Design of the system to create and conduct quantitative simulations

Business-simulations gained popularity and relevance in the modern world. Business simulations are the interactive systems allowing to organize, create and conduct simulations of economic and socio-economic processes with satisfactory realism. At the same time, study conducted among students of higher education establishments revealed lack of knowledge and technical skills in the area of business-simulations development using modern software development approaches and technologies. Objective of the paper is to present results of logical and technical design of the system that allows teachers and students organize and conduct business-simulations in the educational process. The general scientific methods were used to define the problem, analyze the need and idealize the solution. The methods of complex software systems design and development were used on the stage of architecture, programming interfaces creation and implementation. The paper describes design and development of the software system for creation and conducting quantitative simulations. The next requirements to the software system were defined: the system has to be web-based; the system has to be neutral to the type of the device and operating environment; the system has to have adaptive interface; the system has to be scalable towards adding third-party simulations, supporting defined API; the system has to have user-friendly interface, minimizing time overhead for the teacher and students during preparation, conducting and analyzing simulation. The cloud architecture has been chosen on the design stage of the research. It allows managing simulations using centralized resource. Developed software system for creation and conducting software simulations consist of the next components: SimulationLab.Admin, SimulationLab.Api.Models, SimulationLab.Engine, SimulationLab.Core, SimulationLab.Web. The augmentation of the cognitive experience of the students was proved during conducting the research. Augmentation was resulting in the practical skills development. Ease of implementation of the business-simulations into educational process is crucial to ability to augment cognitive experience. This resulted in the special attention to the efficient user experience for the teacher and the students during lectures and practical classes. The system is designed and developed using modern software development approaches and tools. Developed system implementation making augmenting theoretical material by practical and research-based type of activities significantly easier and more productive. The courses of mathematical and socio-economic blocks of disciplines of the higher education establishments, schools, corporate trainings and informal education events and materials are the targets to be effectively augmented by the designed and developed system.