Page 17 - Ideas
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The Bidding Game didn’t listen,” Kwong Sin elaborated, “it is similar to how
people may go bankrupt when they do not read the
Kwong Sin has since gone on to develop many other contractual terms in real business.”
games, including a simulation he uses in his Management
Accounting course, The Bidding Game. In this game, At the end of the game, students not only better
groups of students bid for the most profitable contract in understood the accounting knowledge covered in the
a market controlled by the instructor. Students have to textbook, but also came to the valuable realisation that
explore different variables and make decisions in the certain accounting knowledge could not be acquired
game. Ultimately, students get to learn about production simply from textbooks. As Kwong Sin pointed out, “They
costs and product pricing. The ubiquitous Microsoft Excel are aware of people around them, and being aware of
is used to determine the winning bids, the prices offered, competition is very important for accountants.”
and profits made.
To Kwong Sin, another big bonus of using the game was
The original version of the game was quite old-school, how it made learning more enjoyable. He awards
with students having to submit their bids on paper. For students extra marks if they end up as the top two groups
subsequent versions, Kwong Sin worked with CTE to in the game, ensuring that they are more emotionally
programme the game to allow students to submit their invested and motivated to take the game seriously and
bids online, making the game a lot easier and smoother do well.
to play. The time taken to play the game was also
effectively halved. A survey carried out by CTE on The Bidding Game
revealed that more than half of the students indicated
Enabler of experiential learning they had learnt from the game and that it was quite fun.
That said, Kwong Sin acknowledged that not everyone
The Bidding Game enabled Kwong Sin to engage his would have the same level of learning in the game.
students in the intricacies behind applying accountancy “Some will learn more while some will not; nothing is
concepts in real-life. He described simulation games as perfect.” Likewise for the level of interest in the game.
“harmless experiments which allow students to suffer “Some seem quite interested while some are not;
without real suffering”. For instance, when students went students’ learning styles are very different. It is a bit too
bankrupt in the first round of the game, it served as a hopeful to expect everyone to enjoy the same thing with
valuable lesson and experience for them. “It means they different preferences.”
