Project Success through Effective Decisions: Case Studies on Project Goal Setting, Success Evaluation and Managerial Decision Making

The objective of the thesis is to structure and model the factors that contribute to and can be used in evaluating project success. The purpose of this thesis is to enhance the understanding of three research topics. The goal setting process, success evaluation and decision-making process are studied in the context of a project, business unitand its business environment. To achieve the objective three research questionsare posed. These are 1) how to set measurable project goals, 2) how to evaluateproject success and 3) how to affect project success with managerial decisions.The main theoretical contribution comes from deriving a synthesis of these research topics which have mostly been discussed apart from each other in prior research. The research strategy of the study has features from at least the constructive, nomothetical, and decision-oriented research approaches. This strategy guides the theoretical and empirical part of the study. Relevant concepts and a framework are composed on the basis of the prior research contributions within the problem area. A literature review is used to derive constructs of factors withinthe framework. They are related to project goal setting, success evaluation, and decision making. On the basis of this, the case study method is applied to complement the framework. The empirical data includes one product development program, three construction projects, as well as one organization development, hardware/software, and marketing project in their contexts. In two of the case studiesthe analytic hierarchy process is used to formulate a hierarchical model that returns a numerical evaluation of the degree of project success. It has its origin in the solution idea which in turn has its foundation in the notion of projectsuccess. The achieved results are condensed in the form of a process model thatintegrates project goal setting, success evaluation and decision making. The process of project goal setting is analysed as a part of an open system that includes a project, the business unit and its competitive environment. Four main constructs of factors are suggested. First, the project characteristics and requirements are clarified. The second and the third construct comprise the components of client/market segment attractiveness and sources of competitive advantage. Together they determine the competitive position of a business unit. Fourth, the relevant goals and the situation of a business unit are clarified to stress their contribution to the project goals. Empirical evidence is gained on the exploitation of increased knowledge and on the reaction to changes in the business environment during a project to ensure project success. The relevance of a successful project to a company or a business unit tends to increase the higher the reference level of project goals is set. However, normal performance or sometimes performance below this normal level is intentionally accepted. Success measures make project success quantifiable. There are result-oriented, process-oriented and resource-oriented success measures. The study also links result measurements to enablers that portray the key processes. The success measures can be classified into success domains determining the areas on which success is assessed. Empiricalevidence is gained on six success domains: strategy, project implementation, product, stakeholder relationships, learning situation and company functions. However, some project goals, like safety, can be assessed using success measures that belong to two success domains. For example a safety index is used for assessing occupational safety during a project, which is related to project implementation. Product safety requirements, in turn, are connected to the product characteristics and thus to the product-related success domain. Strategic success measures can be used to weave the project phases together. Empirical evidence on their static nature is gained. In order-oriented projects the project phases are oftencontractually divided into different suppliers or contractors. A project from the supplier's perspective can represent only a part of the ¿whole project¿ viewed from the client's perspective. Therefore static success measures are mostly used within the contractually agreed project scope and duration. Proof is also acquired on the dynamic use of operational success measures. They help to focus on the key issues during each project phase. Furthermore, it is shown that the original success domains and success measures, their weights and target values can change dynamically. New success measures can replace the old ones to correspond better with the emphasis of the particular project phase. This adjustment concentrates on the key decision milestones. As a conclusion, the study suggests a combination of static and dynamic success measures. Their linkage to an incentive system can make the project management proactive, enable fast feedback and enhancethe motivation of the personnel. It is argued that the sequence of effective decisions is closely linked to the dynamic control of project success. According to the used definition, effective decisions aim at adequate decision quality and decision implementation. The findings support that project managers construct and use a chain of key decision milestones to evaluate and affect success during aproject. These milestones can be seen as a part of the business processes. Different managers prioritise the key decision milestones to a varying degree. Divergent managerial perspectives, power, responsibilities and involvement during a project offer some explanation for this. Finally, the study introduces the use ofHard Gate and Soft Gate decision milestones. The managers may use the former milestones to provide decision support on result measurements and ad hoc critical conditions. In the latter milestones they may make intermediate success evaluation also on the basis of other types of success measures, like process and resource measures.

