Leveraging mobile app and gameplay data to teach and assess economics and business concepts

While there have been economics and business simulation games developed in the past, there are three critical gaps left unfilled. First, they are developed on PC while most people now use mobile devices and expect strong social interactions. Second, they do not capture and utilize the big data during gameplay to help assess and improve learner’s capabilities. Third, they do not allow dynamic configuration of game levels, therefore missing the opportunity to leverage wisdom of the crowd.

In this case study, we will present our innovative mobile game, Magitech, that teaches economics and business concepts while bridging all three gaps that exist in current games:

 

1. Social mobile gameplay. Magitech has to overcome numerous challenges when designing a social mobile gameplay for economics and business learning: How to teach those concepts in a small mobile screen? How to design bite-sized levels of 5-10 minutes to teach the complex mechanics behind the simulation? How to enable social gameplay in single player progression and multiplayer competition?
2. Data-driven capability assessment. Magitech captures two levels of gameplay data to help assess and improve learner’s capabilities. The first level is gameplay statistics and results (e.g., quantity of products produced each round, profit achieved). The second level is gameplay actions and behaviors (e.g., frequency of checking data, time spent reviewing reports when losing to opponents).
3. Dynamic configuration. Magitech has programmed the core mechanics (products, customers, analytics charts, etc.) dynamically to be linked to Google doc. This allows other professors to “create their own levels” and harness the wisdom of the crowd.