Learning by doing!
On February 26th, 2016, an Investment Session business simulation game was carried out in English as part of the Performance Management course.
On February 26th, 2016, an Investment Session business simulation game was carried out in English as part of the Performance Management course. The event attracted undergraduate students, international students, and representatives of the investment business.
The Performance Management course was recently accredited by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Great Britain. This allows undergraduate students who pass the ACCA certificate examination to account the disciplines from F1 and F5 blocks.
Elizaveta Markovskaya, Candidate of Sciences (Economics), Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Finance, head of the Performance Management course, developer and moderator of the Investment Session business game:
I was very pleased with the students’ involvement in the game, their teamwork, and the lack of a language barrier. During the game, the students presented the project that they’d been developing during the course. Some of the students played the role of creditors, while others played investors. They offered credit and investment policies by their financial institutions, banks and funds.
The business game format teaches students to work as a team, to find joint solutions for complicated problems, to delegate power, and to manage projects. This can be learned by immersing participants in a real life professional situation, or in a situation close to real life, which can be done as part of a business game based on the ‘learning by doing’ principle. I believe that the first experience of undergraduate and international students’ participation in the investment session, where they communicated with investment professionals and got feedback on their projects, was extremely successful.
I was also happy to see that my colleagues from the business world were impressed with the student’s work in the final of the game, and gave them some valuable recommendations, which will help the students further improve their work with investors and creditors.
Dmitry Efremov, Director and Founder,Factosphere consulting company
It’s great to see how a business game can help to find effective approaches for solving professional tasks and develop skills that are really useful in business and life.
Andrey Udalov, Director of St. Petersburg branch,Agat Fund, gave the following recommendation to the project teams: ‘It’s essential to promote the projects better, to understand the client’s image, and to understand what investors might be interested in’.
The FootBridge team (Sofia Timofeeva, Ekaterina Chernikova, Mari Deordieva, Daria Erkina, Ilya Obukhov, Natalia Sharapova, and Igor Trefilov) presented a project for a footbridge on Krestovsky Island.
Sofia Timofeeva:
The business game we participated in as part of the Performance Management course is an interesting form of learning, which offers the students practice in investment project analysis, formulating conclusions, preparing presentations, and defending their ideas before professionals.
The VOLVO team (Svyatoslav Derzhavin, Anastasia Petrantsova, Anna Protasova, Camelia Silkina, Alena Strakova, Yulia Viguzova, and Maria Zemtsova) presented a project on developing, implementing and selling a digital control system for cars.
Svyatoslav Derzhavin:
I’m happy that the game attracted several business representatives. On behalf of my team I want to say that we understood the weaknesses of our presentation and will bear this in mind in future.
Sebastian Widmann (University College London):
I participated in the business game organised as part of our Performance Management Course at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg and took the role of a potential investor for the projects presented, to be specific the role of a bank. I found it very interesting that students were given very different roles so they could pursue various tasks that suited their interest best and which therefore also ensured their commitment and motivation to the work. The final business game was very interesting and well structured, where students were graded by professional fund managers from Russia. Such an activity is only beneficial to the students if everyone participates fully and works hard, which our professor, Ms. Markovskaya, made sure of, offering advice in every session and also being available outside of the classroom. Overall it was a different activity from the usual lecture setting and I think everyone found it very insightful and realistic.