Take a Chance on This Game of Chance: A Lesson on Goal-Setting and Strategy

This paper introduces a novel dice-rolling activity designed to teach students about goal setting theory. Many management classes involve discussions of goals and theories for motivating employees. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to impress upon undergraduate students the criticality of such concepts in the real world. Drawing upon the principles of experiential learning, this activity was designed to create a powerful hands-on experience that demonstrates how setting goals and providing training/feedback can help improve motivation and performance even if it feels like the outcome is “a game of chance.” We outline the steps of the activity, learning objectives, and discussion points to use in the debrief.