Virtual U Manual: Introduction

Congratulations! You’ve just been appointed as President of a prestigious liberal arts institution by a unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees. It’s the appointment you have been working toward since graduate school and now it’s time to sit back, relax, and watch your kingdom grow. Right?

Not really. Rather, it’s time to start learning how to run an organization as complex as any multinational corporation. But in this case, your “business” consists of faculty members who are often overworked and underpaid, students who feel beleaguered by an administration that is not sufficiently politically active, a staff that wants to unionize, and a losing football team (there go the donors’ contributions!).

Twenty years ago you would have been on your own. Today you have Virtual U — the first fully interactive tool that simulates the management of a university system, from the quality of students admitted, to the building of new physical facilities — in short, every facet of administrative life. Using this simulation, which is based on real-life data, you can actually practice being the chancellor or president of an institution of higher learning.

What does Virtual U do?

Virtual U motivates and guides participants through common scenarios and problems that college and university administrators face on a daily basis.
Virtual U takes place in real time. You do everything from hire and fire faculty and change teaching loads, to adjust the allocation of funds to campus departments. And when the Virtual U school year is over so are you. Your evaluation for the year arrives in a letter from the Board of Trustees.
Virtual U allows you to access financial and operational reports at any time and make the adjustments necessary to keep your institution afloat (and avoid bankruptcy).
Virtual U allows you to choose from several scenarios or construct your own, similar to the institution you manage, attend, or care about generally.
Virtual U allows you to make admissions decisions down to the level of who gets admitted, why, and even their attitude toward the University.

Virtual U is based on an underlying model that mimics actual conditions in real universities across the United States and was conceived and designed by Dr. William F. Massy, former Stanford University professor and vice president for finance and current president of the Jackson Hole Higher Education Group. Enlight Software of Hong Kong, a leading simulation software developer, contributed its expertise on creating a holistic simulation design and did all of the hands-on programming, artwork, and software construction. Dr. Massy’s extensive use of mathematical models in building the Virtual U simulation, combined with real data gleaned from thousands of colleges and universities and Enlight’s ability to create entertaining and realistic simulation software, makes Virtual U more than a simulation. It is realistic in its approach and entertaining in its design. The result is an environment that effectively teaches and helps administrators sharpen their skills.

Who Should Use Virtual U?

Virtual U is for anyone who needs to experience the complexities involved in managing an institution of higher learning — anyone with an interest in how colleges and universities work as a dynamic system. More specifically, this includes:

university administrators and their staffs who want to simulate and practice the management of an institution of higher learning,

faculty, especially those involved in administrative positions such as department chairs or division heads,
trustees and members of Regents and oversight boards,
policymakers and other gatekeepers within a university system,
graduate students who aspire to work in college administration, and
anyone interested in a fun and challenging interactive experience.

How Virtual U Works

In the creation of Virtual U, Dr. Massy set out to create as real a simulation as possible. In order to accomplish this, he used data from the IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System), the College Board, and the High School and Beyond survey as a basis for the mathematical models that drive the variables you work with in Virtual U. For example, rather than just creating a hypothetical relationship between variables such as school characteristics and school applications, the underlying relationship between these variables in Virtual U is based on the real data compiled from hundreds of institutions similar to the one that you are emulating. Players set, monitor, and modify a variety of institutional parameters and policies, allocate resources as they see fit, and watch as results continually unfold. The game provides an opportunity to experiment and succeed or fail in a safe and entertaining environment. While Virtual U is not real academic life, it is grounded in authentic data and provides serious lessons in higher education that focuses on the following five broad areas:

academic operations and faculty management,
enrollment management,
resource allocation and finance,
physical plant activities, and
performance indicators.

Each of these areas consists of separate variables that can be manipulated. These areas and their associated variables are described in great detail in Virtual U: The Strategy and Technical Guide (included in the Administrator version of Virtual U or available separately). The relationship between these variables provides the foundation for the consequences of your actions as head administrator.

Additional Documentation and Learning Aids

This manual is not only the tool you have at your disposal for learning about, playing, and mastering Virtual U. It is a basic introductory part of a series of initiatives that the Virtual U development team has taken to provide you with help in learning the ins and outs of this complex simulation system. Here are the other available tools and options.

Virtual U: The Strategy and Technical Guide: This book by Terese Rainwater, Neil Salkind, and Dr. William Massy dives deeply into the inner workings of the Virtual U system and provides hands-on training and strategies that make you a better Virtual U president. With information derived directly from Virtual U’s creator, you can gain insight not available anywhere else. This guide is included with the Administrator version of Virtual U, and is available separately for users of the Game version or users and students using site-licensed versions of the software.

Virtual U Multimedia Tutorial: This Macromedia Flash based multimedia tutorial, which is included on your CD-ROM and featured on www.virtual-u.org, provides an audio-visual overview of the most important aspects of Virtual U. Divided into key sections that cover how various components of the program are used, it provides a way to get quickly up to speed with Virtual U.

www.virtual-u.org: The centerpiece of the Virtual U user community is our Web site, which features many learning tools for Virtual U. With manual updates, a knowledge base, and access to user discussions, www.virtual-u.org is the place to go to improve and trade your knowledge of Virtual U management techniques. The Web site will feature a directory of approved trainers for hands-on training with Virtual U. When software updates are published, www.virtual-u.org will be the place to find those updates and the requisite updated documentation.

Getting Ready to Play

After installing Virtual U (see your installation instructions) and running it, you will see a brief introduction with credits. The introduction will then transition to the opening Campus screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Virtual U Campus screen.

