The right moves: Creating experiential management learning with chess

Management principals are often challenging to teach to students who may not have extensive business experience. This paper describes the objectives and process for using a “chess simulation”, an experiential learning method, that some faculty may consider using to help introduce or illustrate important management concepts to their students. This simulation requires numerous levels of involvement from students (e.g. planning and analysis, discussion and negotiation, teaching and learning, seeing and touching, feedback and application), and, thus, may provide an enduring lesson to participants. The simulation objectives and debrief points correlate the activities that the students experience during the chess match to specific management principles. As the simulation unfolds students will apply most of these principles, and, during the debrief, students will discover that they had been utilizing management principles in the game, and, thus, had gained experience in the application of these principals. To sum, I have found that the chess simulation has proven to be an effective and enjoyable method for illustrating and reinforcing management concepts in the classroom.