Pecuniary Effects,Second-Order Conditions,and the LRAC Curve

In the continuing controversy over the one-semester as opposed to the two-semester introductory economics course, Paden and Moyer present evidence in support of the latter. They report on an experiment in which students in two-semester courses performed significantly better on objective tests than those in one-semester courses, after adjustments were made for such things as differences in initial knowledge of economics, student ability and influence of teaching assistants.     

Trends in Undergraduate Economics Degrees: An Update

The author examines the effects of different introductory microeconomics textbooks on student performance in subsequent economics courses (specifically, Intermediate Microeconomics I and Money and Banking). In some cases, the effects are significant and sizeable. There is also evidence of other variables affecting student performance in later courses, such as taking first-year microeconomics by distance, math background, effects of having taken other economics courses, and the time between introductory economics and later courses.     

Incentive Matters!—The Benefit of Reminding Students About Their Academic Standing in Introductory Economics Courses

In this article, the authors illustrate how incentives can improve student performance in introductory economics courses. They implemented a policy experiment in a large introductory economics class in which they reminded students who scored below an announced cutoff score on the midterm exam about the risk of failing the course. The authors employed a regression-discontinuity method to estimate the causal impact of their policy on students’ performance on the final exam. The results suggest that the policy had a significant impact on students’ performance on the final exam. In fact, the gain in test scores was sufficient to boost a student's overall course grade by one letter grade.     

The Role of Economics in Interdisciplinary and Problem-Oriented Programs

Although research on the teaching of economics beyond the introductory course appears to be increasing, it is still rare. This study is one of the few that deals with the intermediate level. Ault and Rutman used a three-part test (one part of which was made up of an essay question) in measuring student knowledge before and after instruction in intermediate theory. They compared an experimental group being taught through a problem-centered format (in combination with the usual lecture-discussion approach) with a control group getting only the lecture-discussion treatment. The experimental students did no better than the control students, but the authors discuss several variables that might help to explain these results.     

Are your students absent,not absent,or present? Mindfulness and student performance

The concept of mindfulness has received significant attention in recent years as the effects of ubiquitous distractions become more apparent in the workplace and in education. This study examines the relationship between three measures of mindfulness and student performance among a sample of 922 students in introductory economics classes from two large public universities. The authors’ measures of mindfulness include general dispositional mindfulness levels, frequency of mobile device usage during class as a measure of classroom mindfulness, and frequency of test anxiety as a measure of assessment mindfulness. The results show a positive association between all three measures of mindfulness and overall performance. The association between dispositional mindfulness and performance was greater for female students and students with lower grade point averages.     

New insights into an old problem – enhancing student learning outcomes in an introductory statistics course

Many students enrolled in first year introductory statistics courses believe learning statistics is a waste of time and fear they will fail. In this study, we explored the impacts on learning outcomes for students in an introductory statistics course by allowing students to arbitrarily choose their own sequence of learning from three key learning activities, namely tutorials, Peer-Assisted Study Sessions and Computer-Managed Learning quizzes. Unlike the old regime where the learning activities followed a strict, rigid sequence, a new regime allowed students to freely choose when, where and how they engaged with the course learning activities. This allowed increased opportunities for students to receive relevant and timely feedback. Using a total of 1187 students enrolled in semester 2 of 2011, 2012 and 2013, data were collected on students’ scores from 7 assessment tasks. Our experimental design ensured as many course features as possible remained constant between the control cohorts (of 2011 and 2012) and the experimental cohort (2013), thereby avoiding potential sample selection problems. The findings showed student learning outcomes in the new regime improved significantly. Interestingly, the effects were found to be greatest in the lower percentile of the score distribution.     

A COLLABORATIVE LEARNING LAB: DOES THE FORM MATTER?

