At the conclusion of the class period, students will build a final report and presentation synthesizing their experiences from both the budget game and stock game. Students will work in the same teams that they used for the Stock Game project to build this report. The Stock Game freezes all student portfolios automatically at the end of your class trading period – students do not need to sell off their holdings.
Each group will be asked to prepare a final report, plus a short presentation they will make to the rest of the class. Group presentations should not exceed 10 minutes, plus time for questions. Each student will also be evaluated based on a participation score, which is a combination of questions they asked during other presentations and a group self-assessment for the stock game.
The Final Report Should Consist Of:
- Final Stock Game Report
- Restate their original objective statement.
- If they revised their objective statement as part of the “Check-In Project”
- State their updated objective statement and explain why they made the change.
- Restate their original team roles.
- If they revised their team roles as part of the “Check-In Project”
- State the updated team roles, and why they made the change.
- Include a discussion of how they set their objectives, and how well they stuck to their objectives over the duration of the class.
- Identify the final portfolio holdings of the team using a pie chart.
- Identify the investments the team made with the biggest gains and worst losses. Include the total profit or loss for each.
- Identify two major real-world events that had a significant impact on their portfolio
- If they were starting over from scratch and building a portfolio for 7 years instead of 7 weeks, what would they as a team have done differently?
- Restate their original objective statement.
- Final Budget Game Report
- A summary of each student’s final positions in the budget game, including:
- Final Overall Score
- Final Credit Score
- Final Quality of Life Score
- Final Savings Account Balance and Checking Account Balance
- The number of months each student was able to reach their savings goal
- A discussion on the differences between the events in the budget game between the participants. Why did each team member finish with different scores? Did some team members encounter significant events in the game that made progress harder or easier than their teammates?
- If students were playing through the game again, what would they do differently?
- As a group, what do students think were the most realistic and least realistic parts of the budget game compared to what they expect to encounter in the real world.
- A summary of each student’s final positions in the budget game, including:
- A Group Evaluation
- Team members should also separately submit a group evaluation of how much each team member contributed to the total project.
Grading Rubric
| Needs Improvement (1) | Meets Expectations (2) | Exceeds Expectations (3) | Total Score | |
| Completeness – Budget Game | Not all questions have been answered. | All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail. | All questions are fully and completely answered for each team member. | |
| Insight – Budget Game | Students have not identified significant differences in the game for each group member. | Some game differences were listed for each group member, but without discussion of the significance. | The group explores differences in how the game played out between the group members and how this impacted their final scores, highlighting key events that students handled differently and the long-term impacts of those events. | |
| Reflection – Budget Game | Little or missing reflection on what students would do differently if playing again, and how the budget game compares to what they expect in the real world. | Students include a brief explanation of mistakes they made in the game and would improve on if playing again. Some explanation is provided of what they think would be different in the real world. | Students explain differences between the group members in what they would change if playing the game again. Specific examples are provided of the difference between the game and the real world, and what this would mean for a person managing a real budget. | |
| Completeness – Stock Game | Not all questions have been answered. | All questions have an answer, but some responses may lack full detail. | All questions are fully and completely answered for each team member. | |
| Insight – Stock Game | Students do not fully connect their initial and/or revised investing strategy or team roles to the final portfolio returns. | Students explain how their investing objective statement impacted their choice of investments, and how this would be different from other groups. | Students explain both how their investing objectives and team roles did or did not change over time based on how their portfolio performed. They include key real-world events that had a large impact on their portfolio, and what this meant in the context of their objective statement. | |
| Reflection – Stock Game | Little to no reflection is provided in how the team would adapt their investing strategy for a long-term portfolio. | A short explanation is provided about what went right and what went wrong as part of their team portfolio, and what they would do differently if the game lasted 7 years. | Students propose a new or revised objective statement for a 7-year portfolio, outlining what they learned as part of this class but also why investing for a longer term is different than the class game. | |
| Participation – Stock Game | Students receive poor or zero scores from teammates, indicating very little engagement with the stock game project. | Students receive average participation evaluation from their teammates regarding stock game participation. | Students receive outstanding participation evaluation from their teammates as part of the stock game project. | |
| Participation – Presentations | Students did not ask questions or provide comments to other groups’ presentations. | Students asked cursory or irrelevant questions to other group presentations. | Students asked meaningful and insightful questions to other groups after their presentations. | |
| Style and Presentation | Answers are disorganized and difficult to follow. Numerous spelling/grammar errors. | Answers can be understood easily with minimal spelling/grammar errors. | Answers are creatively presented in an easy-to-understand format with no spelling or grammar errors. |
Student Packet
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