Task complexity, the Cognition Hypothesis and second language learning and performance

In this paper we describe a taxonomy of task demands which distinguishes between Task Complexity, Task Condition and Task Difficulty. We then describe three theoretical claims and predictions of the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2001, 2003b, 2005a) concerning the effects of task complexity on: (a) language production; (b) interaction and uptake of information available in the input to tasks; and (c) individual differences-task interactions. Finally we summarize the findings of the empirical studies in this special issue which all address one or more of these predictions and point to some directions for continuing, future research into the effects of task complexity on learning and performance.

Learning-induced gene expression in the heads of two Nasonia species that differ in long-term memory formation.

BACKGROUND: Cellular processes underlying memory formation are evolutionary conserved, but natural variation in memory dynamics between animal species or populations is common. The genetic basis of this fascinating phenomenon is poorly understood. Closely related species of Nasonia parasitic wasps differ in long-term memory (LTM) formation: N. vitripennis will form transcription-dependent LTM after a single conditioning trial, whereas the closely-related species N. giraulti will not. Genes that were differentially expressed (DE) after conditioning in N. vitripennis, but not in N. giraulti, were identified as candidate genes that may regulate LTM formation. RESULTS: RNA was collected from heads of both species before and immediately, 4 or 24 hours after conditioning, with 3 replicates per time point. It was sequenced strand-specifically, which allows distinguishing sense from antisense transcripts and improves the quality of expression analyses. We determined conditioning-induced DE compared to naïve controls for both species. These expression patterns were then analysed with GO enrichment analyses for each species and time point, which demonstrated an enrichment of signalling-related genes immediately after conditioning in N. vitripennis only. Analyses of known LTM genes and genes with an opposing expression pattern between the two species revealed additional candidate genes for the difference in LTM formation. These include genes from various signalling cascades, including several members of the Ras and PI3 kinase signalling pathways, and glutamate receptors. Interestingly, several other known LTM genes were exclusively differentially expressed in N. giraulti, which may indicate an LTM-inhibitory mechanism. Among the DE transcripts were also antisense transcripts. Furthermore, antisense transcripts aligning to a number of known memory genes were detected, which may have a role in regulating these genes. CONCLUSION: This study is the first to describe and compare expression patterns of both protein-coding and antisense transcripts, at different time points after conditioning, of two closely related animal species that differ in LTM formation. Several candidate genes that may regulate differences in LTM have been identified. This transcriptome analysis is a valuable resource for future in-depth studies to elucidate the role of candidate genes and antisense transcription in natural variation in LTM formation.

Los enfoques de aprendizaje en estudiantes universitarios Catalanes mediante el approaches and study skills inventory for students (ASSIST) = Learning Approaches of Catalan University Students Measured with the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST)

The aim of this study is to measure the psychometric properties of a Catalan translation of the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST), and to analyse the different learning styles used by university students, considering the influence of gender and type of studies. The instrument was administered to 834 students at the University of Girona. The results showed that most students interviewed had a deep approach to learning, although the analysis by gender showed that females tended to use a more strategic approach, while males used a deep approach predominantly. As to whether the type of studies influenced learning styles, a prevalence of deep approach was found among Science and Technology students, while a more strategic approach was found among Humanities and Education students

Gestión de la actividad no presencial y autoevaluación de competencias = Management of Student Learning Outside the Classroom and the Self-evaluation of Competences

