Course & Instructor Management Updated 2026-06-04

Course Setup Guide: From Creation to Student Enrollment

Setting up your first Simbound course can feel like a lot of steps at once. This guide will walk you through each step—from creating your instructor account, choosing how the simulation is paid for to building your course, scheduling rounds, forming teams, and getting participants in—so you’ll be ready to launch Round 1 with full confidence.

A woman writing in a notebook at a desk.

1. Get an instructor account

Everything in Simbound starts from an Instructor Account. It gives you access to the simulation management and reporting tools — course creation, configuring rounds, enrolling participants, reading results and awarding grades.

1

Obtain a valid instructor account

To use Simbound you first need a valid Instructor Account. If you don't have one yet, contact Simbound support or your institution's licence administrator to be set up.
2

Invite a co-instructor (optional)

You can invite a co-instructor by email. The invitation includes a temporary password and grants access to simulation management and reporting. If the email is already registered as a student, it will be upgraded to an instructor account. This is ideal for teaching assistants or large classes.
3

Open the Instructor Dashboard

After login you land on the instructor dashboard, where your courses are listed. Click any course name to open and manage it. There is the option to create a new course.

Note: Co-instructors have similar management and reporting access. See Co-instructors & permissions for when and how to add them.

2. Understand licensing & credits

Before you build a course, it helps to understand how Simbound is paid for, because you choose a licensing method while creating the course. Each participant needs an individual user license and account to access the simulation.

The three licensing methods

Method	Who pays	Best for
Instructor / school-funded	Licenses are purchased in bulk by the school or instructor.	Standard cohorts where the institution covers access.
Participant-funded (Stripe)	Participants pay individually at enrollment.	Open or self-funded courses.
Cost per Use (credit-based)	Funded by credits — by the school, the participant, or both.	Individual learning and self-paced, asynchronous or independent round progression, ideal for competitions.

How user licenses work

Each license is valid for one simulation run and one participant.
Licenses are purchased in bulk by the school/instructor, or individually by participants at enrollment.
Participants can keep enrolling even if the license balance goes negative — you then confirm payment for the additional licenses used.
Participants cannot see your license balance or purchase prices.

Platform credits (Cost per Use)

When credit-based licensing is enabled, actions within the simulation consume credits:

1 credit per action / decision (e.g. set up a new website page).
3 credits to close a round.

You can allocate an initial credit balance to new participants — these credits are deducted from your account. If participants run out, they can purchase more. Cost per Use is the only method that allows independent round progression, which makes it ideal for individual or asynchronous learning.

Tip: Track license and credit usage anytime from your dashboard.

License restoration policy: A license is restored only if a participant is removed before the first round deadline of the course. If you spot duplicate enrollments of the same participant, you can choose which account to keep — when the duplicates are removed, those licenses are restored to your account.

3. Plan your course

Simbound simulations are intensive learning experiences. A little planning before you build the course pays off in a smoother first week. Four things are worth deciding up front.

3.1 Participant preparation

Give participants time to orient themselves before Round 1.

Audience	Preparation time	Notes
Beginners	4–5 days	Send the business case and the weekly guides beforehand. Record a basic simulation walkthrough.
Graduate Students	1–2 days	Send the business case and weekly guides beforehand.
Professionals	1–2 hours	A short briefing session is usually enough.

Provide materials several days before Round 1, and consider scheduling an introductory meeting (online or in person) to demo the simulation. Registration takes place before or during the first Round.

3.2 Expected participant numbers & teams

If you're using teams, predefine the number and size of teams, and optionally assign individuals to teams before distributing enrollment links. For individual learning, select Cost per Use licensing — no team setup is required. Make sure you have enough credits added to your account.

Participant type	Suggested team size
Beginners	3–5 members
Graduate Students	2–3 members
Professionals	1–4 members

3.3 Simulation calendar design

Decide your course duration, the interval between rounds, and the total number of rounds. Factor in participant skill level, team vs. individual learning, total available time for each Round, and whether you'll include practice rounds.

Participant type	Suggested rounds	Notes
Beginners	4 or more	Include 1–2 practice rounds.
Graduates or Professionals	3-5	Up to 10 rounds possible.

4.4 Large enrollments

If you expect more than 100 participants, invite a co-instructor to help with management and communication, and confirm you have enough licenses or credits available before sharing enrollment links.

4. Create the course (5-step workflow)

A course is a simulation instance that you configure and manage. Courses use ready-made scenarios containing all the simulation data and instructions, and the system automatically tracks each participant's engagement and decisions. Each course is identified by a unique 5-character alphanumeric code that is contained within the enrollment link.

Course at a glance

Name — your title for the course (visible to participants).
Scenario — the standard or adapted parameters the simulation runs on.
Licensing method — School-paid, Participant-paid (Stripe), or Cost per Use.
Timetable — Round structure and deadlines.
Markets — e.g. the USA, the UK
Unique code — the 5-character enrollment identifier.

