Study on Student’s Decision-making Behavior Mode with Business Operations Simulation System through Protocol Analysis

This research is developed to study the information and considerations adopted by college and master-degree students when operating the Business Operations Simulation System under various kinds of operation scenarios and the approaches used by them for integrating the variations of different business management knowledge. In this research, the protocol analysis is conducted to acquire the historical information of their mental activities, supported with experimental design to create the information recognition based comparative experiment to know how the decisions are made by students. Finally, the analysis and verification results are compared to obtain the behavioral features of students in problem solving and the process of information processing that can be physically described. According to the research, the results indicated that college students require more complicated thinking steps when solving the problem but their thinking elements required for decision-making are not as inclusive as master-degree students. Being less familiar with the issue of decision-making, the college students are normally unable to make correct decisions and work out the solutions; instead, they tend to proceed with thinking and judgment by intuitive method. Being more comprehensive in learning experiences and knowledge accumulation, the master-degree students are able to comprehend he provided information more quickly and they also develop specific kinds of solutions. Therefore, they are able to execute the decision and set up decision items in a more direct way.