HISTORY

In 2000, Experience Builders was formed with a mission to make high quality role-play simulations affordable, mainstream products. Our strategy is to (1) dramatically simplify and reduce the time, energy and costs associated with building simulations, and (2) equip organizations with the tools to build simulations internally.

Our origins date back to the Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS) at Northwestern University where John Cleave, an EB Principal, studied under artificial intelligence guru, Roger Schank. It was there that many of the theories and methodologies for effective simulations were first developed.

The innovative thinking at ILS attracted the interest of many leading corporations, who were looking for ways to reinvent their training. A for-profit spinoff from ILS was formed as a direct response to this interest. That spinoff company, Cognitive Arts, focused exclusively on designing and building soft-skill training simulations for Fortune 500 companies.

Cognitive Arts’ systems were well received, but they took a long time to build and came at a very high price. As the e-learning marketplace matured, more and more pressure was placed on lowering costs and production time. Many companies began to look for ways to bring simulation development in-house. They couldn’t rationalize spending hundreds of thousands of dollars outsourcing when they were already spending millions on internal development resources. Nonetheless, they wanted to continue incorporating more high quality simulations in their curricula.

Experience Builders was formed to tackle these challenges. John Cleave partnered with his brother, Scott, who has more than 20 years of experience in the business world and a graduate education from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. John’s academic background matched perfectly with Scott’s business acumen. They were soon joined by Jeff Brandt, who managed the creative work in many of the simulations produced by Cognitive Arts, and the three began to reinvent simulation production methodology.

The fruits of their labor produced a cutting edge authoring tool that made creating simulations a fast, easy, and accessible endeavor. Backed by a development staff with extensive experience in all aspects of production, including interface design, learning design, content development, database architecture, programming, assessment, and quality assurance, EB has produced over 150 scenarios for organizations like IBM, Ulysses Learning, and the University of Chicago, to name a few.

Experience Builders represents a depth of knowledge and specialized skills that are unsurpassed in making high quality role-playing simulations affordable.