The course builder walks you through these five steps:

1

General setup

Define the course name, currency, markets, scenario, and in-game currency. Optionally, import the settings of a previous course and adjust them in the course builder.
2

Mode & licensing

Choose an estimated number of participants (0–30, 31–60, or 61–90) and the number of rounds (1–4, 5–8, or 8–10). Then assign the licensing option: instructor/school-funded, participant-funded, or credit-based (Cost per Use can be funded by the instructor, the participant, or both together). Cost per Use allows independent round progression, and you can allocate initial credits to a participant from your balance — best for individual or asynchronous learning.
3

Select a course template

Pick from the Small, Regular, or Large Course templates to pre-fill team counts, practice rounds, actual rounds, and the interval between rounds. (This step is skipped if you imported a course at Step 1.) See Course templates for the exact presets.
4

Course content scheduling

Time-release simulation sections to match each specific round: SEA, Email, Social, Affiliate, and Community. Enable or disable practice rounds, add launch dates for each round (optional, this opens decision-making), and round deadlines (this calculates results for the whole course at preset times).

Course builder — the five-step setup wizard guides you through the setup, licensing, template, scheduling, and activities.

1

Course activities

Add basic initial objectives for each round or test questions for a simulation section, allow the Preview mode (also called Check-up), and optionally enable SEA simulation rewards (performance-based extra budget). Decide if you want to allow participants to restart a round and try out new strategies. You can set a reminder email for participants with no or few decisions. At the end, the system allows a review of all the settings and generates the course enrollment link and lets you send email invitations or set up a co-instructor account.

Tip: Give your course a clear, descriptive name that includes the semester or year (e.g., "MBA Digital Marketing — Spring 2026"). This helps if you run the same course across several terms and need to tell them apart.

Important: You can change most settings after a course starts, but the Licensing method, Scenario, the Course code cannot be changed once set. See Editing a course after launch.

5. Course templates

At Step 3 of course creation you choose a template that pre-fills the structure. You can fine-tune the details afterwards in the next step.

Template	Teams	Practice rounds	Actual rounds	Interval between rounds
Small	2–6	1	5	1 day
Regular	6–10	1	5	1 week
Large	10–16	2	8	1 week

Tip: The template is a starting point — you set the final number of rounds, deadlines, and which simulation sections appear in which round at Step 4 of the five-step course setup wizard.

6. Rounds & simulation control

Rounds define the pace of the simulation. Each round is one period in which participant teams make their marketing decisions, and you control how and when each round opens and closes from the Calendar module. From there you can add, remove, restart, or reschedule rounds, and enable or disable individual simulation sections. You can add or disable markets or audience segments at any time.

6.1 Launch dates and deadlines

Round launch dates open decision-making — participants can't act on a round until its launch date is reached. Participants can continue to browse the simulation up until the launch date.
Round deadlines will calculate results for the entire course at predetermined times.
For Cost per Use courses, participants progress independently across rounds and results appear on demand, rather than at a shared deadline.

6.2 Practice rounds

Practice rounds let participants try the interface before scores count. For beginner cohorts, 1–2 practice rounds are recommended.

6.3 Restart a round

Restarting lets participants re-enter the previously completed round to change their decisions in the case they launched a round by accident. Participants can restart rounds individually only with Cost per Use licensing. In deadline-based courses, only instructors can restart rounds, and this applies to the entire class.

Assets — Websites, SEA, SMM, Affiliate Campaigns, Communities — are Preserved on Restart.
Emails can be Deleted when a round is restarted.

6.4 Preview a round (Check-up)

Preview mode (also called Check-up) gives limited access to predictive results during an active round, so participants can assess their performance before the round ends. Enable or disable it during course creation or from Course Settings.

Important: Deleting a round removes its results and the Participants' simulation email campaigns, but it retains assets — Websites, SEA, SMM Campaigns, Communities, and Affiliate campaigns are kept.

7. Teams

Simbound enables team-based activities, with each team submitting one set of decisions per round. You can manually assign teams or allow students to form their own. (If you're running Individual progress with Cost per Use licensing, you can skip team setup entirely.)

Option A — Create teams before students enroll

1

Go to the Participants tab inside your course

Click "Create Team", then edit the team name (e.g., "Team Alpha" or "Group 1"), and save. Repeat for each team you want.
2

Share each team's enrollment link with the relevant students (coming soon)

Each team gets a unique link. When a student joins via that link, they are placed directly into the corresponding team. See Enrollment links.

Option B — Auto-assign teams after enrollment

1

Share the general course enrollment link first

All students join the course without a team assignment. You can see them choosing teams in the "Participants" section.
2

Assign students manually

You can move each student into a team from the same panel. Click on the Settings button next to their name for this option.

