Simbound

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CertifiedEducation quality
11/2020
Simbound

Simbound

Simbound/Apollo Edtech
Digital marketing
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Simbound is a simulation tool for learning digital marketing

The online simulation application contains ready-made content to practice the following topics: digital marketing with websites, analysis, and performance of contextual advertising, e-mail promotions, and the management of a medium-sized online brand community.

Students get an interactive, data-rich environment where they create e-marketing content in multiple formats. Competition and collaboration are key to the development of a unique marketing strategy.

Course administration options include participant monitoring, managing simulation traffic, real-time results, collection of feedback from participants, a quiz, extensive reports in the form of spreadsheets.

Age groups 
Tertiary Education
Professional education
Languages 
Română
Nederlands
Français
Español
Türkçe
اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ
Italiano
English
Platform 
Browser-based
Registration 
Required
Offline play 
Internet required
Pictures
Videos
Simbound allows creating digital marketing content and simulating its performance in a realistic manner.

Simbound allows creating digital marketing content and simulating its performance in a realistic manner.

Pedagogy
Educational Quality
Learning Goals

The pedagogical analysis covers how the product supports learning of the identified skills. The student’s role is assessed by four contrary pair parameters, which are selected to cover the most essential aspects on the use of the product.

Passive
Active
Simbound sparks learning through exploration in a very extensive environment. The guidebook and in-app instructions provide good support for students to learn individually. The solution responds or adapts to the user's activities: the environment is interactive and allows many possibilities for the student & teacher to modify the learning activities to meet the needs of learners. The experience is based on learning by doing, where students needs to reflect their own actions and results.
Rehearse
Construct
The learning experience is based on allowing the student to plan, design, and execute online marketing activities and reflect the effect of made decisions in retrospect. The environment offers a very extensive and holistic experience in simulating situations in online marketing. Success is based on the ability to adapt knowledge that the solution delivers: student starts succeeding better in the simulated marketing tasks by reflecting own actions and their effect on achieved outcomes.
Linear
Non-linear/Creative
Users' success can be compared between each other which allows the motivational competitive aspect and also helps the teacher to understand who is learning well and who needs more support. The solution promotes free exploration of tools and/or content: learning through exploration is a pedagogical strong approach and works well in supporting students to achieve the solution's learning goals. The simulation is extensive, and the student can test various scenarios in it.
Individual
Collaborative
Simbound enables both group work and individual work. When playing individually, it allows the learner to make all the decisions individually, and progress and amount of effort depend only on the user's own actions. The comparison of results encourage competition against other users, but this is also a valuable place for learning since different tactics can be easily compared. When playing in teams, the simulation allows very deep collaboration and teamwork.

The following are the high educational quality aspects in this product.

Simbound provides safe and interactive way to practice digital marketing with realistic scenarios
The system is very open-ended and non-linear, allowing students to progress at their own pace and create their own strategies.
The simulation can be played in teams or individually, and it can be used flexibly to fit different teaching situations.

The supported learning goals are identified by matching the product with several relevant curricula descriptions on this subject area. The soft skills are definitions of learning goals most relevant for the 21st century. They are formed by taking a reference from different definitions of 21st century skills and Finnish curriculum.

Subject based learning goals

The role of marketing planning
Marketing and its relationship with other business functions
Characteristics of the market in which an organization operates
How marketing strategies evolve as a response to changes in customer preferences
The elements of a marketing plan
The difference between target markets and market segments
Possible target markets and market segments in a given situation
The difference between niche market and mass market
The following strategies for dealing with cash flow problems: reducing cash outflow, improving cash inflows, looking for additional finance
An appropriate marketing mix for a particular product or business
The effectiveness of a marketing mix in achieving marketing objectives
How organizations target and segment their market and create consumer profiles
The relationship between investment, profit and cash flow
The difference between profit and cash flow
Possible strategies to improve these ratios
The importance of budgets for organizations
The role of budgets and variances in strategic planning
Total revenue and revenue streams, using examples
Short, medium and long-term finance

Soft skills learning goals

Practicing strategic thinking
Practicing to notice causal connections
Learning to build information on top of previously learned
Practicing to work with others
Learning decision-making, influencing and accountability
Practicing time management
Learning to plan and organize work processes
Practicing decision making
Connecting subjects learned at school to skills needed at working life
Practicing logical reasoning to understand and interpret information in different forms
Learning to acquire, modify and produce information in different forms
Learning to understand and interpret diverse types of texts
Practicing to use information independently and interactively
Practicing to find, evaluate and share information
Familiarizing with the influences of media and understanding its affordances
Learning to plan and design own written content and textual representations
Using technology as a part of explorative and creative process
Using technology for interaction and collaboration
Practicing persistent working
Creating requirements for creative thinking
Practicing creative thinking
Encouraging students to be innovative and express new ideas
Developing problem solving skills
Practicing to create questions and make justifiable arguments based on observations
Learning consumer knowledge and smart economics
Using technological resources for finding and applying information
Using technology as a part of explorative process
Learning to notice causal connections
Practicing to plan and execute studies, make observations and measurements
Learning to use foreign language in work context
Building common knowledge of technological solutions and their meaning in everyday life
Learning to find the joy of learning and new challenges

The Finnish Educational Quality Certificate

Our Quality Evaluation Method is an academically sound approach to evaluating a product’s pedagogical design from the viewpoint of educational psychology.

The method has been developed with university researchers and all evaluators are carefully selected Finnish teachers with a master's degree in education.

More about the evaluation