A recent paper found that adding a collaborative learning lab (CLL) component to a traditional introductory microeconomics class significantly improved students' scores on a standardized final exam. Here, the authors reconsider these results in two fundamental ways. First, this article is able to include student-specific factors, such as standardized test scores and age, to control for a student's desire and ability to perform. These results suggest that they slightly underestimate the gains from CLL classes. The second question addressed concerns the implementation of the CLL component. In the original work, the CLL class contained only 24 students in class (small-CLL). This paper introduces the CLL component into a class with 48 students (largE-CLL). The authors found students attending a large in-class CLL failed to perform significantly better on a standardized test than students attending classes without an in-class CLL. They also performed significantly worse than students in a small-CLL environment. This article suggests that a CLL can improve scores if care is taken to both maintain an environment that maximizes student–instructor interaction and monitors student collaboration.     

Evaluating the flipped classroom: A randomized controlled trial

Despite recent interest in flipped classrooms, rigorous research evaluating their effectiveness is sparse. In this study, the authors implement a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of a flipped classroom technique relative to a traditional lecture in an introductory undergraduate econometrics course. Random assignment enables the analysis to eliminate other potential explanations of performance differences between the flipped and traditional classrooms, while assignment of experimental condition by section and lesson enables improved statistical precision. The authors find that the flipped classroom increases scores on medium-term, high-stakes assessments by 0.16 standard deviation, with similar long-term effects for high-performing students. Estimated impacts are robust to alternative specifications accounting for possible spillover effects arising from the experimental design.     

Student employment and academic performance: an empirical exploration of the primary orientation theory

This study empirically assesses the thesis that student employment only hurts academic performance for students with a primary orientation towards work (versus school). To this end, we analyse unique data on tertiary education students’ intensity of and motivation for student employment by means of a state-of-the art moderation model. We find, indeed, only a negative association between hours of student work and the percentage of courses passed for work-oriented students. This finding may explain the contradictory results in the literature neglecting this factor.     

Letter from the Editors

The authors explore academic misconduct in various forms and consider the role of student perceptions. They gather data from students in introductory economics courses regarding 31 types of misconduct. They estimate the relevance of various determinants of misconduct, acknowledging that they may vary across misconduct type and that students' perceptions may influence their behavior. Their estimates reveal that although there are determinants that influence student behavior across misconduct type, some types of misconduct have a unique set of determinants. They find that a student's perception of what constitutes misconduct is an important component of this behavioral decision. These results imply that to reduce a particular type of cheating, one must consider its specific determinants and ensure that students believe that the act is misconduct. In addition, students must believe that the probability of being caught is high.     

Students' Characteristics and Performance in Economic Statistics

The vast majority of studies in college economics have dealt with the introductory principles course. In one of the rare research projects dealing with other courses, Professor Cohn attempts to identify factors affecting student performance in economic statistics. He considers such variables as grade point average, graduate vs. undergraduate status, major field, sex and credits in economics, mathematics and statistics. There are a few recognized limitations to his model, but the reader will find some of his results to be surprising indeed.     

A Note on Attitude as a Factor in Learning Economics

Although one might naturally assume that students interested in economics will learn more in an introductory course than those not interested in the subject, this assumption had to be tested. Using a specially designed “Questionnaire on Student Attitude Toward Economics” on a pretest and posttest basis, and accounting for previous course work, the student's verbal and quantitative skills, and student program requirements, Karstensson and Vedder employed linear multiple regression analysis and found a positive relationship between precourse attitude and course grade. Changes in student attitude which occurred during the course were also analyzed.     

Are contingent instructors better teachers: evidence from a Chinese university

This paper evaluates the effects of contingent instructors on education outcomes in the context of higher education in developing countries. Exploiting the features of Chinese higher education system, we are able to exclude the confounding effects of student selection and heterogeneous marking standards. Although students of contingent instructors appear to perform as well as their fellow students taught by full-time instructors, we find the evidence that contingent instructors utilize lower marking standards, resulting an inflation of the scores of their students, which masks the negative impacts of their teaching. Our results suggest that contingent instructors have a significantly negative impact on education outcomes. While exposure to contingent instructors may affect the probability of students taking more challenging courses in the following term, the longer-term impacts on education outcomes are negligible.     