Tip: If students are allowed to self-form groups, use Option A and share each team's specific link with the students who belong to that group. This avoids the manual step of reassigning them later.

8. Enroll participants

After creating a course, participants join using the course enrollment URL, which contains the unique 5-character course code. Each link encodes the course code and, optionally, a team assignment.

1

Copy it at the end of course creation

The link is shown on the final screen of the course builder. Copy it there and you're ready to share.
2

Retrieve it anytime from the Settings tab

Open your course and go to the Settings tab — the enrollment link and code are always there.
3

Email it with "Invite Participants"

On the Participants tab, use "Invite Participants" to email the enrollment link to several people at once. Paste the same link into Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, or any LMS — participants with an existing Simbound account can join without re-registering.

On the Participants tab, each team has its own unique link — share each one only with the participants who belong to that team. Once participants are enrolled, you can start the simulation immediately.

Settings Page — course enrollment link and 5-character code are displayed. Copy the full URL for the easiest participant experience.

9. Manage participants

From the Participants tab you can view and manage everyone enrolled in the course, see their teams, and act on individual accounts.

Test accounts

Each course can have three optional test accounts, auto-enrolled for testing and for demonstrating the simulation in front of the class. Use them to walk through the participant experience before your cohort arrives.

Participant-level actions

Click on the Settings symbol next to a participant's name to access the following actions:

Action	What it does	Implications
Participant Info	Change Name, Email or Assign a New Password	Inform Student of Changes.
Login As	Full access to their account for troubleshooting.	Actions are saved, so use it cautiously.
Delete account	Permanently remove a participant or team.	This is irreversible.
Remove From This Course	Removes student from the course.	Student is unenrolled or defaults back to previous course.
Move To Another Team	Reassign a participant to another team.	You can transfer all of their assets as well if the destination team has no website.
Move To Another Team	Reassign a participant to another team.	You can transfer all of their assets as well if the destination team has no website.

You can send messages to individual participants or entire teams, filtering by active or dormant status, display participant decision counts, and reassign accounts between teams or courses as needed.

Important: Deleted participants cannot be restored. Remember that the license is only refunded if a participant is removed before the first round deadline — see the licensing section.

10. Course settings overview

Open the course settings by clicking the course name on your instructor dashboard. Most configuration can be adjusted here after the course has started. Settings you can change include:

Course name and currency
Market selection
Preview Results (Check-up) toggle
Licensing method selection
Referral, Direct, and Email traffic values, and product-level rules for conversions
Social media simulation configuration (audiences, etc.)
Enable / disable Search Advertising (SEA) bonuses
Automatic notifications to inactive participants
Show or hide overall participant rankings
Block the decisional interface
Enable AI text check and improvement suggestions
Invite co-instructors to help manage the course

11. Engagement features: objectives, bonuses & tests

Every course includes optional activities to boost interactivity and learning outcomes. None of them prevents a participant's progression within the simulation.

Objectives

Set basic tasks for each round to guide participants and track engagement. Objectives can be edited or removed, but it's best to keep them stable once the course has begun.

Bonuses

Provide extra search advertising budget for specific decisions or strong performance to encourage strategic behaviour and competition. Enable or disable bonuses anytime via Course Settings. You can also query the chatbot for the bonus condition of each round.

Tests

Tests measure understanding of simulation concepts and track learning progress. They consist of multiple-choice questions with four options, where one (or more) are correct. Crucially, questions are dynamically generated from each participant's own simulation data, which prevents answer sharing. Tests may assess:

Website or campaign performance
Product sales
Marketing decision outcomes

12. Simulation Results

The Results & reporting module displays participant performance across every simulation section — Website, Search Engine Advertising (SEA), Email, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Community, and Affiliate — and supports ranking participants or teams across one or multiple rounds and across different courses.

What's measured

Section	Example metrics
Website	Traffic by source (Organic, Direct, Referral, SEA, Email, SMM); Visits, Leads, Lead Rate, Conversions, Conversion Rate, Gross Profit, market share.
SEA	Impressions, Clicks, CTR, CPC, Cost, Conversions, Conversion Rate, Gross Profit, ROAS, CPA, market share.
Email	Opens, Open Rate, Clicks, CTR, Conversions, Gross Profit, Unsubscribers, market share.
SMM (posts & ads)	Posts, organic and paid conversions, boost campaign cost and ROAS; ad impressions, CPM, leads, conversion rate, ad cost, gross profit.
Community	Number of communities, Members, Engaged Members.
Affiliate	Visits, Conversions, Paid Commission, Promotion Cost, Websites, Gross Profit, Net Result.

