Principles Of Economics Course Research Articles

Gender Bias and Temporal Effects in Standard Evaluations of Teaching

This study investigates whether gender differences in SET vary over the course of a semester, particularly in response to feedback from the instructor. We survey principles of economics courses at multiple institutions three times during the semester to analyze whether the evaluations of male and female instructors change throughout the term, specifically after the first exam is returned. Results indicate a negative effect on evaluations for female instructors relative to male instructors associated with returning grades. This work shows the importance of understanding the dynamics of changes in evaluations within a course over the semester.

Climate Change and Economics 101: Teaching the Greatest Market Failure

In this paper, we explore how principles of economics courses prepare undergraduate students to think about climate change. We collected a comprehensive list of twenty-seven introductory economics textbooks in the United States and analyzed their coverage of climate change. Our finding shows that not all texts touch upon climate science, and a small subset deviates from the scientific consensus on the human causes of climate change. All texts conceptualize climate change as a problem of carbon emission’s negative externalities and the preferred market-based solutions, such as emission trading and Pigouvian tax. Besides externality, some authors include various useful points of engagement through GDP (Gross domestic product) accounting, economic growth, collective action problems, cost–benefit analysis, and global inequality. In the end, we provide suggestions for economics educators to innovate the current introductory curriculum to better cope with the climate crisis.

Using data and research to address student misconceptions

This study presents the results of two pedagogical interventions – an assignment using economic data and an assignment requiring a research project – that attempt to dispel economic misconceptions students carry through a typical principles of economics course. Participants completed a wide-ranging questionnaire at the beginning of an academic semester and again at the conclusion of an academic semester. Control and treatment groups were randomly spread across four academic semesters. The results suggest that students who completed the Research project more accurately estimated the percentage of the labor force who earned the minimum wage. While student responses were more accurate, they were, still far from the correct response, on average. The Research project also encouraged students to respond by saying, “I don’t know” to the surveyed questions. The data assignment did little to improve student responses.

The effects of using Facebook as a discussion forum in an online principles of economics course: Results of a randomized controlled trial

This paper makes a comparison between using social media or traditional Course Management System (CMS) discussion groups in a fully online Principles of Microeconomics course. Students were randomly assigned to a discussion forum in either Facebook or CMS to discern a difference in the level of engagement and learning outcomes. The popular hypothesis is that students using social media have greater engagement with the class and higher learning outcomes relative to students using a CMS platform. Reasons for the positive effect include the ease of use and student familiarity with social media, which allows them to make more connections and gain a deeper understanding of the course material through discussions with others. Contrary to the widely held view, the results of this study suggest that participation in the treatment Facebook group is associated with declining student engagement and a reduction in the semester course average of 3 to 5 points on a 100-point scale.

A New Look at Lake Wobegon: Who’s in Your Canoe?

We re-examine the Lake Wobegon effect for reported GPA using data from students enrolled in principles of economics courses. Students are well known to over-report their GPA on surveys. In addition to standard measures of the mean difference, we extend the analysis to understand the distribution of response error using quantile regression analysis. We also examine how survey conditions impact response error. Our findings suggest that response error is more complicated than simple over-confidence. Students respond differently throughout the distribution of GPA and respond differently when seated near friends. Modeling response error should take these findings into account.

Age, Gender, and Race as Predictors of Opting for a Midterm Retest: A Statistical Analysis of Online Economics Students

The number of students enrolled in online courses continues to grow despite declining overall higher education enrollments. This trend charges educators to focus efforts on improving student outcomes and academic success within distance learning courses. This paper investigates if a midterm exam retest were available to online college students taking introductory principles of economics courses, which students would increase their human capital stock in these distant learning courses and take a retest? We examine, age, race, and gender to examine if these sociodemographic factors affect one’s option to retest.

Using Technology to Complete the Natural Learning Path in a Principles of Economics Course

Higher education is rapidly changing due to the convergence of two powerful trends: an improvement of our understanding of how students learn and the rise of...

