Capitalism II Update

The students completed the Capitalism II simulation a few weeks ago to great success. In total it took about three class periods playing the game before students were successful in implementing a strategy that made their company money. Student's were ecstatic when their income number went from red to green. One student discovered that he could make money simply by trading stocks in other companies. It was great to hear students using economic vocabulary in context. The students were able to intuitively develop an understanding for complex terms by experiencing their meaning in real time. Students were actively discussing production and marketing strategies, they debated the causes of lost demand and affects on price of too much supply. They discussed what it meant for their city to be in a recession and learned the basics of the stock market.

Once students had begun the simulation I was met with some resistance toward completing the gradable assignments. These were tasks that required the application of what was learned while playing into a written analysis. Many students wrote little more than a sentence. These findings show that more scaffolding will be needed in the future to model what a proper response and analysis should look like.