Getting Down to Business With a Fun Business Sim

What kind of business would you run?

In this post, we will be starting off on a sample lesson that could be used with many different mathematics classes. This game session is all about setting the stage and getting things started with just a taste of what will continue each game session.

Note that students will be concentrating mostly on the concept of what makes a businesses successful. Based on their individual philosophies and the collaborations with peers in their group, students will be making their first business choices for a fledgling start up business. Future posts will continue with this game with each post completing a turn or two and introducing more and more mathematics focal points. It will be important to emphasize that groups and individuals should be recording all data the game provides for future work that will be done. Perhaps a page in their journal could be used for data collection for each game turn.

Before students engage in any game play or exploration, get them reflecting on their individual values, feelings and hypotheses. Sample Journal prompts for this activity are:

• If you were in charge of a business which of the following aspects of your business would be most important to you. Please record why your selection would be so important in your day to day operation of the business.

1. The public loves my business and fully supports what we stand for.
2. Our business will not be undersold. Lowest price ... Guaranteed!
3. Our staff is ultra efficient and everyone gives 100% to meet our customers' needs.
4. My workers love to come to work. Their passion is what keeps customers coming back.
5. Connections make the business world go around. With friends in the right places anything is possible.
6. We maximize profits by utilizing the laws and rules of commerce to the maximum.

• When determining what your company would sell, share your philosophy in terms of what kinds of products you would promote. Should you stock a little of everything to meet everyone's needs? Should you just stick to the fast movers to keep the stock flying off the shelves? Maybe you should only stock the big ticket items that give huge profits but sales may be slower? In your opinion, what is the best way to stock goods for your business?

Try to group students in like groups. These groups will create business teams that will be working together to create business decisions for their start up company. You may have up to 6 groups. Although it is not necessary to have the same number of students in each group, you want to have at least three in a group.

Have these new groups discuss strategies and record justifications (about 5-10 minutes) concerning the following: 

• What percentage of profit is our minimum amount we would be happy with in a sale?
• Do we like investing money into long term growth or short term payouts?
• Running our business will require we not only determine our path, but we need to watch out for what others are doing. How can we best use the people in this group to do both? Should we all be doing a little of all the responsibilities or should we each take on a specific role and report findings and suggestions to the group?

These response should be submitted to the teacher for review and reflection as students experience the simulation.

Teacher sets up only one computer in such a way that groups will take a turn coming up to enter their choices. Try to position the computer so that a group up at the computer has some privacy from the rest of the class while still being in the same room. 

Teacher should go to the Zapitalism site ( http://www.zapitalism.com/home.php ) and logs in with her registered credentials. 

Choosing the PLAY FREE GAME option, choose TUTORIAL, and the teacher can now choose how many groups are available to play. There are always going to be 6 players but your student groups will be each playing one player role while the computer will fill in for the other players not used. Remember that you assembled the groups based on their journal reflections at the beginning of this session? Assign the following businesses to the groups that responded with the given value (#1-6)

Group valuing #1 get Tibi's Boutique

Group valuing #2 get Spinniker Discount

Group valuing #3 get Meister Mart

Group valuing #4 get Briggs Brothers

Group valuing #5 get Hoffmani's Emporium

Group valuing #6 get Grunion Company

The computer determines which company goes first. As a company get it's turn, they will click on the yellow building (Royal Wholesaler) in order to see what goods are for sale. As they click on each good, they get data on how many goods are available, what kind of demand is out there, and how many of each item is out in other stores at that moment. The first store up each round gets a nice advantage in that they get first choice. Groups should be notified that they only have space for 100 units in their store. They need to choose how many of each resource they wish to carry and why they want to do so. As they are making their selection they should write down decisions and justification. It is suggested you give each group only 4 or 5 minutes. 

Let every company complete their turn and save the game so you can resume when your next play session begins. To end this session, have students return to their journals and record the following:

• As part of any group effort, many opinions must be balanced. When thinking about what your company just invested in, compare those choices to what you might have done if you did not have to consult with others. 
• Did your company play it safe or take risks? 
• If you needed to be critical of your company's choices, what would you saw was the most questionable choice?

Notes:

What are groups doing while they are waiting for their turn? Much of this depends on what grade level you are working with and what their current mathematical experiences have been. It is advised that groups are working collaboratively to complete some practice problems that are in some way related to the concepts of investments, warehousing, profits, percents, bar graphs, ratios, pie graphs, and line graphs. All of these factors will be brought into play in the game as the second turn starts up in the next game class. It is not necessary for students to be able to create the graphs but they will have to be able to read them. Likewise they will not have to calculate profits and percents directly, but the evaluation of given values from the game will be important for the company learning from their choices in future choices. 

If you have access to computers for each group, it is advisable to have each group start researching real business practices. This research could be done with textual resources if those are available. For instance, questions like: 

• How do businesses use "Supply and Demand" to run their business?
• Is it possible for a business to remain in operation if their net assets are in the negative? 
• What is an "acceptable" profit margin for a business?
• Is the cost of insurance worth the possible security for businesses? Which types of insurance seem to be most prevalent in businesses that deal with warehousing and selling goods?

A reminder that data collection is important for students to later be using the data to create graphs and functions that will help them determine the directions their company will go. 

As a teacher interested in exploring, please take a moment to play this game on your own to see just how deep this experience is going to get. It is very impressive how many mathematics elements are included as well as actual business elements are included in this simulation. 

In our next session we will be starting turn two with tons of data crunching opportunities on the way. If students have not processed data very much, you will find this session FULL of options that process data in so many different mathematical ways.

Question for readers: Teachers all have different comfort zones. I would like to hear form readers how many details they would like to see in these posts. This post concentrated on how to set up the students and get them constructively thinking and working on starting off in this game. I did not fully flesh out the activities groups are doing while waiting. With so many different variables and content areas that could be used I may have some difficulty just putting one or two specific sets of directions. If I were able to offer specific directions, then I worry that teachers who are not engaged with that content currently will feel they are left out or that this experience can not be easily adopted. I will always provide alterations to anything I post if people share their needs in the comments. Where there are many content options available, do you feel it best that I supply at least one specific content example or is it better to suggest a number of content areas that could be used and address specific requests in the comments under the post?