Written by: Du Yi-Chen, Team Leader, Yihan Group
During the second semester of the 110th academic year, the main session of the Honors College’s Third-Year Students’ Dean’s Evening Talk featured Professor Lin Zheng-Chang from the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, along with his team. They led college students and tutors in experiencing macro-financial education through the board game “Financial Strategy King.”
Professor Lin offers unique and forward-looking insights into finance and has established a financial education platform to introduce the new generation of students to the field of finance. Dean Wang, Tutor Chen Hui-Juan, Professor Lin, Assistant Lecturers Jiang Hai-Yun, Lin Xin-Yi, Shi Zhe-Yu, Chen Mi-Ying, along with tutors and students, engaged in communication and interaction. Through the board game experience, participants learned financial knowledge and embodied the college’s spirit of “collaborative learning.”
Phase 1: Laying the Foundation
“Learning through play” — with this philosophy in mind, we introduced a board game called Financial Strategy King. This game is based on real events in the United States and originates from Wall Street. It features five key elements: real estate, commodities, stock market, foreign exchange, and bond market.
Each team starts with a capital of 100 million. Players place bets and roll dice, which might allow them to buy companies or draw cards. Drawing cards is a skill in itself, as each draw can result in significant gains or losses depending on the amount wagered. The way players manage their bets reflects their personalities — some prefer to take big risks, while others play it safe.
How players decide to place their bets determines their wins or losses. For example, if Greenspan defends the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation stance, all five elements might drop sharply, resulting in heavy losses. But in the next round, different cards could lead to recovering those losses. There is no standard answer or fixed outcome.
Phase 2: An Opportunity for a Surge
At this stage, players review the cards in their hands, choose one to show their opponents, and arrange their chips accordingly. The goal is to learn how to observe the rise and fall of the five elements as different events unfold. Players may experience huge gains overnight or suffer sudden losses.
Looking around, there are sounds of joyful laughter as well as sighs of disappointment. All of this proves one thing: the fluctuations during this phase can be very significant.
At last, the game officially came to an end, and the laughter gradually faded. Professor Lin Cheng-Chang then explained the cards used in the game and the possible scenarios one might encounter. Through the guidance of the board game, he led the college students to think critically and reflect deeply. This activity not only opened their minds to the world of finance but also deepened their understanding of the importance of financial issues. By recognizing trends, they become better equipped to adapt to them. It is believed that all participating students greatly benefited from this experience.
林正昌教授給院生勉勵的話：致廣大而盡精微，極高明而道中庸。
Link to the news report by our campus reportershttps://pr.ntnu.edu.tw/news/index.php?mode=data&id=20651
