Integrating Steemit and Bitshares into an Investments Course I’m Teaching

I’m teaching an Intro to Investments course at my university and plan on integrating both Steemit and Bitshares into the curriculum. The plan is to have each student create a Steemit account and base part of the participation grade on their interactions in the #finance, #economics, or #investing tagged posts. The goal is to get them actively thinking about current events and contributing to a thoughtful community discussion.

The plan with using Bitshares is to give each student about 10 USD worth of BTS, have them set up accounts on OpenLedger, and instigate a trading contest. I’ll have them run through some basic exercises, like borrowing smartcoins, playing market maker, and taking directional bets on whatever assets they find interesting.

Why am I doing this instead of just teaching from the textbook? While there will be the usual textbook learning and exams, there’s no better way to learn than actually getting your hands dirty and having some skin in the game. Plus, an investments course that doesn’t at least mention cryptofinance these days is just outdated.

Any other ideas on using Steemit or Bitshares for the course? At the current exchange rate I’ll need about 35,000 BTS for the experiment and plan on self-financing it, but if anyone else in the community wants to help you can send donations to Bitshares account: cylonmaker2053.

I'll definitely be posting updates as we go along and hopefully the students will comment on their experiences.

#bitshares #finance