Introducing economics to millennials

Abstract

The vast majority of first-year undergraduate students are millennials, who have different learning habits compared with their previous cohorts. Thus, teaching foundational microeconomic concepts to millennials could be very challenging. This paper proposes an attractive method to improve millennials’ learning experience by projecting short YouTube movie clips (3minutes on average) in the classroom. The clips were not specifically uploaded to YouTube for a microeconomics lecture; they were already available on YouTube as movie scenes. The objective of the apparent absence of connection between the clip and the lecture is to inspire students’ interest, which helps to involve millennial students in the lecture by giving them a real-world emphasis and they can improve their understanding. This short break in the lecture contributes to engage millennials by giving them a focus using social media. The results of a student self-assessment survey support the expectations of the literature that the use of YouTube clips would improve students’ assimilation of economic concepts by helping them realize how economics is applicable to the real world, enhancing their internalization of those notions, and recognizing the relevance of economic ideas to their lives. Links to be used by other instructors are provided.