easier thanks to the Session Results page. No need to filter through all your previously finished games in the Analysis tab. The desired information is now available right away!

It is easier to connect to your games, thanks to the unique Session Lobby link. You could previously use the "Public Instructor Page", but it listed all the rounds and your previous games, which made it harder for players to join a random position or a specific one.

Sessions also bring substantial performance improvements for the instructors with a lot of games history. Now when you want to follow-up an event, only the concerned games' data is loaded by the browser, not the one of old events games.

With the feature activated you need to create a Session instead of individual games. No worries though, it is as fast as before, you simply need to choose the type of game (Beer Game or Lean Game), the session name and the number of teams expected.

If you want, you can then edit the settings for each individual Round that players will go through. You can also modify the number and name of the teams.

Save, and all the games will be updated accordingly!

Each Session has a Lobby from where players can view all the available roles. From there, they can either join a specific position, or a random one.

Before you send the link, don't forget to Publish your Session to make it available to the public!

On the Follow-up page, you (and any other external facilitator) can view the advancement of each team through the game rounds.

You also have access to quick-update buttons, if you want for example to Start the Timer, Pause games, Send a message to players etc.

Once a team has reached the end of their round, they are brought to the debriefing page of their game.

This page now shows a comparison of KPIs for the concerned team for the different rounds it went through.

The players and yourself can also quickly access the Session Results page, where the performance of the different teams is compared.

Have a look at our explanatory video below, where Zensimu's founder Mathias comments each new view:

Get started with sessions today, it is free and open to everyone.

Any questions on how Sessions work ? The video above may give you all the answers you need. But if it doesn't, feel free to contact us at [email protected]!