Contact: Dr. Beck A. Taylor, Dean & Professor of Economics, 205-726-2364, btaylor@samford.edu

Innovative economics pedagogy improves learning for most

Economists who teach economics to undergraduates have recently debated the best methods to use in the classroom.

"Historically, economists have relied on the chalk-and-talk' methodology that focuses too heavily on lectures and passive learning," says Samford School of Business dean and professor of economics, Dr. Beck A. Taylor. "Recently, economists have attempted to adopt techniques more often seen in the physical sciences to teach economic concepts to students, including the use of experimental laboratories," Taylor adds.

During a recent semester of teaching Principles of Microeconomics, Taylor and his coauthor, Dr. Tisha Emerson at Baylor University, separated nearly 300 students enrolled in the course into two groups: one that employed the traditional lecture format, and a second that used curriculum based on 11 classroom experiments designed to place students into simulated market environments.

Taylor notes that, "The beauty of the experimental method is that students learn market fundamentals not by manipulating supply and demand curves on a graph, but by experiencing the real effects of market changes on their own performance as a buyer or seller. When the student returns to the textbook treatment of the concept highlighted in the experiment, he or she has real experience to serve as context."

In a paper scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of Journal of Economic Education, Taylor and Emerson show statistically that not only do students exposed to the experimental method perform better on an end-of-semester instrument of learning, but that most learning styles and personality types benefit from the exposure.

"Once it was determined in an earlier study [published in the Southern Economic Journal] that the students in the experimental sections outperformed those in the traditional sections, we wanted to see if there were some experimental students with unique learning styles who would have performed better in the traditional section. After accounting for students' learning styles and personality types using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, we found that the experimental approach appears to benefit, or to be neutral with respect to, most personality types and learning styles. We found some evidence that students in the experimental classroom who tend to be more concrete and factual in their thinking may not perform as well as more abstract thinkers."

Taylor and Emerson are currently working on yet a third study tracking the same cohort of students to determine whether students exposed to the experimental approach to teaching economics are more or less likely to major in economics or take additional upper-level economics courses.