Psychological Assessment is a core subject of Psychology studies, and of the university degree Human development, at the University of Girona and according to the University regulations, had 12 credits. Until the 2005-06 academic years, the student work conducted outside the classroom consisted of undertaking a psychological assessment that was written and handed in at the end of the course. From this the student obtained a qualification and a review if they applied for it In accordance with the European Credits for Higher Education, this subject was reduced to 9 credits, which is the equivalent of a total of 255 hours of in-class work and outside the classroom. In the 2006-07 academic year we created a guide to manage the student’s experiences outside the classroom, with the objective of encouraging the application of problem solving/critical thinking (Bloom, 1975), in line with the recommendations of the Catalonia Agency for University System Quality (2005). The guide includes: learning objectives, evaluation criterions, a description of activities, work week timetable for the whole course, programmed tutorials to review all steps of the psychological assessment process, and the use of a web-based virtual forum for the transfer of knowledge, analysis and constructive critiques of the assessment done by themselves and their colleagues

Efficiency and Equity in Learning Communities and schools

Traditionally, school efficiency has been measured as a function of educational production. In the last two decades, however, studies in the economics of education have indicated that more is required to improve school efficiency: researchers must explore how significant changes in school organization affect the performance of at-risk students. In this paper we introduce Henry Levin’s adoption of the X-efficiency approach to education and we describe the efficient and cost-effective characteristics of one Learning Communities Project School that significantly improved its student outcomes and enrollment numbersand reduced its absenteeism rate to zero. The organizational change that facilitatedthese improvements defined specific issues to address. Students’ school success became the focus of the school project, which also offered specific incentives, selected teachers, involved parents and community members in decisions, and used the most efficient technologies and methods. This case analysis reveals new two elements—family training and community involvement—that were not explicit parts of Levin’s adaptation. The case of the Antonio Machado Public School should attract the attention of both social scientists and policy makers

The Connectivity of Musical Aptitude and Foreign Language Learning Skills: Neural and Behavioural Evidence

Given the structural and acoustical similarities between speech and music, and possible overlapping cerebral structures in speech and music processing, a possible relationship between musical aptitude and linguistic abilities, especially in terms of second language pronunciation skills, was investigated. Moreover, the laterality effect of the mother tongue was examined with both adults and children by means of dichotic listening scores. Finally, two event-related potential studies sought to reveal whether children with advanced second language pronunciation skills and higher general musical aptitude differed from children with less-advanced pronunciation skills and less musical aptitude in accuracy when preattentively processing mistuned triads and music / speech sound durations. The results showed a significant relationship between musical aptitude, English language pronunciation skills, chord discrimination ability, and sound-change-evoked brain activation in response to musical stimuli (durational differences and triad contrasts). Regular music practice may also have a modulatory effect on the brain’s linguistic organization and cause altered hemispheric functioning in those who have regularly practised music for years. Based on the present results, it is proposed that language skills, both in production and discrimination, are interconnected with perceptual musical skills.

Habilitats comunicatives per a l’aprenentatge en l’entorn virtual = Communicative skills for learning in a virtual environment

The virtual learning environments are an option in permanent training with great possibilities for adults who look for studies that are compatible with their jobs and with their family life. So as to participate in determined learning as much in attitudes as knowledge and skills. The article is dedicated to analysing the necessary linguistic habits for moving within an environment of this type and offers didactic proposals that can facilitate the active participation in a virtual course and widen the perspectives of the control of new channels of communication with objectives that are different to learning

Promoting Programming Learning. Engagement, Automatic Assessment with Immediate Feedback in Visualizations

