The STEP UP: Playconomics High School Program is a nationally-recognized outreach literacy initiative, grounded in a purpose-built interactive video game that is fun, freely available to students in Years 9 – 12 and developed for easy implementation by teachers. It has two core objectives:
- To equip high school students from all backgrounds with essential financial literacy skills, and
- To significantly increase high school students’ confidence in the ability to pursue a university career, particularly in economics.
Launched in 2022, STEP UP has so far successfully empowered nearly 7,000 high school students to build strong foundations in economic and financial literacy, delivering:
- Academic gains:
- 74% gain confidence in economics reasoning
- 64% report stronger maths confidence
- 23-40% higher learning gains across topics
- 11% more likely to consider university
- Life skills benefits:
- 83% say it taught useful things for life and future jobs
- 80% gained confidence to make decisions
- 75% feel better prepared for their future
Recognised by UNSW Advanced Placement, the program enables high school students to earn university course credit with the UNSW School of Economics as they progress through the game.
STEP UP is powered by Playconomics.com, an innovative educational platform that seamlessly integrates immersive video game experiences with an AI-driven learning management system.
Playconomics has been developed by UNSW Professors Isabella Dobrescu and Alberto Motta - award-winning academics with extensive experience designing and teaching university courses to large and diverse cohorts across Europe, North America and Asia. Together -in response to six urgent challenges:
- Low levels of financial literacy in Australia and globally, limiting informed decision-making.
- Growing student disengagement and drop-out rates in university programs.
- Learning increasingly viewed as a chore rather than a choice.
- Traditional education struggling to compete with the allure of immersive, always-on digital content.
- Digital-native learners demanding interactivity, personalisation, and agency in their learning journeys.
- Declining enrolments and diversity in economics, with student cohorts shrinking since the 1990s.
Drawing on their personal teaching experience and cutting-edge research, Isabella and Alberto designed Playconomics as a technology-enabled learning environment that simulates entire economies and invites students to interact, experiment, and learn through gameplay. In doing so, it offers innovative, authentically experiential learning that feels like leisure - not work.
Accredited by UNSW since 2014, Playconomics courses create immersive, evidence-based learning experiences that demonstrably improve engagement, academic performance and equity (see here). Highly scalable and recognised for excellence in digital education, these courses - continually reviewed and refined to enhance quality and performance - have since reached over 70,000 learners across universities, high schools, and international settings, with 0.5 million downloads and 3.5 million learning hours on the platform.
Originally developed for Business education, Playconomics expanded in 2017 to deliver tailored digital learning in Engineering and Medicine disciplines as well.
For more information, please see the STEP UP Overview or contact Professor Isabella Dobrescu, Head of the UNSW School of Economics, at step-up@unsw.edu.au