The main objective of this research is to construct an interactive simulation model, on which a range of problems concerning the academic aspects of a university management system can be analyzed and certain policies for overcoming these problems can be tested. More specifically, the model focuses on long-term, strategic university problems that are dynamic and persistent in nature, such as growing student-faculty ratios, poor teaching quality, low research productivity. The model generates

more »

... rous performance measures about the three fundamental activities of a university, namely, teaching, research and professional projects. To construct such a game, a system dynamics model of the major academic aspects of a university system is built. The "model is validated and verified by standard tests, using data from Bogaziqi University. After these tests, some scenario experiments are done to test and demonstrate the analysis capabilities of the model. Next, the necessary changes are made on the model to construct the interactive gaming version and the gaming interface is programmed. The game has been played and tested by a group of faculty members, teaching assistants and students. Finally, the game results of these players are compared. Differences in performances reveal that players with different orientations focus on different performance measures in making decisions. This paper reports results of ongoing research. At this stage, we can state that the interactive simulation model has proven to be a useful laboratory to support not only practical debate, but also theoretical research on how to cope with