The skill of programming is a key asset for every computer science student. Many studies have shown that this is a hard skill to learn and the outcomes of programming courses have often been substandard. Thus, a range of methods and tools have been developed to assist students’ learning processes. One of the biggest fields in computer science education is the use of visualizations as a learning aid and many visualization based tools have been developed to aid the learning process during last few decades. Studies conducted in this thesis focus on two different visualizationbased tools TRAKLA2 and ViLLE. This thesis includes results from multiple empirical studies about what kind of effects the introduction and usage of these tools have on students’ opinions and performance, and what kind of implications there are from a teacher’s point of view. The results from studies in this thesis show that students preferred to do web-based exercises, and felt that those exercises contributed to their learning. The usage of the tool motivated students to work harder during their course, which was shown in overall course performance and drop-out statistics. We have also shown that visualization-based tools can be used to enhance the learning process, and one of the key factors is the higher and active level of engagement (see. Engagement Taxonomy by Naps et al., 2002). The automatic grading accompanied with immediate feedback helps students to overcome obstacles during the learning process, and to grasp the key element in the learning task. These kinds of tools can help us to cope with the fact that many programming courses are overcrowded with limited teaching resources. These tools allows us to tackle this problem by utilizing automatic assessment in exercises that are most suitable to be done in the web (like tracing and simulation) since its supports students’ independent learning regardless of time and place. In summary, we can use our course’s resources more efficiently to increase the quality of the learning experience of the students and the teaching experience of the teacher, and even increase performance of the students. There are also methodological results from this thesis which contribute to developing insight into the conduct of empirical evaluations of new tools or techniques. When we evaluate a new tool, especially one accompanied with visualization, we need to give a proper introduction to it and to the graphical notation used by tool. The standard procedure should also include capturing the screen with audio to confirm that the participants of the experiment are doing what they are supposed to do. By taken such measures in the study of the learning impact of visualization support for learning, we can avoid drawing false conclusion from our experiments. As computer science educators, we face two important challenges. Firstly, we need to start to deliver the message in our own institution and all over the world about the new – scientifically proven – innovations in teaching like TRAKLA2 and ViLLE. Secondly, we have the relevant experience of conducting teaching related experiment, and thus we can support our colleagues to learn essential know-how of the research based improvement of their teaching. This change can transform academic teaching into publications and by utilizing this approach we can significantly increase the adoption of the new tools and techniques, and overall increase the knowledge of best-practices. In future, we need to combine our forces and tackle these universal and common problems together by creating multi-national and multiinstitutional research projects. We need to create a community and a platform in which we can share these best practices and at the same time conduct multi-national research projects easily.

Verbal learning in mild cognitive impairment and alzheimer's disease : behavioural and neural approaches

The main focus of the present thesis was at verbal episodic memory processes that are particularly vulnerable to preclinical and clinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here these processes were studied by a word learning paradigm, cutting across the domains of memory and language learning studies. Moreover, the differentiation between normal aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD was studied by the cognitive screening test CERAD. In study I, the aim was to examine how patients with amnestic MCI differ from healthy controls in the different CERAD subtests. Also, the sensitivity and specificity of the CERAD screening test to MCI and AD was examined, as previous studies on the sensitivity and specificity of the CERAD have not included MCI patients. The results indicated that MCI is characterized by an encoding deficit, as shown by the overall worse performance on the CERAD Wordlist learning test compared with controls. As a screening test, CERAD was not very sensitive to MCI. In study II, verbal learning and forgetting in amnestic MCI, AD and healthy elderly controls was investigated with an experimental word learning paradigm, where names of 40 unfamiliar objects (mainly archaic tools) were trained with or without semantic support. The object names were trained during a 4-day long period and a follow-up was conducted one week, 4 weeks and 8 weeks after the training period. Manipulation of semantic support was included in the paradigm because it was hypothesized that semantic support might have some beneficial effects in the present learning task especially for the MCI group, as semantic memory is quite well preserved in MCI in contrast to episodic memory. We found that word learning was significantly impaired in MCI and AD patients, whereas forgetting patterns were similar across groups. Semantic support showed a beneficial effect on object name retrieval in the MCI group 8 weeks after training, indicating that the MCI patients’ preserved semantic memory abilities compensated for their impaired episodic memory. The MCI group performed equally well as the controls in the tasks tapping incidental learning and recognition memory, whereas the AD group showed impairment. Both the MCI and the AD group benefited less from phonological cueing than the controls. Our findings indicate that acquisition is compromised in both MCI and AD, whereas long13 term retention is not affected to the same extent. Incidental learning and recognition memory seem to be well preserved in MCI. In studies III and IV, the neural correlates of naming newly learned objects were examined in healthy elderly subjects and in amnestic MCI patients by means of positron emission tomography (PET) right after the training period. The naming of newly learned objects by healthy elderly subjects recruited a left-lateralized network, including frontotemporal regions and the cerebellum, which was more extensive than the one related to the naming of familiar objects (study III). Semantic support showed no effects on the PET results for the healthy subjects. The observed activation increases may reflect lexicalsemantic and lexical-phonological retrieval, as well as more general associative memory mechanisms. In study IV, compared to the controls, the MCI patients showed increased anterior cingulate activation when naming newly learned objects that had been learned without semantic support. This suggests a recruitment of additional executive and attentional resources in the MCI group.

