I think this is the right approach to take. I would, however, be wary of excessively privileging the notion of "best practices" (which may be highly contextually dependent)--indeed, this is one of my concerns about UrbanSim, in that it potentially generalizes from one set of COIN experiences that may not travel well to other environments. (Then again, I haven't seen the actual simulator, only read the literature on it.)
Key, I think, is encouraging people to think about what questions they need to ask, what kind of dynamics they need to be alert for, and what kind of operational/economic/political/normative trade-offs they are likely to face.
Finally, we need to prewarn people in a sophisticated way about "worst practices"--that is, situations where well-intentioned actors make mistakes due to organizational pathologies, cultural baggage, inappropriate or unresponsive SOPs, etc. I've often found that my own students end up repeating many of the mistakes they've already read about--which provides a valuable opportunity to discuss how and why they did so.
Bookmarks