This article is intended for instructors.

This article is for Entrepreneurship, Management and Marketing simulations.

This article is relevant to the Team version only.

Depending on your lesson plan and teaching methods, there are various approaches to choosing the best time to simulate the market. Here are the four most common times to run the simulation:

1. Simulate at the beginning of class: This encourages class attendance and generates interesting discussions. Because the students will find out their results on the spot, plan on at least an hour of discussion.
2. Simulate at the end of class: Students find out their results immediately after finalizing their decisions. This motivates the students and creates a high point in class.
3. Simulate at the end of the day of class, for example around 11:00 p.m.: This gives teams the chance to continue their discussions outside the classroom if they have not completed their decisions by the end of class time. They will have a few extra hours to finalize their decisions. Because they can find out their results the next day, the students will have a few days to analyze their company’s situation and come to class prepared with suggestions for the next round.
4. Simulate on Thursday or Friday: When several class sections are using the same simulation, information can circulate among them, so simulating all the sections at the same time is recommended. For example, if you have three class sections on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, you can plan to run the market simulation on Thursdays at 11:00 p.m. Because they can find out their results on Friday, the students will have a few days to analyze their company’s situation and come to class prepared with suggestions for the next round.

No matter when you choose to simulate the market, the industry analysis can be presented in class. For more information, see Using the Industry analysis.