Really integrating simulations into a finance curriculum, whether at the undergraduate or graduate level, requires quite a bit of effort. Of course, there are easy solutions. You can tell your students: go trade whatever you want and write a report. There are cheap, even free, solutions for that and they require minimal effort from the instructor. But there is no way to know if anyone actually learned anything. I am not against these, I think they give students a chance to think about what is going on in real world financial markets. Ironically, they do not address the basic issue: the integration of theory and practice because there is basically no link between what is taught and the trading exercise.
As with any endeavor, doing it right requires effort, in this case by instructors. There have to be measurable learning outcomes: whether the student mastered the concept being taught and its application. FTS accomplishes this by having a series of exercises (we call them projects) that are based on what is typically taught in courses. We are not "training traders" in the classroom and are don't really believe in a "trading room curriculum." We believe in the theory of investments and our goal is to use the simulations give students a deeper understanding of this theory in a real world, dynamic context. The teaching guide to our real time system has about 25 specific projects for this purpose. Students go through these exercises in lock-step as they do with everything else being taught in the course. and the projects bring to life the concepts being taught in class. As projects are completed, instructors can judge learning just as they do with assignments and exams. The amount of effort required on the part of instructors is actually much less than it initially appears; you only have to do the exercises yourself.
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