Feature Highlight – Assignment Rewards!

Picture this – you set up your class stock and budget games, along with assignments with tutorials and other info you want students to work through before finishing the games. But students always seem to want to play first, learn later. How can you incentivize them to get through their lessons and quizzes first?

Introducing Assignment Rewards

When you create an assignment on PersonalFinanceLab, one of the settings at the top is if you want to set a reward. Setting a reward gives students a cash deposit (either as “bonus cash” to their stock game portfolio, or a deposit into their Budget Game checking account). You can choose which type of bonus to give students with a dropdown:

By letting your students know there is a reward to be earned by using Announcements or Messages, it gives a clear incentive to finish the tutorials or other lessons before jumping back into the games.

Getting Creative With Rewards

You can also leverage the Rewards system to really get creative with your class structure. Here are some ideas for your class:

1. Complete The Stock Tutorials Before Trading
   • Set up your class stock game with very little starting cash (say, $100). Then create an assignment requiring students to go through each of the basic investing lessons and tutorial videos, granting a $9,500 cash reward to round out a $10,000 starting portfolio
2. Complete The Budget Game Tutorials Before Starting
   • Set up your class budget game with $0 cash in students checking or savings accounts. Only grant them their first $1,000 to “get started” as a reward for completing the budget game tutorial lessons
3. Connecting the Budgeting and Stock Games
   • Start out your students with very little starting cash in the stock game, and use a speed limit of 1 month for the budgeting game. Then every week, create an assignment requiring students to complete 1 month of the budgeting game, with a reward of $1000 to their Stock Game portfolio. This grants students cash to invest in the stock game when they first complete a month of the Budgeting Game

The combinations are endless – be prepared to get your students excited to finish their quizzes!

Happy Learning!

-The PFinLab Team