evaluating projected cash flows against a Minimum Attractive Rate of Return (MARR), we bring up the issue of whether profitable plants should be closed if their rate of return is not sufficient. Closing the plant would put hundreds of people out of work, and decimate the local economy. A decision on whether to outsource a labor intensive activity to an overseas plant may need to account for qualitative factors such as local labor practices and how they might reflect on the company reputation, as occurred with NikeThese kinds of issues, that are quite real, require students to have an awareness of the biggerpicture, and a well developed value system.A number of approaches to improve the engineering economics course
clear: students need access to information and encouragement to pursue thatinformation if they are to successfully detect and resolve discrepancies through adaptation anddecision-making.Points of ImprovementGame Assessment. We found that the weekly reports were helpful in familiarizing the gamemasters with teams’ decision-making processes, and would like to continue this form of serialassessment. However, the prompts for these weekly reports should be more specific, and shouldalign with the learning frameworks identified in our analysis. We propose that in each weeklyreport, teams should be asked to reflect on the following: (1) What discrepancies exist betweenexpected and actual results of the previous week, (2) what strategies led to the
of actively andskillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating informationgathered from or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication,as a guide to belief and action”.10 In this context, critical thinking targeted in this study is thestudents’ ability to gather information through various activities and connect and integrate thisinformation for use (as a guide to action) in a more complex assignment. The approach used issimilar to the one employed in Linder et. al. study in terms of assignment sequencing andbreaking up a larger assignment into smaller assignments. However, the smaller assignmentsused in this study are different in nature and type, and how they are connected
semester, we believe there is great value in students working with the two new subjects(Capital Budgeting and VBA) over time and within the same context (the simulation).Development work is distributed throughout the first two-thirds of the semester to create a senseof flow in relation to the topics of the course. After development, students use the remainder ofthe semester to examine peer-reviewed literature in order to find other methods for ranking andselecting projects, to design new or novel approaches to project selection, and to modify thesimulation model to better reflect real-world operating environments. Students then use thesimulation model to perform experiments and test hypotheses related to research objectives theydefine.Of course