Ascertaining Performance Variables for Use in Determining Students’ Grades in Courses Employing a Business Simulation

Thus the purpose of this study was to better understand what variables, or combination of variables, that account for the major portion of variation in student performance in business simulations. The eight performance variables that were chosen for this study were selected because of their frequency of use in prior studies. Furthermore, since many simulations are started up in an in—process mode or are continued over more than one semester, the positive percent of change in these variables were included in the research design. Thus the study examined a total of sixteen simulation performance variables. These variables and their corresponding positive percent of change used in the study are sales, net income, ROS, ROE, ROA, dividends, market share, and stock value