The Virtual U Opening Screen Options

When Virtual U begins, you can select either a New Scenario Game or a New Custom Game (see Figure 1). For the first time Virtual U user, the New Scenario Game option is the best place to start since many of the variables are already well defined and the basic parameters set. In New Custom Game (the focus of Virtual U: The Strategy and Technical Guide), the player customizes Virtual U according to his or her interests. In the custom option, you can choose among three customizable options: Basic Options, Advanced Options I, or Advanced Options II. Or you can choose the pre-configured Express Games.

Note:
Only the Administrator version lets you play the custom game longer than the first two Virtual U years.

Designing your own custom institution game is more challenging and requires more familiarity with the game and the influences that variables have upon one another. For information about custom institution factors, see Virtual U: The Strategy and Technical Guide.

New Scenario Game

New Scenario Game is the primary option that this guide will cover. We’ll review how, in general, a scenario is selected and played. The objective of a scenario-based game is to accomplish an objective such as hiring more minority faculty before you use all your available resources. You accomplish an objective by adjusting certain related policies that you will encounter during the simulation.

New Custom Game

When you want to play a custom game, click the New Custom Game button on the opening screen shown in Figure 1. This will allow you to define custom attributes for your university at the outset of Virtual U. You can define attributes such as whether the University is public or private, big or small, rural or urban. For the most part, you can tailor your custom university to simulate many types of institutions. By clicking on the Express Game tab, you can quickly load several common university types.

Tip:
A more complete discussion of these variables and their relationship to other variables is included in the Virtual U: The Strategy and Technical Guide.

The objective of a custom game (which is only found in its fullest form in the Administrator version of Virtual U) is to stay financially solvent for as long as possible while improving every aspect of your university (as opposed to one or two specific goals in the scenario games). This means working with and manipulating variables as you move toward a better functioning institution.

Load a Saved Game

Click the Load A Saved Game button on the opening screen when you want to load a game that was previously played and saved. This option allows you to play Virtual U and then rejoin a game if you have stopped for other activities, such as actually running a university!

The Hall of Fame

Click the Hall Of Fame button on the opening screen when you want to see who has reached his or her goal (such as the completion of a scenario) and the number of points they have been awarded.

Credits

Click the Credits button if you want to learn about the creative and hard-working people who brought you Virtual U.

Quitting Virtual U

When you want to quit Virtual U and return to Windows, click the Quit button. If you are in the middle of a Virtual U game, Virtual U will ask you if you want to save the game. This is your last chance to do so. If you quit without saving, everything you have done in the current game will be lost.

Getting Started with a New Scenario Game

To teach the basics of Virtual U — whether it is the Administrator or the Game version — we will start by focusing on launching a scenario game. Scenario games are featured in both versions of Virtual U and provide the quickest and most focused way of experiencing the product.

Using an already existing scenario is the best place for first-time Virtual U users to begin. The variables are clearly spelled out in the scenario and a plan for considering the overall goal is much easier to formulate than with an open-ended custom game.

OK, you should be ready to go. Put on your power clothes, get a cup of coffee, and let’s get started. Appendix A shows you a list of all the scenarios used in Virtual U as well as the welcome letter from the Board that accompanies each scenario.

Setting Up a New Scenario Game

Figure 2: Click the Select Scenario button to start a Virtual U scenario.

To start a new scenario game:

Click the New Scenario Game button.
Highlight the scenario you want to select by clicking on the scenario once. As you can see in Figure 2, which shows one such scenario (Teach Better), each of the scenarios is accompanied by a formal explanation of what the scenario entails and the nature of the specific challenge to you as an administrator at the institution.

For example, in Figure 2, you can see that your challenge is to improve the overall quality of teaching without jeopardizing other aspects of the institution’s functioning. You will try to accomplish this by concentrating on those variables that can affect teaching while minimizing the effects that these changes have on other variables.

Based on the type of institution that is selected, the scenarios change slightly. As a function of the game’s design, Virtual U automatically inserts text and numbers (represented in bold in each of the scenarios) based on its internal database.
Click the Select Scenario button.

Scenario Achievements tell you exactly what you have to do to reach a certain level of performance.

Each of these three different elements provides you with all the information you need to pursue the goal in that scenario of Virtual U.

Setting Up an Institution

Once you have selected a scenario, the next screen (as shown in Figure 3), will enable you to:

select the appropriate institution logo (click on one of the triangles to cycle through the choices)
name the institution
provide your name, and
select the type of institution to be simulated.

Figure 3: Setting up the institution is one of the first steps in a Virtual U simulation.

We’ll begin our simulation by being Central State University, run by President Lewis Harvey (if your name is Lewis Harvey), who has been in office for four years.

To accomplish these four things, follow these steps.

Using the up-and-down triangle above the institution logo, click until you find a logo that you want to use.
Select the words “Player University” under Institution name and then type in the name of your institution. Type carefully because once you are finished setting up your institution, you’ll not be able to change anything on this screen. In our example, we’re using Central State University.

Tip:
You are probably used to selecting items on your screen by dragging the mouse over them. It’s the same process with Virtual U, except the selected items are underlined, not highlighted.
Select the word “Player” under “Player first name” and type in your first name or the first name of the person using Virtual U. Do the same for whatever last name is being used.
Click the type of institution you want as a focus. Select the type of university you manage or attend if you want to make the simulation similar to your own situation without starting a custom simulation.

Tip:
To move from field to field within a Virtual U screen, use the Tab key.

There are four types of institutions from which you can select (as shown in Figure 3).
- Private Research University
- Liberal Arts College
- Public Research University
- Comprehensive University
In this example, Central State University is represented as a Public Research University.
Click the Start scenario button. Virtual U generates the game simulation in which you will participate.