Looking for Creative ideas for software simulation courses...

I used to do quite a bit of simulation for complicated software tasks. Not so much anymore but at the time I employed a few different tactics:

1) Only describe the tasks that are difficult. Dragging folks through demonstrations of things that are pretty intuitive gets boring pretty fast. One way to do this is by combining simpler tasks into a compound task. For simpler or shorter tasks, you might consider a quick illustration of the task rather than dragging it out. For these, you might indicate the difficulty with a label and / or color (EASY, MEDIUM, HARD, NIGHTMARE) that way it's consistently clear why you are using a single image to describe a sequence and when you're using the show me / let me try / test me pattern.

2) Build a campaign based on a single scenario or set of related "missions". These would lead the participant through an "application story" where they are solving a problem or set of related problems during the series.

3) Use diagrams to describe the models (the logical operation of the software or "what the user does and what the software will do in return") before laying into more complex tasks or to "build up" or scaffold a task set. For example, "Study this diagram for a minute. This illustrates what you'll do in the software and how the software should respond.". With software training, I think that's what we're aiming for - a clear mental model of the how and the why. Diagrams that are analogs of the way the software works can really help in a lot of cases.

Hope this helps

Steve