Academic Controversy In Macroeconomics: An Active And Collaborative Method To Increase Student Learning (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Economic Education, 2017
The authors describe a unique approach to enhancing student learning at the introductory economics level that utilizes a multi-section, team-based competition. The competition is structured to supplement learning throughout the entire introductory course. Student teams are presented with current economic issues, trends, or events, and use economic tools and theories to comprehensively examine the topics. Students present their analyses in their own sections with one team from each section moving on to compete in an intersection round. Students are judged on technicality, creativity, and applicability of economic concepts. The competition has the potential to advance students' creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical and analytical thinking skills, while enhancing their ability to apply foundational economic concepts to real-world settings. The development of our millennial students has been shaped by rapidly changing technological, entertainment, economic, and political arenas. Therefore, scholars of teaching and learning suggest that millennials thrive in active learning environments in which content is kept relevant, dynamic, and learned through competitive group projects (Prensky 2001). To meet the needs of our current students, we have developed a team-based, multi-section competition that envelopes the content of an entire semester of introductory economics and gives students an interactive way to explore the applicability of their economic knowledge. At the beginning of each semester, students are placed into teams and presented with a current economic event, trend, or issue. Student teams work throughout the semester, draw together economic concepts to comprehensively understand the issue, and suggest timely and feasible solutions during an 8-minute class presentation within their own sections. One team from each section advances to an intersection round and competes against teams from other sections. At each level of the competition, teams are judged on technicality, creativity, and applicability of economic concepts. Those who advance to the intersection round have an opportunity to win cash prizes. Unlike the discontinuous group projects scattered throughout, or placed at the end of the semester, semester-long experiments (Valcarcel 2013), writing assignments (Strasser and Wolfe 2014), and competitions (Singh and Russo 2013; Aguilar and Soques 2015; Gulley and Jackson 2015) have shown to greatly improve the learning outcomes of our current students as they tend to have a better understanding of the concepts, and ability to creatively and critically analyze real problems with the use of economic tools and theories. The teamwork and multi-section design of our competition provide additional dimensions to ensure that it has enough dynamic components to keep our students invested and interested in the course content throughout the entire semester.
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This paper investigates various changing aspects in the teaching of economics within the context of the dynamics of parameters. These include inter alia the role of effective communication, clarity of lecture notes, ability to focus on the centrality of theme, teaching and learning environment, and ability to illustrate with examples. It also notes the changing perception of indicators of good teaching over the two points in time in which data were collected.
Drawing largely on educational literature outside of economics, we provide a survey of perspectives on alternative teaching methods. We then report results regarding the effectiveness of various alternative methods such as cooperative learning, class discussions, and the use of multimedia sources compared to lecture-only instruction. A difference-in-means test is utilized to compare gains in learning between control classes and treatment classes. Alternative teaching methods were not shown to increase student performance in a statistically significant manner.
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Teaching economics as a distinct subject matter requires a curriculum rationale and curricular orientation no less than any other subject matter field. As with any social studies curriculum component, it is necessary to delineate the curriculum parameters of economics so as to justify and guide its teaching in the schools. This article aims to explore various approaches to developing and implementing economics curricula, weighs their benefits and drawbacks, and ends with a suggestion for blending the alternatives so as to optimize the benefits. Prior to the development of a curriculum rationale, however, the educator must ask a question seldom raised with the other social sciences: What kind of economics should be taught? Positive Versus Normative Economics The positive versus normative distinction in economics is particularly important in economic education.
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A New Revolution in Economics Education
New trends are emerging in education of economics following rapid de- velopment in economic theories for static, dynamic and strategic analysis, increasing applications of general equilibrium modelling for evaluation of economic policies at national, regional and global level and overwhelm- ing advancement in econometric techniques developed to test those the- ories. A concise knowledge of these theories and techniques is essential for understanding micro and macro economic processes and to in‡uence policy making for achieving greater e¢ ciency and satisfaction of mankind. How careful design of curriculum and thoughtful implementations could be instrumental in achieving higher standard of teaching and research is analysed using the practical experience over the years in the University of Hull.
Forthcoming in The Journal of Economic Education
2008
This paper develops an original measure of learning in higher education, based on grades in subsequent courses. Using this measure of learning, this paper shows that student evaluations are positively related to current grades but unrelated to learning once current grades are controlled. It offers evidence that the weak relationship between learning and student evaluations arises, in part, because students are unaware of how much they have learned in a course. The paper concludes with a discussion of easily-implemented, optimal methods for evaluating teaching. We are grateful for comments from Tisha Emerson, Eric Fisher, and Hajime Miyazaki, seminar participants at Ohio State University and especially members of The Ohio State University Undergraduate Economics Society, and participants at the 2007 American Economic Association