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Enhancing the teaching of introductory economics with a team-based, multi-section competition

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.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE: A Simple Oligopoly Classroom Experiment

Classroom experiments can provide a stimulating experience for students who are being introduced to the ideas presented in a microeconomic principles course. The authors propose a classroom experiment on oligopoly that highlights the difference between a collusive and a competitive equilibrium. The exercise is similar to other oligopoly classroom games proposed with the exception that the game presented here is less time consuming for instructors and provides a list of suggested modifications that instructors can use to tailor the game to their specific educational needs. Empirical observations are also provided to give instructors an idea of how the classroom experiment works in practice and the range of actions that a typical undergraduate principles of microeconomics class are likely to exhibit.

Beyond``lesson study'': Comparing two ways of facilitating the grasp of some economic concepts

Instructional Science, 2003

During three discussion sessions, two groups of five teachers each developed a shared lesson plan, one for each group, for the teaching of a difficult economic concept, the incidence of a sales tax. In one of the groups (the lesson study group), the lesson plan was based on the pool of the participants' experience and intuition in accordance with the Japanese "lesson study". In the other group (the learning study group), the lesson plan was based on the participants' experience and intuition as made sense of in terms of a learning theory introduced by a researcher in accordance with the idea of "the learning study", in which the Japanese lesson study is combined with a "design experiment". The students' understanding was probed after the series of lessons. In the classes of the lesson study group, fewer than 30% of the students developed a good grasp of the concept, compared to over 70% of the students in the learning study group. The differences in learning outcomes are interpreted in the light of observed differences in how the concept was dealt with in the different classrooms.

How Do We Teach Economics?

The information published in this work is the sole responsibility of the author and should not be construed as representing the views of the Open Society Institute. The Open Society Institute takes no responsibility for the accuracy and correctness of the content of this work. Any comments related to the contents of this work should be directed to the author.

“Socializing Economics:” Using Practical Applications to Enliven Economic Theory

socstrpr.org

Economics has traditionally been taught in a way that emphasizes the "science" side of social science. This article suggests ways to cover the concepts introduced in high school economics using discussions, simulations, and discovery-based techniques that bring the "social" back into social science. Through descriptions of five authentic economic scenarios, the authors provide examples of ways in which teachers can help their students become engaged with economic concepts without using traditional methods that students often find dull or difficult to understand.