This clever video-based short sim uses YouTube’s branching features to illustrate quantum physics and the multiverse theory.
PhET: Interactive Simulations for Science and Math
“Founded in 2002 by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman, the PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations”
Rhet Sim: Communicating to a Diverse Audience

Icon for first screen of “Communicating to a Diverse Audience” rhet sim.
This rhet sim allows the student to simulate attempting to communicate effectively with an audience composed of people from a diverse background.
Rhet Sim for Persuasive Writing
This rhet sim allows students to practice making rhetorical decisions to persuade a skeptical reader that college students work harder than earlier generations.
Interactive Digital Text Games for Political Science
This site, created by Nicholas Vaccaro of Doane College in Nebraska, presents several sims which address political science topics such as international relations, comparative governments, and conflict resolution.
Devil’s Advocate
Devil’s Advocate is a serious game intended to “help prepare deploying soldiers for the myriad of psychological challenges they will face during the stages of deployment….Cognitive distortions and thoughts are negative, maladaptive ways of thinking. Devil’s Advocate helps to fight cognitive distortions by taking an individual through the first step of cognitive restructuring — automatic thought identification. Players will take control of Judith, an otherworldly being whose job it is to eliminate soldiers’ cognitive distortions. The players must move undetected around a base and sneak up behind an individual who is currently plagued by a negative automatic thought. They are then tasked with identifying and labeling the specific automatic thought the soldier is having. Once they apply the correct label to the automatic thought, a new, positive automatic thought replaces it.”
The objective of this work is to help prepare deploying soldiers for the myriad of psychological challenges they will face during the stages of deployment. The objective of this work is to help prepare deploying soldiers for the myriad of psychological challenges they will face during the stages of deployment. The objective of this work is to help prepare deploying soldiers for the myriad of psychological challenges they will face during the stages of deployment.
“Londoner” – A History Game
“The year is 1644. You are 16 years old and an orphan; completely on your own on the streets of London, England. Your goal is to survive and hopefully rise in status.”
This serious game is intended to recreate the experience of trying to survive in 17th century London.
Fighting a Church Fire
This short sim was created for a fire science class (mark Armstrong, instructor). The intent was for students in the community college course to practice the decision making that firefighters employ.
How to Find iOER on this Site
In this blog, we will be posting examples of interactive open educational resources Each example will be categorized as a either a simulation or a serious game. They will also be tagged based on their content, so visitors to the site can search for interactive open educational resources based on topics (sociology, business, economics, physics).
To access the interactive open educational resource that has been aggregated,use the search function to the right using one of the following categories
- History
- Psychology
- Ethics
- Fire Science
- Sociology
- Writing/Composition
- Economics
- Political Science
When the search function provides an abbreviated description of a relevant iOER artifact, click the title of the entry to get full access to the description and an active link to the interactive open educational resource.
A Fine Line (Ethics)
This short sim created at Carnegie Mellon is intended to help computer science students think about ethical choices and their impact.