Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Discussions about educational uses of Capitalism II
Meiaman
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Hello guys, how are ya all going?

Been on a bit of silence here. Currently, the university servitors been going on a strike, so classes are suspended (brazilian public universities. While among the best in the country in terms of research, often have those administrative problems. Waiting for class to resume, so the 3rd experiment can get on track again.

This time we will be taking pictures, use capitalism lab challenge system (for ranking and feedback) and of course, i am working on a portuguese translation for the game.

I do believe the third time will be far better than the 1st and 2nd experiments.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by David »

This sounds great. Thanks for the update.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Update: Third semester using simulator started. Translation is not 100% complete, but that is mostly my fault.



Day 1 (05/01/2016)


Just had them use tutorial 1-4. Initial awkwardness due to the simulator complexity and a few translating issues. There is a bug at tutorial 1 that enables you to deselect the building you have to construct, but it won´t allow you to open the build menu again (unless you use the B shortcut). It happened at only 2 out of the 30 used computers.

Hardest part of applying the simulator is always explaining to the class how it works. If you explain yourself, some of them don´t pay attention, are too slow to keep up or are exploring other parts of the game. If you use the tutorial, sometimes they don´t follow it thoroughly and get stuck. A few initial frustrations from the students are expected.


Fun fact: Each semester, some students always asks for the game's download link.
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David
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

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Just had them use tutorial 1-4. Initial awkwardness due to the simulator complexity and a few translating issues. There is a bug at tutorial 1 that enables you to deselect the building you have to construct, but it won´t allow you to open the build menu again (unless you use the B shortcut).
I tested it by closing the build menu and clicking on the Build icon again. And I have no problems building the retail store in this way.

Could you please describe the problem in more details so that I can nail it down?
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Meiaman
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

It is exactly at that part in the picture. From what i could tell, they somehow deselect the building (closing the build menu in the process) and when they tried to open the build menu again, the menu does not open up by clicking, only by using the B shortcut.


I tried to recreate the bug but no success. It only happened to 2 computers out of the 30+ being used, nobody else had the bug other than those 2 pcs, so i do not know if it is a very specific set of actions that trigger the bug or computer related.

Also, on tutorial 6, when i clicked the build menu, an error message showed up once. Restarted the tutorial and it did not happen again and it did not happen to anyone else. Forgot to save a picture, will do so if i run into this again.

Had the 2nd day yesterday. ;) I Will describe with more details later.
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

Ladies and gentleman, am i allowed to double post here? ;)

I am going to skip describing the 2nd day, since it was pretty much tutorials.

Anyway, i we had the third day and for the first time we used CHALLENGE GAMES!

At first, everyone had an error when loading the challenge game. I figured the problem was the product name MOD (i renamed it after creating the challenge game, seems that creates an error somehow), the error was fixed and things worked smoothly, aside from the habitual disconnection (computer lab fault, not the game's) or the creepy build menu glitch that has a very low chance of appearing randomly 'operator624' or something, im going to take a picture if it happens again. :|


Today we are going to have the definitive challenge game. It is going to be a 3 class challenge (one hour per class) and they will be running for 30 years. Each student has their own computer and their own company, but they are grouped and must work together as if they were a business conglomerate, in practical means, their individual scores will be averaged for grading purposes.

This is how our last data ended looking like.

Image

Students still have a bit of trouble doing analysis. Some of them do things randomly or trial and error, however some are already picking things up.
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David
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by David »

Thanks for the update. Great to see the progress of using Capitalism Lab's Challenge Games in teaching!
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

4th day

I did forget to take pictures again, the students get very excited and bombard me with questions, so i barely have time to think about doing that. Not a second of rest at all. Will remember doing so tomorrow.

Some students are doing great, but others tried to diversify their business and are being challenged with productivity bottlenecks or inefficient use of resources. I try to explain that to them in these terms, that is the effect of them rushing the business without thinking things deeply and the cost of their actions. Plan. Do. Check. Act.

Industry usually is the biggest villain. They usually pay a lot to set up a factory and either do not know how to sell the production efficiently, being filled with bottlenecks, or sell a subpar product while paying a lot to set things up. One person that did it successfully had some lucky with jewelry because of high quality gold he had access to.

Other students questioned me that even through they have higher cash and profit, the value of their business diminished over time. Once again, i had to explain that is the effect of inflation on their companies' value.

They are truly experiencing the effects of macroeconomics over them instead of just hearing about it. Also feeling how costly their actions can be and how much more it costs for them to undo their actions.

I also advised a student that went broke about emiting shares since he had an already high bank debt, but be careful about corporations takeovers.

Overall the experience is being great. Our class works from 8:30 pm to 10:00 pm. On an average class, students are starting to go home by 9:30 pm. On cap. lab. class, they stay until 10:00 pm. By 10:10 pm we have to ask them to leave.

Results are being displayed to the class using the challenge game system.
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David
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by David »

Thanks for the detailed report.

Great to know about the students' positive reactions!
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Re: Feedback: our experience with capitalism 2

Post by Meiaman »

I forgot to add the pictures.

Here you can see part of the laboratory and people playing it. We had around 35 people on that semester.
Image

Results were shown to the students, almost real time.

Image
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