Organizations for learning professionals - NASAGA

Places please for effective instruction.

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Today we examine the foremost national organization for proponents of interactive games in learning – the North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA).

This is the fourth in a series listing the various non-profit national training, educational, and speaking organizations that any training and development professional should be familiar with. The first two articles showcased ASTD, ASCD, and NSA.

NASAGA’s website offers the slogan, “Playful methods. Serious results.” Although sometimes slogans are just that – slogans – NASAGA’s slogan fits.

NASAGA is tightly focused on learning through games and simulations. This focus has made it both a visionary and a growing organization.

The organization was founded over 35 years ago to provide a common meeting ground for simulation gamers the world over. Members come from a broad variety of backgrounds and disciplines in education, training, organizational development, and public service.

NASAGA members work on the design, implementation, and evaluation of games and simulations to improve learning results in all types of organizations.

A major tenet of the organization is that learning that is playful in delivery is also memorable in learning. NASAGA describes its purpose as follows.

“We believe in the value of learning gained through experience and feel that games and simulations, appropriately designed and conducted are an extremely useful (and underused) tool for creating this rich learning.”

NASAGA's primary mission is to facilitate the use of simulations and games and to spread the principles and procedures of interactive, experiential approaches to education, training, management, problem solving and decision making.

Besides hosting an annual conference each year in October, NASAGA offers a newsletter, a discussion board and a list of resources for trainers, teachers, and speakers interested in adding gaming to their events.

For additional information, please visit www.nasaga.org.

Lenn Millbower, the Learnertainment® Trainer helps trainers, teachers, and speakers keep their learners awake so the learning can take through one-on-one coaching, keynotes and seminars, open enrollment workshops, instructional design consulting, and his published works.