Business 10 students at St. John Brebeuf Secondary School recently took on the Junior Achievement (JA) Titan Program and experienced real-life business situations.
Math/marketing teacher Christine Tsou integrated the JA Titan program into her business classroom.
The players learned how to sell "holo-generators" by making critical decisions on unit price, unit production, marketing, capital investment, research and development, and charitable giving.
"Students grasped what it's like to run a business and understood one drastic move could significantly drop or raise their business profiles," Tsou said.
The students competed to be first on the market, using skills and tactics to find a balance between the perfect price and their unit production.
The analysis section of the JA Titan game provided players with graphs that assisted in the monitoring of sales and production.
Utilizing the production statistics displayed in the planning section, students could see how much it cost them to produce items and learned how to determine whether this helped or hurt their business.
Tsou said that, in the simulation, one wrong move that seemed small could lead to bankruptcy.
She said the program teaches students more about business than they could ever acquire through a lecture.
"By applying the knowledge that all decisions have consequences, players know to be cautious when coming to conclusions and putting choices into action."