Experiencing university through playing property

Abstract

Junior high school students are encouraged to explore their preferences as learners and engage in a range of activities to develop understanding of work, careers and post-school destinations. Higher education providers contribute to the school students' exploration through proving campus experience programmes structured to aspire young learners and increase enrolments. This paper communicates the design science research method activities of demonstration and evaluation as they are applied to a serious game, Playing Property. Playing Property is an audience response game forming the basis of a workshop to engage junior high students and enhance their knowledge of property investment. The evaluation discusses trends in audience response decisions along with brief survey responses from 12 workshops, conducted over 3 years. The workshops were consistently rated positively by the participating students, with a majority indicating they learned more about property [investment] through playing. Comparatively the results were in line with other hands-on workshop activities facilitated by academic leaders from other disciplines. The resource allocation to the Playing Property workshop is notably less than comparable workshops and the ability capture decision-making data provides a sound basis for further analysis.

Teaching political economy to students of property economics: mission impossible?

“…According to this view, encouraging aggressive competitive behaviour and property investment is the best way to learn about property. In his own words: "in playing property, ruthlessness in game play is encouraged through player-to-player communication where students are free to assist or mislead their peers" [Boyd, (2016), p.36]. These 'property games' show how prospective property economics students may be indoctrinated to be materialistic, individualistic, and utility-maximising, consistent with the findings of Frank et al (1993Frank et al ( , 1996 and Frey and Meier (2003).…”

“…So, open information and orientation days provide an important opportunity to learn more about students in contrast with the practice of mainstream property economics teachers who attend such days apparently to ingrain capitalist property behaviours in prospective or new students. For instance, at the University of Sunshine Coast in Australia, one lecturer is explicit about how he uses his attendance to get prospective students to "play serious property games" that is, to "buy, hold and sell Sunshine Coast property to get rich" [Boyd, (2016), p.36]. According to this view, encouraging aggressive competitive behaviour and property investment is the best way to learn about property.…”