Enhancing Finance Students’ Learning Effectiveness and Motivation: Application of Financial Simulation Game

Abstract

Financial issues have been the source of divorce, psychological diseases, and unhappiness in the past few years. A person with good financial literacy ability could therefore avoid and effectively solve financial problems. Simulation and games have been gradually emphasized by educators in the past years, stressing active learning and learner-centeredness and expecting to help learners understand complicated ideas and effectively promote learning effectiveness. The simulation game materials and multimedia interactive web materials for financial education are designed and compared to the effects on students’ financial learning effectiveness and motivation in this study. College students in southern Taiwan were selected as the research objects for the 16-week experimental teaching. The total number of valid samples is 168. “Nonequivalent group design in quasi-experimental design” is adopted in this study, where the teaching model, including “simulation game materials” and “multimedia interactive web materials”, is the independent variable and financial learning effectiveness and learning motivation are dependent variables. Research findings reveal that (1) financial simulation games are an effective teaching strategy, (2) students with financial simulation games present higher learning effectiveness, and (3) students using financial simulation games show higher learning motivation. Finally, suggestions are proposed in this study, expecting to apply such characteristics to design game software for learning finance and effectively improve the dilemmas of practicing financial teaching in class.