Our first major enhancement of the summer is almost here! The next release of Personal Finance Lab focuses on our Assignments – our awesome system used to manage curriculum and track your students’ progress through our Stock Game and Budget Game. There’s three game-changing new features you can expect for your next classes: Rewards, Prerequisites, and Content!
Rewards: Instant Cash Bonuses!
The next time you set up your class Assignment, you’ll notice a new option – “Rewards”:
This is a brand-new way to make sure your students complete their work on time!
A “Reward” is a cash bonus that your students receive when completing the assignment. You can choose whether the rewards are applied to their Stock Game portfolio (it appears as extra cash added to their account), or their Budget Game checking account (it gets direct deposited).
This means students who finish their assignments get an instant boost in the Class Rankings – the perfect incentive to get their work done on time!
Prerequisites: Self-Paced Learning!
You might also notice another option when you’re creating your assignments – “Prerequisite”:
For the first Assignment you create for your class, this will be empty. This new tool will let you “queue” assignments for your students to let them learn entirely at their own pace.
By setting a “Prerequisite”, students will need to complete one assignment before they can progress to the next. As soon as students complete the “Prerequisite”, students are prompted to continue to the next set of lessons and activities, letting them move at their own pace.
Typical Use Case
As a teacher, I want to set up activities for my students every week, and I want to make sure everyone completes everything in a certain order. However, I know that some students might take longer than others.
I would:
- Set up my first assignment (“Week 1”), with a “Start Date” of today, with the first set of activities
- Set up my second assignment (“Week 2”), with a “Start Date” of a week from today, with the second set of assignments. I would set my “Week 1” assignment as a prerequisite.
For my students, everyone starts today and start work on the “Week 1” assignment. Next week, students who finished the first assignment are prompted to begin the “Week 2” assignment.
BUT students who have not yet finished the “Week 1” assignment need to complete that first. As soon as they do, the Week 2 assignment pops up for them to start too.
Combining “Start Dates”, “Due Dates”, and “Prerequisites” give teachers a whole new toolkit for giving students pacing and structure to their experience throughout PFinLab!
Curriculum Update
We are also rolling out an update to our entire Personal Finance curriculum! We’ve been working hard with a team of dedicated educators from around the country to conduct a full audit of our lessons and assessments to make sure they are the best they can be. The topic list will have minor updates, but the contents of every lesson has been reviewed, updated, and revised for 2020.
There’s a lot more coming where that came from – with new updates coming throughout the Summer! If you already have a Personal Finance Lab license for your school, set up your Fall classes today. If you don’t have a license yet, or need a renewal, request a quote for your class with the form below!
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