ELAF 760: Resource Management in Higher Education

Instructor:  Joshua Powers

Indiana State University

 

Virtual U Website

 

Here’s the Virtual U website with a variety of useful information about the software, manuals, etc.:  http://www.virtual-u.org

Downloading the 1.1 patch

You must download the patch.  This is a new piece of software with some glitches (some but not all that are fixed by the patch).  Download the 1.1 patch from this website:  http://www.virtual-u.org/improvements.asp

Download the Administrator patch and not the Game patch (you own the Administrator Version of the game) via the directions given.

You will know it successfully loaded if it says Version 1.1 in the lower left corner of the start screen after the opening credits.  On or about 9/5, a 1.3 patch will be available that fixes the printing problems (hence, you should no longer need to do screen captures as much).

Finding the Virtual U Tutorial:

The Virtual U Tutorial is located in the VU Tutorial folder on the CD-ROM. To run them, double-click on the Tutorial icon located in the folder.  To get there, select your CD-ROM Drive from Windows Explorer, click on the Tutorial Folder icon, and double click the Tutorial icon at the bottom.

Printing

 

The built-in printing feature of Virtual U is quite poor (hard to read).  Print this way:

 

1. Have the screen you want to print open in front of you and press the Print Screen button on your keyboard.
2. Hit Alt Tab (which will get you to the desktop)
3. Open a word document.
4. Pull down the Edit menu bar and select paste.
5. The screen you copied should be pasted in.

 

Saving a Game

 

Save a game whenever you want but it works best when you do it at the start or the end of a fiscal year.  Saving a game is done through the MENU window in the upper right hand corner of the main play screen.  Name it something logical like the name of the institution and the year (e.g., EmpireStatet0, WaldorfUt3).  The “t0” or “t3” suffix indicates what fiscal year it was from the start (0 being before you did anything).

 

Accessing a Saved Game sent to you as an a-mail attachment

 

Using Windows Explorer, drop the saved game into your Virtual U folder on your C drive (the files are SPSS files but you don’t need SPSS on your computer for Virtual U to run them.  Virtual U has its own version of SPSS embedded into it).  After that, open Virtual U and when you click on Open Saved Game, the game you loaded in should be one of your options.  Clikc on it and you should be good to go.

 

Sending a Saved Game to Someone Else

 

Save a game as described above and then close out Virtual U.  Go to your Virtual U folder in the C drive and find your file.  Attach it to an e-mail just as you would with any other file.  Be aware that the files are pretty big so we recommend sending only one per attachment.  The longer the years, the bigger the file (Year 0 is just under a meg and by year 3, it is up to about 1.2 megs.).  I think a 2HD diskette would hold one game into the 5-7 year range but check it first before trying to save it to a disk.  Only put one game on a diskette as more than one surely won’t fit (in the event you ever needed to use a diskette).  The better choice is a zip disk if you have that capability.

 

Turning Some Features Off

 

We recommend turning off the random features in Custom Games (pop-up windows that can periodically appear with unexpected issues to handle), at least early on in your orientation.  You can also feel free to have it off for all of the assignments.  It can be turned off from the MENU button.

 

Stopping and Starting Time

Press 0 on your key pad to stop time and 9 to go the fastest. 

Key Elements that Affect Your Performance and Score[1]

Adapted from pp. 16-17 of Strategy Manual