macro experiment this fall

From: David Wheat (dwheat@wheatresources.com)
Date: Mon Jul 12 2004 - 13:42:43 CDT

  • Next message: Polley, William: "RE: Another teachable moment from Business Week?"

    Greetings to everyone on this list.

    I teach macro at a community college in Virginia, and I am
    currently getting a PhD in Norway. I have developed a
    system dynamics (SD) model of the economy and an
    interactive learning environment (ILE) for macro. In my
    teaching, I put a heavy emphasis on dynamic feedback
    effects rather than comparative statics.

    I can provide more info to those who are interested, but
    the main reason I’m sending this message is to get out
    the word that I will be conducting an experiment this fall to
    test the learning effects of the ILE. And, I am looking for
    macro instructors who would like to participate.

    The experiment requires a pre-test at the beginning of the
    course, and a post-test at the end. All you would have to
    do is arrange for the administration of the tests. You
    would not need to change your teaching methods. What
    I hope to learn is whether students who participate in my
    course, using the ILE and SD model, demonstrate a better
    grasp of feedback effects over time, compared to students
    who do not use these teaching aids. The pre-test
    questions are not finalized yet, but will involve a “policy
    situation” that calls for applying what has been learned in
    the course. The pre-test results will be poor, but are
    needed to establish a baseline for comparison.

    All participants (instructors, students, and institutions) will
    remain anonymous in the article that will be written about
    this experiment. And the data will be made available to
    all participants.

    Thanks for providing this forum for discussing economics
    teaching.

    All the best,
    Dave 

    --
David Wheat
University of Bergen, Norway
47-55-58-4142 (office)
47-55-27-6836 (home)
dwheat@wheatresources.com
--

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 12 2004 - 13:42:55 CDT