Friday, May 20, 2011

Students at WVU Parkersburg Run Top-Simulated Business 4-26-2011


Pam Braden (center) talks to students about the Glo-Bus course during one of their simulated business meetings.

by Susan Moore
   
    The Business Policy class at WVU Parkersburg is the “capstone” course for those seeking a bachelor’s degree in business. 
    The capstone experience is designed to both assess what students have learned during their academic program and to put the “icing on the cake” of students’ knowledge bases. 
    A major part of the Policy course is the online simulation called “Glo-Bus.”  This enables students to virtually “run” a camera manufacturing company.  Each week of the course is a year of the simulation.  The students make decisions about how many workers to employ, how much to pay them, how many cameras to make, what features are on the cameras and how much they want to charge for the cameras. 
    This semester there are 12 teams competing and they are broken into two competing industries.  It is noteworthy that five of the 12 teams scored in the top 100 globally over the past few weeks.  This is the first time the college has ever had that many teams scoring so successfully on the simulation. 
    Accounting major and member of Team E Southwest, Brian Allman, explains that it is the team’s responsibility to decide how to distribute their inventory to box stores, online companies and small independent retailers.
    “Since I enjoy numbers and research, this course follows my career and was a good fit,” Allman said.
    The analytic data that is available through the online software, provides information that helps students track their companies’ return on equity, revenues, and earnings per share, stock price, etc.  They are able to follow their progress and see where their company ranks among the other colleges that participate.
    Allman feels that experience is the key to his team’s success.
    Team Golf member, Jeremy Davis, feels that “being able to apply the knowledge gained during college,” has been the factor that has put his team on the Glo-Bus map.
    “It is all about accounting and where to apply your resources,” said Davis.
    Through the Glo-Bus simulation, students are able to put their education into practical application.
    “Trial and error has contributed to our success,” Davis said.
    Student Lora Zseidler member of Team A feels “it is good to work as a team when you have reliable people to count on.” 
    Zseilder is originally from the Ukraine and moved to the United States eight years ago.  She feels that this simulation has helped her gain an understanding for how businesses run in the U.S.
    Cassey Bell from Team Adidas added that this has been a very challenging experience for her. But due to her team’s hard work and dedication, Team A has made great improvements over the last few weeks, improvements that put her team 81st overall for team return on investment.
 WVU Parkersburg students are competing with teams from both domestically and internationally, including University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Clemson University, campuses of Penn State University and State University of New York. 

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