The Simulator Is Only the Beginning: Inside the CHIRON Network
A simulator can put students inside a real cargo insurance claim. What happens after that click is what turns it into a lesson — and that’s what a network of Port Virtual Lab teachers is now comparing notes on.
Written by: Mar Monzó, CHIRON Network of PVL
Each month, the Escola’s Port Virtual Team runs a webinar for the community of teachers using Port Virtual Lab (PVL) in their own classrooms — a loose, informal network known as CHIRON. This month’s session, led by Mar Monzo, took on one PVL scenario in particular: TT Circle. While preparing it, Mar found her attention shifting — less toward how the tool works, more toward what a teacher can actually build around it once the simulation ends. What follows is a first look at where that thinking led.
The simulator is only the beginning
TT Circle takes students through almost the entire cargo insurance process: analysing the risk of an operation, requesting a quotation, seeing how a decision changes the premium, activating the policy and, when something goes wrong, documenting the damage and submitting a claim. For the teachers running it, the interesting part starts exactly there. The goal was never for students to use the simulator correctly or complete each stage in the right order — the simulation just gives them a situation close to professional reality. What a teacher builds around that experience is what turns it into learning.
What is TT Circle?
TT Circle is a cargo insurance scenario inside Port Virtual Lab. It doesn’t run in isolation — it’s one situation among the operations a class may already be working on, so a teacher can connect insurance, transport, Incoterms, documentation and incident management inside a single professional case rather than teaching each one separately.
While preparing the activity, the team kept returning to the same sequence of questions: why did you choose that level of cover, what would happen if the route changed, is the higher premium worth paying, which decision would you make again and which one would you change now that you’ve seen the result. Written up on their own, those five steps became what the network is now calling the CHIRON loop — a sequence that works with any PVL scenario, not only with insurance.
Five steps for turning a Port Virtual Lab simulation into learning. Works with any PVL scenario; the sequence stays fixed, only the questions change.
1. Analyse — students read the operation before touching the platform: cargo, route, parties, value, known risks. No decisions yet; the teacher’s job is to set the problem and withhold the tool.
2. Decide — students commit to a decision in writing, with their reasoning in a line or two. It’s the step most often skipped, and the one that makes the rest of the loop work.
3. Simulate — they run the decision through the scenario and observe the consequence: premium, cover, claim outcome, cost of the incident. The teacher stays out of it — answering here removes the last two steps entirely.
4. Justify — students explain the decision to other groups: on what basis it was taken, what information was missing at the time.
5. Reflect — they say which decision they’d take again, which one changed once they saw the result, and what they’d need to know before deciding in a real operation. It’s the step the timetable eats first, so protecting the time for it matters most.
Different classrooms, different answers
There’s no single correct way to run it. Within the network, one teacher uses TT Circle as a case study, another as a team challenge between groups, another folds it into a longer PVL operation already underway. A comparative variant has also emerged: assign the same operation to every group, but vary one parameter each — route, cargo value, Incoterm, level of cover. The groups don’t converge on one answer; they map how the decision changes as the conditions change, which tends to produce a better discussion than everyone arriving at the same result.
The loop has its failure points too, and the network has been direct about naming them. If the decision in step two isn’t recorded, the reflection in step five turns into an opinion with nothing to test it against. If the teacher answers during step three, steps four and five disappear on their own. And the loop doesn’t survive being compressed into the last ten minutes of a session — it needs one PVL scenario, groups of three to five, and time reserved for justifying and reflecting before the class ends.
The simulator gives us the professional context. We build the learning around it.
Constantly learning
That’s really the shape CHIRON keeps taking — less a fixed method than an ongoing exchange between people teaching the same platform differently. Anyone using Port Virtual Lab is welcome to add to it: what you ran, what worked, what you’d change next time, sent to [email protected]. A short template keeps contributions easy to compare (scenario used, group, timing, the problem set, the decision asked of students, what was compared, what was adapted and why, materials attached), though a short paragraph is often just as useful as a full lesson plan. Contributions go back out to the network in the next set of notes, with the contributor’s name and institution unless they’d rather not.
CHIRON is the network of educators teaching with Port Virtual Lab, run by Escola Europea – Intermodal Transport.
An open door
CHIRON doesn’t really have a front desk — teachers tend to find their way in simply by using Port Virtual Lab and following the conversation from there. For anyone who’d like a more structured way in, the Escola happens to be running an online Training of Trainers course this October.
261005PVL — Training of Trainers | Online | English
Dates: 5–8 October 2026
Schedule: 15:30–19:30 CEST (Spain)
A 100% registration discount is available for educators — get in touch to check your eligibility.