Conditions for EFL learning and professional development : Finland-Swedish learner and teacher perspectives

Engelskans dominerande roll som internationellt språk och andra globaliseringstrender påverkar också Svenskfinland. Dessa trender påverkar i sin tur förutsättningarna för lärande och undervisning i engelska som främmande språk, det vill säga undervisningsmålen, de förväntade elev- och lärarroller, materialens ändamålsenlighet, lärares och elevers initiala erfarenheter av engelska och engelskspråkiga länder. Denna studie undersöker förutsättningarna för lärande och professionell utveckling i det svenskspråkiga nybörjarklassrummet i engelska som främmande språk. Utgångsläget för 351 nybörjare i engelska som främmande språk och 19 av deras lärare beskrivs och analyseras. Resultaten tyder på att engelska håller på att bli ett andraspråk snarare än ett traditionellt främmande språk för många unga elever. Dessa elever har också goda förutsättningar att lära sig engelska utanför skolan. Sådan var dock inte situationen för alla elever, vilket tyder på att det finns en anmärkningsvärd heterogenitet och även regional variation i det finlandssvenska klassrummet i engelska som främmande språk. Lärarresultaten tyder på att vissa lärare har klarat av att på ett konstruktivt sätt att tackla de förutsättningar de möter. Andra lärare uttrycker frustration över sin arbetssituation, läroplanen, undervisningsmaterialen och andra aktörer som kommer är av betydelse för skolmiljön. Studien påvisar att förutsättningarna för lärande och undervisning i engelska som främmande språk varierar i Svenskfinland. För att stöda elevers och lärares utveckling föreslås att dialogen mellan aktörer på olika nivå i samhället bör förbättras och systematiseras.

Neural correlates of language learning in adults

The human language-learning ability persists throughout life, indicating considerable flexibility at the cognitive and neural level. This ability spans from expanding the vocabulary in the mother tongue to acquisition of a new language with its lexicon and grammar. The present thesis consists of five studies that tap both of these aspects of adult language learning by using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during language processing and language learning tasks. The thesis shows that learning novel phonological word forms, either in the native tongue or when exposed to a foreign phonology, activates the brain in similar ways. The results also show that novel native words readily become integrated in the mental lexicon. Several studies in the thesis highlight the left temporal cortex as an important brain region in learning and accessing phonological forms. Incidental learning of foreign phonological word forms was reflected in functionally distinct temporal lobe areas that, respectively, reflected short-term memory processes and more stable learning that persisted to the next day. In a study where explicitly trained items were tracked for ten months, it was found that enhanced naming-related temporal and frontal activation one week after learning was predictive of good long-term memory. The results suggest that memory maintenance is an active process that depends on mechanisms of reconsolidation, and that these process vary considerably between individuals. The thesis put special emphasis on studying language learning in the context of language production. The neural foundation of language production has been studied considerably less than that of perceptive language, especially on the sentence level. A well-known paradigm in language production studies is picture naming, also used as a clinical tool in neuropsychology. This thesis shows that accessing the meaning and phonological form of a depicted object are subserved by different neural implementations. Moreover, a comparison between action and object naming from identical images indicated that the grammatical class of the retrieved word (verb, noun) is less important than the visual content of the image. In the present thesis, the picture naming was further modified into a novel paradigm in order to probe sentence-level speech production in a newly learned miniature language. Neural activity related to grammatical processing did not differ between the novel language and the mother tongue, but stronger neural activation for the novel language was observed during the planning of the upcoming output, likely related to more demanding lexical retrieval and short-term memory. In sum, the thesis aimed at examining language learning by combining different linguistic domains, such as phonology, semantics, and grammar, in a dynamic description of language processing in the human brain.

