2018 Fall - Winners

Marc Kaufmann 

Business and Economics

Role Play in Economic Situations Integrated with Tailored Problems

CEU TEACHING DEVELOPMENT GRANTS Application Form 2
Context and Problem
I taught Information Economics in Winter 2017/2018, with me lecturing and students solving problems at home. While I thought it worked well, students scored between 18 and 47 points out of 100 on the exam and they performed quite poorly on some questions that I expected them to do well on. It was quite clear they had not learned how to understand, solve, and apply the economic models taught in class – and that this was primarily driven by a lack of understanding how to setup these problems and how to think them through.
Goal and Improvement of Student Learning
To teach the course in a way that ensures that students learn all of the following:
1. Decide which model applies in a given economic situation
2. Know how to formally write down such a model
3. Know how to solve (simple versions) of these models
4. Interpret and communicate the outcomes from these models
Steps 1 and 4 are not that well addressed by most of the current problem set questions, as they are not based on the formal mathematics but economic judgement. Steps 2 and 3 are implicit in the problems, but last year’s problems jumped right to the intermediate/advanced level.
Method
First, I will flip the classroom this year since students said the lecture notes were very clear (they are not mine originally), and since they lack practice. This will help with 2 and 3.
Second, I will introduce role plays or simulations of the economic situations we are studying, where students will (in pairs or triplets) play through these situations with tokens. This is meant to address 1 and 4 – getting an intuitive sense of the situation – and thus help with situation 2 and 3.
Third, these role plays should be based on problems that range from easy over intermediate to advanced, and these problems need to be shorter and address one specific part, (1) through (4), of the modeling process above. This will require to repurpose existing problems as well as come up with new ones that are sufficiently varied in covering many economic situations and giving students ample space for practice.
I will need help with the design and checking of role-plays and tailored problems through a competent PhD-level research assistan acquainted with the material in this course.
My hope is that the role plays will lead students to peer-learning similar to the Mazur method, while going beyond it. This is done by immersing students in the situation themselves, which is easier in economic situations of exchange than in the case of thinking about physics problems.
Measurement
I will (hopefully) have a mock exam in the middle to measure progress on actual problem-solving along points (1) through (4) above; as well as survey students regarding their personal perception about the learning efficacy and enjoyment and motivation following this change in course design.