Jaipur, Jul 14 (IANS):  Taking a stride in innovation in teaching Management, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Udaipur has strengthened its MBA programme with a new course - Management Games, which promotes decision making through application of management theories to actual situations.

It is a carefully curated course where students first play a board game which are followed by debriefing sessions where the faculty connects these games to the domain of management. The institute will incorporate this as a full 30-hour course as part of the MBA programme this academic year. Students would be learning through this distinctive pedagogy to enhance their engagement and retention levels.

Speaking about the course, Prof. Shobhit Aggarwal, who teaches Management Games, said: "I believe that gamification of management education would revolutionise the way we think about learning. The board-game-based pedagogy already has acceptance in the corporate world and the reviews received from both corporates and students alike are exceptionally good. I am confident that this experiential learning pedagogy is the future of high-impact management education in business school courses and also in corporate training requirements."

Sharing further about the evolving pedagogy, Prof. Janat Shah, Director of IIM Udaipur, said that "This course will equip students with advanced education that will enable them to manage real-world situations in their chosen field. It will also help them enhance their problem-solving abilities. We're expanding theoretical learning in the classroom to better grasp real-world difficulties during industrial applications. There can be no better way of teaching than imparting practical knowledge of making management decisions."

In this unique method, students play a board game, followed by a concept session that relates their experiences in the game to specific management concepts that they learnt during MBA.

This programme was run at IIM Udaipur as a 15-hour course in the academic year 2021-22 and received excellent student reviews. Hence, this year onwards, it will extend to a full 30-hours course.

This course includes key concepts in games such as integrative negotiation, critical thinking, collaboration and efficient resource utilisation.

More management concepts will be added to it eventually, Shah said.