Engagement metrics & the "Decisions" measure

Simbound captures participant engagement — SEA bonus completion, Test results, End-of-round comments, Learning-journal entries, and the general Simbound Quiz. The main engagement metric is Decisions: the number of times a participant creates, updates, or deletes entries in their simulation (for example, a new ad campaign, a keyword edit, or an ad variation).

Reports you can export

You can view and download comprehensive spreadsheet reports for deeper analysis, including a configurable Team Report covering team and individual performance, ranking trends, changes from the previous round, improvement insights, SEA decisions and results, and general participant statistics. You can also share files and learning materials with participants through the Resources module (JPEG, PNG, GIF, PDF, MS Word, and MS PowerPoint).

13. Editing a course after launch

Simbound is flexible: you can modify most settings even once the course has started. A few core choices, however, are locked once the course is created.

Editable after creation	Cannot be changed
Deadlines, Rounds, Section availability, Objectives, Tests, Teams, and Participants	Course code, Scenario selection, and Licensing method

Best practice: Plan course settings in advance to reduce post-launch adjustments.

14. Cloning & archiving

Cloning a course

Cloning duplicates an existing course configuration so you can reuse it across multiple runs or units with consistent setup. The system creates an exact copy of the selected course, including:

Simulation scenario and currency
Simulation section availability and round of release
Licensing method
Number of teams
Practice round settings, plus preview and restart options
Objectives and test questions

Note: Participant accounts and data is not copied to a cloned course — you'll share a fresh enrollment link for the new run.

Archiving a course

Archiving moves inactive or completed courses out of your main dashboard into the Archive section, keeping your workspace uncluttered.

Important: Over time, archived course data is permanently deleted from the system. Archive a course only after you've exported or saved all results and reports you need.

15. Co-instructors & permissions

Co-instructors share the same management and reporting access to a course. Adding one is especially useful for large cohorts, or when you're sharing management with a colleague or teaching assistant.

1

Invite from course creation or from

Course Settings You can set up a co-instructor account at the end of the course builder (Step 5) or anytime afterwards from Course Settings.
2

Send the email invitation

Enter the co-instructor's email address. The invitation contains an initial, system-generated password they'll use to log in.
3

They gain management & reporting access

Once added, the co-instructor can help manage the simulation and read its reports, and the course appears on their instructor dashboard.

Note: If the invitee already has a student account, it will be upgraded to an instructor account.

16. Course Setup Checklist

Before your course goes live, run through this checklist to make sure everything is in place.

Tip: Run a quick test round before your real Round 1. Create a practice round, have one student (or yourself with a test account) submit decisions, and calculate results. You can then remove results and the test account.

Frequently asked questions

How do I set up a multiple-week course?

A multiple-week course works well with 4 to 6 rounds — one every week. Set round deadlines at consistent times (e.g., every Monday at 23:59) so students can plan their submissions. Make sure a Round opens at least 48 hours before its deadline so students have time to act.

Can students form their own teams?

Yes. Create named teams in advance and share each team's unique link with the students who belong to that group. When they enroll via that link they are placed in the correct team automatically. Alternatively, you can create teams after enrollment and place students into teams manually.

What happens if a student enrolls in the wrong team?

You can move students between teams at any point. Go to the Teams tab, find the student, and move them to the correct team. Moving a student after decisions have been submitted for a round may require you to copy their decisions to the destination team.

Can I duplicate a course I have already run?

Yes — use the Clone option. Cloning creates an exact copy of the scenario, currency, section availability and release rounds, licensing method, number of teams, practice/preview/restart settings, and objectives and test questions. Participant data is not copied, so you'll share a new enrollment link for the cloned course.

Do I need to be online when a round deadline passes?

No. Round deadlines calculate results for the whole course automatically at the predetermined time, with no action needed from you. The exception is Cost per Use courses, where participants progress independently and results appear on demand rather than at a shared deadline.

Which licensing method should I choose?

Use instructor/school-funded licenses when the institution covers access, participant-funded (Stripe) when participants pay individually at enrollment, or Cost per Use (credit-based) for individual, asynchronous self-paced learning. Note that the scenario and the Cost per Use method can't be changed after the course is created, so decide before you launch.

What happens if I run out of licenses or credits?

Participants can keep enrolling even if your license balance reaches 0 or goes negative — you simply confirm payment for the extra licenses used. With credits, 1 credit is consumed per action/decision and 3 credits to close a round; participants can buy more if they run out. Track usage anytime using your dashboard.

Can participants change their decisions after submitting?

Only on Cost per Use courses, where you can restart a completed round so participants re-enter and edit their decisions. Assets such as websites, campaigns, and communities are preserved on restart, but emails are deleted. On other licensing methods, decisions are locked once the round closes.

Can I run the simulation for individuals instead of teams?

Yes. Choose Cost per Use licensing and skip team setup — it allows independent round progression, which is ideal for individual learning. You can also allocate an initial credit balance to each participant from your own balance.

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