Integrated Learning Modules
In addition to the portfolio simulation and messaging tools, all administrators also have the ability to add one or more “Assignments” to their class contest.
Assignments – An Overview
A sample trading assignment
In a nutshell, an “Assignment” is a list of tasks that you give all of your contest participants. You can create as many assignments as you like in your contest, each having their own start and end dates (which can overlap).
Once you have an assignment created, each of your contest participants will see it on the right side of the page when they log in, where it lists each task assigned, with their overall progress. If you have more than one assignment active at a given time, the participants can switch between them using a drop-down menu.
You will also be able to track each user’s progress on each item from your Assignments Administration pages as well, making it easy to track who is keeping up and who is falling behind. The Assignments reporting tools also keeps track of the last time a user has logged in.
What Can I Include In An Assignment?
There are four main types of assignment items to choose from.
Trading
About half of the tasks are related to trading. This can be anything from “Buy 5 US Stocks” to “Place 30 total trades” or “Use 3 Trailing Stop Orders”. If there is a type of trade that can be placed in the system, you can add it as part of an assignment. For each trading item, you can specify the task and how many times a user should do it for full credit. The specific categories are:
- Basic Trades
- Buy US stocks
- Short US stocks
- Use a Limit Order
- Trade a Mutual Fund
- Make X Total Trades
- International Trading
- Trade Asian Stocks
- Trade Canadian Stocks
- Trade Latin American Stocks
- Trade European Stocks
- Order Types and Terms
- Use a Limit Order
- Use a Limit Sell Order
- Use a Stop Order
- Use a $ Trailing Stop Order
- Use a % Trailing Stop Order
- Place a Good Til Date order
- Place a Good Til Cancelled order
- Options Trading
- Buy a Call Option
- Buy a Put Option
- Write a Call Option
- Write a Put Option
- Create an Option Spread
- Trading Other Securities
- Trade a Corporate Bond
- Trade a Treasury Bond
- Trade a Currency Future
- Trade an Interest Rate Future
- Trade an Index Future
- Trade a Commodities Future
- Trade a Future Option
Tutorial Videos
We have designed every part of the site to be as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, and included tutorial videos to walk users through how to trade, do research, and generally get around the site. You can also assign these videos to your students to watch before they start trading to help them get familiar with their portfolio. The videos you can assign include:
- Navigating The Site
- Using Different Order Types and Terms
- How To Use The Quotes Tool To Do Research
- How To Trade Stocks
- How To Trade Mutual Funds
- How To Trade Bonds
- How To Trade Options
- How To Trade Futures
- How To Trade Spots
- How To Trade Future Options
Educational Content
You can also assign reading and interactive activities to your students. Most of the current educational content is written at a high school level – for this reason it is not included by default with most university trading platforms, but it can be added if you would like to run a campus-wide challenge or community outreach event.
For all educational content, users are asked to take a review quiz at the end of the articles, calculators, or chapters. They can re-take the quiz as many times as they like, but the system will not mark the item as “Complete” until the user gets 100%. The types of content available are as follows:
Stock Market Basics
These articles are the basics of the basics to help people completely new to investing get a hang of basic terminology. These items include:
- What is a Stock?
- What is an ETF?
- What is a Mutual Fund?
- What is a Ticker Symbol?
- How Do I Get (and understand) Stock Quotes?
- Why Should Someone Invest In Stocks?
- Building a Diversified Portfolio
- How To Find Stocks In Specific Sectors
- How To Choose Stocks
- What Is The New York Stock Exchange?
- Why Is It Called “Wall Street”?
- Percentages, Fractions, and Ratios In The Stock Market
- Using Excel To Track Your Stock Portfolio
- What are Spot Contracts?
- What are Options?
- What are Futures?
Economics Lessons
We also have over 30 lessons in economics, ranging from the basics of Supply and Demand through lessons in Specialization, Marginal Benefit and Cost, The Federal Reserve, and Price Controls. The lessons have been written to conform with the National Standards for Economic Education published by the National Council for Economic Education, covering benchmarks for the 12th grade standards.
Personal Finance Lessons
We have an additional 30 lessons in Personal Finance. These topics include Building and Maintaining a Spending Plan, How To Start Planning For Retirement, Elements of a Contract, Fundamentals of Insurance, and much more. Like the Economics lessons, these personal finance lessons were written to conform with the National Standards for Personal Finance Education published by the Jumpstart Coalition.
Personal Finance And Investing Calculators
You can also add interactive personal finance and investing calculators as an assignment. For these items, your student gets an interactive calculator to help them solve the quiz, which asks various applied personal finance or investing questions. Our calculator library includes:
- Compound Interest
- Saving to be a Millionaire
- Credit Card Payments
- Buy VS Lease
- Net Worth
- Investment Return
- Building a Home Budget
- Auto Loan
- Net Present Value
- Internal Rate Of Return
Investing 101
Investing 101 is our beginner’s investing course – a fundamental investment course designed for non-business students. This course includes 10 chapters covering a wide range of investing topics, from the very basics of different investing options, through fundamental and technical analysis and even an introduction to options trading. Each chapter contains (on average) 10 lessons, with additional supplemental materials and recommended reading at the end (with an exam covering each chapter).
Your Own Custom Content
If you have your own content you would like to add, no problem! For example, you can assign academic papers for your students to read, or for a corporate challenge you may want to ask your contest participants to visit some of your product pages to get more familiar with your offerings. Either way, you can add these as an Assignment to your contest.
If you want to include your own custom assignment, it generally takes 1 week of turn-around time for us to add it into the platform.
Best Practices
In our experience, adding an integrated lesson can greatly increase participant engagement and understanding of the platform. Below you can find some “Sample Curriculum” instructors have used in the past to rave reviews.
High School Economic Activities