Evolutionary Trends in Decision Sciences Education Research from Simulation and Games to Big Data Analytics and Generative Artificial Intelligence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Decision sciences (DSC) involves studying complex dynamic systems and processes to aid informed choices subject to constraints in uncertain conditions. It integrates multidisciplinary methods and strategies to evaluate decision engineering processes, identifying alternatives and providing insights toward enhancing prudent decision-making. This study analyzes the evolutionary trends and innovation in DSC education and research trends over the past 25 years. Using metadata from bibliographic records and employing the science mapping method and text analytics, we map and evaluate the thematic, intellectual, and social structures of DSC research. The results identify "knowledge management," "decision support systems," "data envelopment analysis," "simulation," and "artificial intelligence" (AI) as some of the prominent critical skills and knowledge requirements for problem-solving in DSC before and during the period (2000-2024). However, these technologies are evolving significantly in the recent wave of digital transformation, with data analytics frameworks (including techniques such as big data analytics, machine learning, business intelligence, data mining, and information visualization) becoming crucial. DSC education and research continue to mirror the development in practice, with sustainable education through virtual/online learning becoming prominent. Innovative pedagogical approaches/strategies also include computer simulation and games ("play and learn" or "role-playing"). The current era witnesses AI adoption in different forms as conversational Chatbot agent and generative AI (GenAI), such as chat generative pretrained transformer in teaching, learning, and scholarly activities amidst challenges (academic integrity, plagiarism, intellectual property violations, and other ethical and legal issues). Future DSC education must innovatively integrate GenAI into DSC education and address the resulting challenges.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".