Towards an Integrative Information Society: Studies on Individuality in Speech and Sign

The flow of information within modern information society has increased rapidly over the last decade. The major part of this information flow relies on the individual’s abilities to handle text or speech input. For the majority of us it presents no problems, but there are some individuals who would benefit from other means of conveying information, e.g. signed information flow. During the last decades the new results from various disciplines have all suggested towards the common background and processing for sign and speech and this was one of the key issues that I wanted to investigate further in this thesis. The basis of this thesis is firmly within speech research and that is why I wanted to design analogous test batteries for widely used speech perception tests for signers – to find out whether the results for signers would be the same as in speakers’ perception tests. One of the key findings within biology – and more precisely its effects on speech and communication research – is the mirror neuron system. That finding has enabled us to form new theories about evolution of communication, and it all seems to converge on the hypothesis that all communication has a common core within humans. In this thesis speech and sign are discussed as equal and analogical counterparts of communication and all research methods used in speech are modified for sign. Both speech and sign are thus investigated using similar test batteries. Furthermore, both production and perception of speech and sign are studied separately. An additional framework for studying production is given by gesture research using cry sounds. Results of cry sound research are then compared to results from children acquiring sign language. These results show that individuality manifests itself from very early on in human development. Articulation in adults, both in speech and sign, is studied from two perspectives: normal production and re-learning production when the apparatus has been changed. Normal production is studied both in speech and sign and the effects of changed articulation are studied with regards to speech. Both these studies are done by using carrier sentences. Furthermore, sign production is studied giving the informants possibility for spontaneous speech. The production data from the signing informants is also used as the basis for input in the sign synthesis stimuli used in sign perception test battery. Speech and sign perception were studied using the informants’ answers to questions using forced choice in identification and discrimination tasks. These answers were then compared across language modalities. Three different informant groups participated in the sign perception tests: native signers, sign language interpreters and Finnish adults with no knowledge of any signed language. This gave a chance to investigate which of the characteristics found in the results were due to the language per se and which were due to the changes in modality itself. As the analogous test batteries yielded similar results over different informant groups, some common threads of results could be observed. Starting from very early on in acquiring speech and sign the results were highly individual. However, the results were the same within one individual when the same test was repeated. This individuality of results represented along same patterns across different language modalities and - in some occasions - across language groups. As both modalities yield similar answers to analogous study questions, this has lead us to providing methods for basic input for sign language applications, i.e. signing avatars. This has also given us answers to questions on precision of the animation and intelligibility for the users – what are the parameters that govern intelligibility of synthesised speech or sign and how precise must the animation or synthetic speech be in order for it to be intelligible. The results also give additional support to the well-known fact that intelligibility in fact is not the same as naturalness. In some cases, as shown within the sign perception test battery design, naturalness decreases intelligibility. This also has to be taken into consideration when designing applications. All in all, results from each of the test batteries, be they for signers or speakers, yield strikingly similar patterns, which would indicate yet further support for the common core for all human communication. Thus, we can modify and deepen the phonetic framework models for human communication based on the knowledge obtained from the results of the test batteries within this thesis.

