Economy Simulations - Reflection - Laura de Beer

How much did your learning about economic systems grow?

I think my learning grew A LOT. On the pre test I took, I think that almost all of the questions, I answered by guessing. Before this simulation, I had no idea what economic systems where. I thought that economic systems had something to do with money, but nothing to do with selling. For Free Market Capitalism, Market Socialism, and Communism, I had no idea they were even types of economic systems. I thought that Free Market meant when Things where free in the market. For communism, I thought that it was when the government took all of the money from people, and Market socialism, I thought it was when stores would socialize with each other in the market. As for the other words, I had no idea what they meant. I think that the thing that I learned the most was about the different systems of economy and the different ways that economy works. For example, I learned what Market, Mixed, and Command economy meant. Another big growth was in buying and selling. I think that I grew a lot in this since we sold and bought so many things. For example, profit. At first, I thought that all of the money that you make when someone buys from you is all yours and your workers. Now I know that it goes through way more and that you end up with way less than what the cost of the item is. Something else that I thought was interesting that I learned a lot about was that in Free market economy, most of the profit goes to only one percent of the population. Overall, I think I have learned so much in this simulation about Economic Systems.

Why do you think you learned this much?

I think that I learned a lot because in this simulation, the incentive is to win, and that incentive is a really big one, so I think that I pushed myself just a little more to learn much more to in. I think that if this were not a simulation, most of the class would not get A’s. No one would study, and no one would know all of this. In addition, since it was two weeks long, no one felt pressured to study in a short time, and it was very smooth and ongoing. I think that since we did most of the work at school, we learned more because it was group work and not alone at home. I think that if we did more of these simulations, people would learn more. Another reason that I think I learned a lot was that I actually forgot we were learning. I think that since we had to go through all of these steps to sell something or to buy something, we adapted to it quickly and made it easy for us to do the work. Then, all of that information was in our brain, therefore, making it easier to do the test. In addition, I think that since I spent so much time studying, I learned a lot.

 What did you think about the simulation?

I think that the simulation was a very fun and creative way of learning about economic systems. I think this simulation was better than the other one, because in this one, there was competition in the class, representing what actually happens in real life. In the other simulation, governments do not real compete in what type is better, so it wasn’t like mocking real life. I also think that this simulation was good because it made everyone cooperate, even if people were not friends. Therefore, everyone made an effort to help win, which is what made it so fun.