Marketplace Simulations vs The Business School

Marketplace Simulations provides web-based business education tools for undergraduate and MBA students and their educators. Its subjects include core business, marketing, societal impact, strategic management, business strategy, entrepreneurship, supply chain, MBA and EMBA capstones, and microsimulations. Students can compete with classmates or computer-controlled teams; computer play supports classes of 1,000 or more. Platform tools include an AI Coach, an AI Tactical Plan Reviewer, and an Automated Coaching Assistant. Automated grading uses cumulative balanced scorecard results, with Easy, Intermediate, and Difficult levels and manual adjustments. Simulations run on internet-connected devices without software installation. Marketplace integrates with Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, Brightspace, Harvard Business Publishing, and Western Governors University, and supports LTI 1.1 and LTI Advantage. The Individual Microsimulation is listed at $8, paid once, billed at $8 per student; exercises take 10–25 minutes and students can replay them. Live support hours are listed for weekdays and weekends, with 24-hour emergency support for registered instructors.

The Business School is a browser-based classroom simulation where student teams run rival firms in a shared market during one lesson. Teams decide prices, hiring, loans, VAT, crises, and deals, with the effects visible in the simulation. Each session supports 6 to 32 students across up to eight firms of three or four. Teachers can pause or resume phases, trigger a crisis, review firm activity, and display a live leaderboard. Students join using a six-digit PIN and a team label or first name, without student accounts or email addresses. They can download private reports, while the teacher receives a curriculum-mapped class report by email within 48 hours. Knowledge Check questions are listed for 23 business courses, including AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, WJEC, Cambridge, BTEC, and IB courses. Session data is stored in an EU database in Frankfurt; the company says it does not sell data or use it for advertising, and teachers can end a session at any time. A free teacher demo is listed. School and trust licence prices are by quote after the pilot. The Autumn 2026 pilot cohort is full, with a waitlist open.