The Effects of Using Facebook As a Discussion Forum in an Online Principles of Economics Course: Results of a Randomized Trial

This paper makes a comparison between the use of social media and traditional Course Management System (CMS) discussion groups in fully online Microeconomic Principles courses. Students within the same sections of the classes were randomly assigned to a discussion forum in either Facebook or in the CMS (Blackboard) to discern a difference in the level of engagement (as measured by frequency and length of posts as well as rated post content) and learning outcomes (measured by overall course average). The popular hypothesis is that students using social media (Facebook discussion group here) have greater engagement with the class and higher learning outcomes relative to students not using that platform for coursework (the CMS control group here) because of the ease of use and student familiarity with social media, which allows them to make more connections and gain a deeper understanding of the course material through discussions with others. The results of this study suggest that membership in the treatment group (Facebook) is associated with declining student engagement and a reduction in the semester course average of 3 to 4 points on a 100-point scale.

Evaluating Twitter and its impact on student learning in principles of economics courses

ABSTRACTEver since Becker and Watts (1996) found that economic educators rely heavily on “chalk and talk” as a primary teaching method, economic educators have been seeking new ways to engage students and improve learning outcomes. Recently, the use of social media as a pedagogical tool in economics has received increasing interest. The authors assess students across three different institutions to see if the use of Twitter improves learning outcomes relative to a traditional Learning Management System. Using an experimental design, they find no evidence that the use of Twitter improves students' learning.

Using Lecture Capture to Improve Online and In-Class Student Performance in Principles of Economics

The primary purpose of deploying a lecture capture method of course delivery is to enhance student performance in online classes. In this study, recordings of classroom lectures are available to students in online sections of the course, as well as those taking the class in face-to-face class sections. We examine the effects of viewing these recorded lectures on student performance in principles of economics courses (macro and micro) over the course of five years. The setting is a small regional university that serves an extensive rural area. The dataset consists of close to 700 students, 55% of which enrolled in online course sections. Course grades, as the dependent variable, are regressed on measures of personal characteristics and academic maturity, as well as use of the recorded lectures. Results indicate that online students who watch the recorded lectures earn course grades that are significantly higher than counterparts who do not. There is also evidence that students in the face-to-face course sections also benefit significantly from watching recorded lectures.

How 'The Big Short' Flipped a Traditional Principles of Macroeconomics Course: Teaching to a Dominant Event in Students' Lives

After the financial crisis, macroeconomics became an unsettled discipline raising pedagogical challenges as to how to teach principles courses. This article concerns a principles of economics course that was initially taught with traditional methods. After students performed poorly during the initial course period, and engagement and attendance was subpar, it was discovered that most students, though young, were deeply affected by, and emotionally invested in, the financial crisis that caused the Great recession. They were also conversant with, and enthusiastic about, popular movies related to the crisis. Therefore, the class was flipped to teach to the dominant macroeconomic event in students’ lives—the financial crisis. The notion of teaching to seminal economic events that loom large in student cognition is the primary pedagogical contribution of this article. The tools were 1) the flipped classroom; 2) experiential learning; 3) the use of popular movies as teaching tools; and 4) the requirement of a major research paper to solidify the learning from innovative techniques. This approach substantially raised student grades, resulted in a dramatic rise in attendance and student engagement, and demonstrably enhanced the creative and critical thinking of students.

Students' persistent preconceptions and learning economic principles

ABSTRACTEconomic views held by the general public tend to differ significantly from those of economic experts. Would these differences fade away if people were exposed to some economic instruction? In this article, the authors identify college students' preconceptions about economic issues at the beginning of the semester, verify their persistence throughout the semester, and test whether their beliefs are correlated to course performance. The authors conduct a survey at the beginning and end of the semester on a sample of first-year students taking an economic principles course. They find evidence of preconception persistence and reasoning inconsistencies, pointing to some cognitive biases as a plausible cause. Most students do not integrate the newly learned tools into their thinking process, even if they perform well in tests.

Patreonomics: Public goods pedagogy for economics principles

A principles of economics course presents educators with an opportunity to connect with large numbers of students from diverse educational backgrounds and majors. This diversity, however, often makes it challenging for instructors to identify pedagogical examples that are relatable to the majority of their students. In this study, we present a timely and engaging example of a public good: Patreon music creations. Patreon is an Internet company that offers an outlet for musicians to share their YouTube-based music creations with their fans. We define and illustrate the characteristics that make these musical creations public goods, explaining also how fans willingly support these creations from a financial standpoint. This study provides educators with a unique real-world example that principles of economics students will find interesting, relatable, and educational.

