New Economics Pedagogic Modules

published May 5, 2010 4:03pm

Jun 10, 2010 - Jun 10, 2010

The Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics project has finished work on three pedagogic modules: Classroom Response Systems, Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, and Teaching with Simulations.

Classroom Response Systems allow students to anonymously commit to an instructor-posed question in class and provides immediate feedback. They are software and hardware systems in which students submit answers to questions via a transmitter, or "clicker." A variety of question types can be asked and most systems can be integrated with PowerPoint.

Interactive Lecture Demonstrations engage students in activities that confront their prior understanding of a core concept. The activity can be a classroom experiment, a survey, a simulation or an analysis of secondary data. This module was originally developed for the Starting Point: Teaching Introductory Geoscience project but has been significantly enhanced by the work of the Economics project.

When students use a model of behavior to gain a better understanding of that behavior, they are doing a simulation. Students often use simulations to make predictions about the social, economic, or natural world. Instructional simulations have the potential to engage students in "deep learning" that empowers understanding as opposed to "surface learning" that requires only memorization.