Organizing any classroom activity with a few hundred college students can be hectic, but running multiple periods of multiple concurrent markets is just plain difficult. That was, however, exactly what we had attempted on May 21 in the Principles of Economics class at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
With the generous support from Professor Rojas Randall, we had the opportunity to demonstrate the power of using interactive games in immersive learning to close to 400 students. We chose to run the classic continuous double auction (market) game on that day as Professor Randall had been covering the basics of supply and demand and the potential impact of various external factors on equilibrium price and quantity in the prior weeks.It took us about 1 minute to set-up a playlist, the collection of the same or different games to be played, with the market game. Each market had about 70 students, evenly divided as buyers and sellers, per group (or per market). The supply and demand schedules were generated on the fly by the system based on: 1) the cost and value ranges specified in the setup; 2) the actual number of participants in each market. By not making any assumptions on how many students may be in the classroom and fixing group size for each market instance, we maximize student participation in classrooms where attendance is typically unpredictable.
In addition to running three periods of the basic double auction market followed by two periods of the double auction with floor and ceiling price controls, we also played two extra periods with seller and buyer taxes. All told, the game instructions, the seven market periods, and a brief discussion of the results took only 45 minutes. On average, about 130 to 150 students participated in each of the trading periods, and each period had 2 to 3 separate markets running simultaneously. So how did it go? Here are some general observations:
What worked?
Students were engaged. Right from the start, we could sense the students’ excitement on the prospect of playing games and gaining first-hand experience in markets among their peers. As we went through the brief instructions, students were attentive and asked good questions, such as “how many units can I buy or sell” or “as a buyer, how is my value determined?” Many of them were obviously eager to apply what they had learned in the class to the game.
Mobile devices maximized participation. Besides using laptops, students had the option of participating using an iPad, iPhone or Android phone by downloading the MobLab app from either Apple App Store or Google Play Store. By making our games available on multiple client platforms, we removed the requirement of computer laboratory hence the physical constraint of running classroom games; we also alleviated the demand on local Wi-Fi networks by letting students leverage the cellular networks using their mobile devices; and finally, we helped make participation more robust by giving students with more device options.
Results delivered instantly. Real-time content delivery is crucial for any classroom interactive technology. When using MobLab, an educator can look at student’s results instantly in two different ways, namely through a game summary or a data export. After each market period, we immediately showed the students what the theory predicted the market would do and how it actually did. We could repeat the classic Chamberlin and Smith market experiments not just once, but seven times, all in a matter of minutes and with many more students. More importantly though, students were able to see the statistics and summary graph while the market was fresh in their minds.
Technology seamlessly integrated with lecture plan. One of the key design philosophies of MobLab is to allow instructors to "play as we go," which gives instructors the flexibility to be more impromptu with enhancing their lectures. Upon seeing how fast the system operated and how easy it was to set up a new market, Professor Randall proposed to add two more periods to illustrate the differences, if any, in the effect of seller and buyer taxes on price and quantity transacted. With a single click (copy of the previous game configuration) and one parameter change on the tax percentage, we were ready to go!
What didn’t work?
Too many students on Wi-Fi created a bottleneck. Even though the lecture hall where the class was held has access to some of the strongest Wi-Fi signals and multiple networks, we found that the wireless networks were nonetheless overloaded with a couple of hundreds of students trying to log in and join the playlist at once. As a result, the network was unstable during much of the market game play, which not only prevented about half of the 400-person class from participating in the markets but also made the administration difficult because we had the instructor console on the same Wi-Fi network as the students did. That said, the good news is students who used mobile devices on their own data networks were able to play through the entire sequence of markets, further validating our direction of making games mobile.
Total participation a challenge. Besides the congestion of the local Wi-Fi networks preventing some students from joining the game in time, we noticed there were still a fraction of students who didn’t participate. Although only a direct survey would help us understand better their decision, we suspect one or more of the following factors may be at fault:
Lack of proper incentive to participate
No access to a smartphone or laptop.
Getting distracted during times of administrative friction (for example, trying to figure out how to project the results on the board).
However, we are confident that these limitations can be mitigated in the near future by improving our technology, content and support as well as gaining more experience on operating our system by the instructors.Parting Thoughts
To the best of our knowledge, running a double auction market of this size in a classroom while students use their preferred device was unprecedented. It speaks volume of how technology has advanced, both software and hardware, in the last few decades. I fully anticipate that interactive pedagogical games will play an increasingly critical role in large classrooms, as more schools are moving toward the flipped classroom paradigm. MobLab’s serious games may be ideal candidates to fill the suddenly available classroom time as most of the students, if not all, already find game playing intuitive and less intimidating comparing to other types of classroom activities such as group discussion or Q&A, especially in a giant lecture hall with hundreds of other students.
Without a question, there are still many hurdles, both technical and educational, to overcome before immersive, interactive and strategic game based experiments can become as entrenched in social science classes as experiments are in natural sciences, but one thing is clear: it is going to happen.
Would you like to learn more? Get in touch with our team. Whether you’re teaching in person, online, or both, MobLab has got you covered for interactive learning and engagement. Click here to schedule a one-on-one demo meeting.