A quantitative evaluation of the flipped classroom in a large lecture principles of economics course

ABSTRACTThis research provides evidence that the flipped classroom instructional format increases student final exam performance, relative to the traditional instructional format, in a large lecture principles of economics course. The authors find that the flipped classroom directly improves performance by 0.2 to 0.7 standardized deviations, depending on the type of learning objective (i.e., knowledge, comprehension, application, or analysis). They also show that the flipped classroom improves effort during the semester, measured by in-class polling participation, and find some evidence of a heterogeneous, yet positive, effect of the flipped classroom by observable student characteristics and by level of performance.

What's in a grade? Grading policies and practices in principles of economics

ABSTRACTSurvey results from a national sample of economics instructors describe the grading policies and practices in principles of economics courses. The survey results provide insights about absolute and relative grading systems used by instructors, the course components and their weights that determine grades, and the type of assessment items used for the major course components of exams, quizzes, and homework. The survey also provides information about the discretionary grading practices of instructors related to awarding bonus points, giving extra credit, or setting cut points for grade decisions. The overall finding is that there is a wide variety of grading policies used in principles courses and substantial discretion in how economics professors determine grades.

A classroom experiment with bank equity, deposit insurance, and bailouts

ABSTRACTIn this classroom experiment, students see how low bank equity requirements can interact with deposit insurance to encourage excessive risk-taking. The experiment fills a niche Admati and Hellwig (2013) have noted: citizens in a democracy must understand why bank owners argue for low equity requirements and why society as a whole is better off with higher requirements. Instructors can run the experiment in principles of economics courses to introduce the topics of banking and financial crisis, or in advanced courses to promote discussion of financial reform. It takes about 45 minutes to run and debrief, and requires no computerization.

Implementing Instructor Videos: An Empirical Test of Changes in Economics Online Courses

Online courses create an environment where lecture delivery and immediate feedback from students can be significantly less than that of face-to-face courses. To address these issues, a set of video lectures were introduced to principles of economics students during the fall of 2015. We compare student grades across twenty-six principles of economics courses to determine if the increase in capital was beneficial to students. Using a logit model, results show that the increased capital increased the predicted probability of passing principles of macroeconomics by almost 20 percent, but had no significant effect for students taking principles of microeconomics.

Student Self-Efficacy and Gender-Personality Interactions

Abstract The present study reveals that female students have significantly lower self-efficacy level and self-efficacy strength than their male peers in a course in Principles of Economics. This general conclusion does not hold for all personality types. The general conclusion of lower self-efficacy level in economics for female students compared to those of their male peers does only exist for female intuition and feeling ( NF ) and intuition and thinking students ( NT ) but not for the female sensing and perceiving student ( SP) . Furthermore, the result is revealing that the significant higher self-efficacy level for male students does only exist for male intuition and thinking students ( NT ) and not for male NF and SP students. Female students have significantly lower self-efficacy strength than their male peers. This does only exist for female intuition and thinking ( NT ) and sensing and perceiving ( SP ) students, but not for female NF students. The general result that male students have significantly higher self-efficacy strength than their female peers, does only encompass male intuition and thinking ( NT ) students and not the male SP and NF students. This study tells us that we should be cautions to conclude that self-efficacy is uniformly affected by gender. Gender-personality interactions do matter.

Student Preconceptions and Learning Economic Reasoning

Economic views held by the general public tend to differ significantly from those of economic experts. To what extent would these differences fade away if people were exposed to economic instruction? In this paper we identify first-year college students' initial preconceptions about economic issues, explore some cognitive biases behind them, verify their persistence, and test whether beliefs are correlated to course performance. We conduct a survey at the beginning and the end of the semester on a sample of students taking an economic principles course. We find evidence of preconception persistence, inconsistencies and self-serving bias. Most students do not incorporate the newly learned tools into their thinking process, even if they perform well. Many economics senior students have some beliefs that are contradicted in a principles course. Instruction in economics could be more efficient if it explicitly addressed students' preconceptions and biases, a path already taken in other disciplines.

Taking higher order thinking seriously: Using Marzano’s taxonomy in the economics classroom

This paper argues for the need for instructors to more intentionally foster higher order thinking skills in economics students, as these skills lend themselves to longer-lasting, more transferable knowledge. This paper proposes the use of Marzano’s taxonomy to aid in this endeavor. It provides a clear functional delineation between lower- and higher-order thinking, and serves as a natural way to systematically build a course around incrementally building up student thinking skills. We outline how it was used in course design for drafting student learning outcomes (SLOs), creating assessments for a Principles of Economics course, and leveraging it as a tool to provide more targeted feedback for students. Preliminary observations on the impact on student learning are presented.