Marketplace Community Newsletter

Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2009

Peninsula Cup Challenge


Left to right: Darrell Radson, Dean School of Business and Economics; Zhouli Yuan from the top team; Bob Mark, Professor of Practice in Marketing and Entrepreneurship - all from Michigan Technological University. Not pictured are fellow winners Shuo Han and Jie Meng.

Bob Mark (Michigan Tech University) and Charlie Wolfe (Northern Michigan University) met at the Syracuse University Experiential Learning Entrepreneurship Seminar in 2007. They both attended Ernie Cadotte's workshop where he demonstrated the simulation. Bob and Charlie teamed up and won the first place award.

Charlie had used Marketplace in all of his classes that year. He spoke with Bob about the positive results he felt it generated for his courses. Bob later contacted Charlie setting up a competition between their students in their Introduction to Business Courses, recreating the same NMU vs. Tech rivalry in the classroom that has existed for years in basketball, football and hockey.

For their class simulation, they introduced the Upper Peninsula Challenge Cup Contest. Their first contest was held in the Fall of 2008 with Michigan Tech University winning the inaugural event. The competition for Spring Semester 2009 included 28 teams competing in 5 games. This semester, they chose to use the new version of Marketplace - Marketplace Live and Charlie feels that it has been a great success.

Neither Bob nor Charlie teaches their course using only the simulation. They both feel Marketplace is a great end of the semester exercise that allows students to take the content covered in the preceding weeks and apply it to a real world, real time simulation. Having done the simulation now for two years, Charlie says "Students overwhelmingly enjoy the experience and learn quite a bit from it. I am continually amazed at how the simulation can bring out a more in-depth understanding and thought process for students and how they can, even in introductory courses as freshmen and sophomores, make very complex connections concerning how interrelated performance outcomes truly are."

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