Based on faculty feedback from initial pilot projects, a key goal emerged for the Learning Lab: to enhance the classroom experience, not replace it. Learning Lab applications typically seek to expand the depth of the educational experience. These products aim to teach students better by using technology to create situations that are difficult or impossible to experience in an instructional setting through any other means. The technology serves to strengthen student-faculty interaction, not replace it. Although not all the projects fit this model, these are characteristic of most Learning Lab initiatives.

Most Learning Lab projects would be categorized as simulations, although the term is fraught with ambiguity. Everything from multimedia cases with a simple branching structure to full emulations of complex control systems fall into the category of "simulation." Other than the attempt to emulate real-world events or processes, these tools have little in common, and their pedagogical outcomes may be very different.

Many of the Learning Lab's projects, however, share a number of characteristics that differentiate them from other technology-enhanced learning models. In general, Wharton Learning Lab simulations: have open-ended outcomes, don't always present the object of the game as the object of the game, encompass more than meets the eye, teach by doing rather than by describing, and facilitate interaction and dialogue.

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