Business Games and Stock Market: An analysis of students’ learning in a Business Administration course

This paper addresses the use of experiential learning to improve knowledge about the capital market, by applying a program with business games, using an electronic simulator of the Brazilian stock market. The objective was analyzing the cognitive domain of the participants after application of an educational program about the capital market, using a business game tailored for stock market trading. The descriptive study, with a quantitative approach, used the quasi-experiment technique to collect data on the learning of undergraduate business administration students at a federal university located in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The data were submitted nonparametric statistical analysis with the inferential Mann-Whitney U-test as well as tests of comparison of medians. The results revealed statistically significant differences in assimilating knowledge between the groups of participants. The G1 group, whose theoretical content was exposed before the game application, showed an assimilation of superior knowledge. In this sense, it was possible to conclude that the way the educational program with the business game was applied affected the students’ assimilation of knowledge.