Teaching (un)sustainability? University sustainability commitments and student experiences of introductory economics

The three largest public universities in British Columbia, Canada have signed the Talloires Declaration, committing themselves to promoting sustainability and creating expectations that they will integrate sustainability across the curriculum in order to improve students' environmental literacy and stewardship. About 40% of North American university students take a mainstream introductory economics course; few of these students take economics at more advanced levels. As such, introductory economics courses are an important vehicle for students to learn economic theory; they have the potential to contribute to the knowledge that students can mobilize to foster sustainability. Interviews were held with 54 students who had recently completed an introductory level mainstream economics course at one of the three universities. Students reported that introductory economics courses place little emphasis on the environment and sustainability, they recalled course content with normative connotations that are problematic from a sustainability perspective and they described how discussion of the limitations of mainstream theory was set aside. Student reports of the insights introductory economics offers into environmental problems imply that these courses are failing to substantively increase students' understanding of sustainability and linkages between the environment and the economy. Findings suggest that current introductory economics curriculum undermines the universities' sustainability commitments.     

A ‘Big Think’ Approach to Government Debt: Promoting Significant Learning in Introductory Macroeconomics

Drawing on Dee Fink's theory of significant learning, the authors present a ‘big think’ learning module to supplement fiscal policy discussions in introductory macroeconomics courses. Students are asked to consider a salient, contentious question that can be addressed in meaningful ways based on principles-level concepts and models, namely: ‘In your judgment, does the recent steep rise in the US debt-to-GDP ratio pose a serious threat to the US economy? Why or why not?’ To enhance students' willingness and ability to engage this big think question, the module provides open-ended preparatory exercises amenable to courses taught from heterodox or mainstream perspectives. Unlike standard textbook treatments which inadvertently thwart exploratory thinking and provide little support for analyzing case-specific burdens and benefits of government borrowing, the big think unit motivates students to think logically and creatively about the debt–GDP relationship in the current US context.     

The Effect of Macro/Micro Course Sequencing on Learning and Attitudes in Principles of Economics

Most of us naturally assume that the more courses a student takes the more he or she will learn. Little has been done, however, to determine just how much additional knowledge or understanding is acquired from economics courses above the introductory level. David Hartman, Director of Undergraduate Economics at Harvard, has taken an important step in attempting to measure the impact of the higher level courses. This atticle reports the results of a study of the effects of intermediate micro and macro courses, field courses, a “graduate-type highly theoretical course,” and a policy-oriented micro course. The report should be of great interest, and will probably engender additional research in other colleges.     

‘Economics with Training Wheels’: Using Blogs in Teaching and Assessing Introductory Economics

Blogs provide a dynamic interactive medium for online discussion, consistent with communal constructivist pedagogy. The author of this article describes and evaluates a blog assignment used in the teaching and assessment of a small (40–60 students) introductory economics course. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected across four semesters, students’ participation in the blog assignment is found to be associated with student ability, gender, and student perceptions of the blog. Importantly, students with past economics experience do not appear to crowd out novice economics students. Student performance is positively associated with the quality of their blog participation after controlling for student ability, suggesting that a focus on quality of student engagement could further improve learning outcomes. Students generally report overall positive experiences with the blog assignment.     

Foreign GTAs Can Be Effective Teachers of Economics

The authors tested whether student performance in the principles of economics course is affected by the use of graphs as part of a lecture. They conducted two experiments at the University of South Carolina, one in spring 1995 and another in spring 1997. Students were randomly assigned to either a nographs lecture or a lecture with graphs. The main hypothesis was that students in the lectures with graphs would show higher gain scores than those in the nograph lectures (both lectures were videotaped). The authors found that students in the lecture with graphs in 1995 had significantly lower gain scores than those in the no-graphs lecture. For 1997, they found no significant differences in student performance between the two groups.     

Economics and Programmed Instruction

An examination of programmed instruction indicates that it is as effective as the lecture-discussion technique for teaching economics when measured by student examination performance. Evidence indicates that PI students better retain information applicable to solving complex application questions than those exposed to traditional instruction. PI saves student and instructor time, yet the growth of its use has diminished. Vredeveld examines the principles and development of PI, its effectiveness, and the economic reasons inhibiting its use in colleges and universities.