Solving the puzzle of mobile learning adoption

The dissertation seeks to explore how to improve users‘ adoption of mobile learning in current education systems. Considering the difference between basic and tertiary education in China, the research consists of two separate but interrelated parts, which focus on the use of mobile learning in basic and tertiary education contexts, respectively. In the dissertation, two adoption frameworks are developed based on previous studies. The frameworks are then evaluated using different technologies. Concerning mobile learning use in basic education settings, case study methodology is utilized. A leading provider of mobile learning services and products in China, Noah Ltd., is investigated. Multiple sources of evidence are collected to test the framework. Regarding mobile learning adoption in tertiary education contexts, survey research methodology is utilized. Based on 209 useful responses, the framework is evaluated using structural equation modelling technology. Four proposed determinants of intention to use are evaluated, which are perceived ease of use, perceived near-term usefulness, perceived ong-term usefulness and personal innovativeness. The dissertation provides a number of new insights for both researchers and practitioners. In particular, the dissertation specifies a practical solution to deal with the disruptive effects of mobile learning in basic education, which keeps the use of mobile learning away from the schools across such as European countries. A list of new and innovative mobile learning technologies is systematically introduced as well. Further, the research identifies several key factors driving mobile learning adoption in tertiary education settings. In theory, the dissertation suggests that since the technology acceptance model is initiated in work-oriented innovations by testing employees, it is not necessarily the best model for studying educational innovations. The results also suggest that perceived longterm usefulness for educational systems should be as important as perceived usefulness for utilitarian systems, and perceived enjoyment for hedonic systems. A classification based on the nature of systems purpose (utilitarian, hedonic or educational) would contribute to a better understanding of the essence of IT innovation adoption.

Playing to Learn: Business Simulation Games as Leadership Learning Environments

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate if participation in business simulation gaming sessions can make different leadership styles visible and provide students with experiences beneficial for the development of leadership skills. Particularly, the focus is to describe the development of leadership styles when leading virtual teams in computer-­supported collaborative game settings and to identify the outcomes of using computer simulation games as leadership training tools. To answer to the objectives of the study, three empirical experiments were conducted to explore if participation in business simulation gaming sessions (Study I and II), which integrate face-­to-­face and virtual communication (Study III and IV), can make different leadership styles visible and provide students with experiences beneficial for the development of leadership skills. In the first experiment, a group of multicultural graduate business students (N=41) participated in gaming sessions with a computerized business simulation game (Study III). In the second experiment, a group of graduate students (N=9) participated in the training with a ‘real estate’ computer game (Study I and II). In the third experiment, a business simulation gaming session was organized for graduate students group (N=26) and the participants played the simulation game in virtual teams, which were organizationally and geographically dispersed but connected via technology (Study IV). Each team in all experiments had three to four students and students were between 22 and 25 years old. The business computer games used for the empirical experiments presented an enormous number of complex operations in which a team leader needed to make the final decisions involved in leading the team to win the game. These gaming environments were interactive;; participants interacted by solving the given tasks in the game. Thus, strategy and appropriate leadership were needed to be successful. The training was competition-­based and required implementation of leadership skills. The data of these studies consist of observations, participants’ reflective essays written after the gaming sessions, pre-­ and post-­tests questionnaires and participants’ answers to open-­ ended questions. Participants’ interactions and collaboration were observed when they played the computer games. The transcripts of notes from observations and students dialogs were coded in terms of transactional, transformational, heroic and post-­heroic leadership styles. For the data analysis of the transcribed notes from observations, content analysis and discourse analysis was implemented. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) was also utilized in the study to measure transformational and transactional leadership styles;; in addition, quantitative (one-­way repeated measures ANOVA) and qualitative data analyses have been performed. The results of this study indicate that in the business simulation gaming environment, certain leadership characteristics emerged spontaneously. Experiences about leadership varied between the teams and were dependent on the role individual students had in their team. These four studies showed that simulation gaming environment has the potential to be used in higher education to exercise the leadership styles relevant in real-­world work contexts. Further, the study indicated that given debriefing sessions, the simulation game context has much potential to benefit learning. The participants who showed interest in leadership roles were given the opportunity of developing leadership skills in practice. The study also provides evidence of unpredictable situations that participants can experience and learn from during the gaming sessions. The study illustrates the complex nature of experiences from the gaming environments and the need for the team leader and role divisions during the gaming sessions. It could be concluded that the experience of simulation game training illustrated the complexity of real life situations and provided participants with the challenges of virtual leadership experiences and the difficulties of using leadership styles in practice. As a result, the study offers playing computer simulation games in small teams as one way to exercise leadership styles in practice.