In this article, the authors describe two independent efforts at "flipping" introductory economics courses employing econlowodown.org resources from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. From an instructor's perspective, it is relatively simple to locate the high-quality free resources available online and assign them to students. Their…

The author of this article describes his experiences in teaching huge classes of principles of economics over the last half-century. He lays out changes in pedagogy and illustrates various novel devices used to explain economic ideas and hold students' attention. Additionally, he considers the appropriate sizes of intro classes and weighs the…

The valuable insights of game theory sometimes remain out of reach for students who are overwhelmed by the subject's complexity. Comic book applications of game theory, with superheroes as players, can facilitate enthusiasm and classroom interaction to enhance the learning of game theory. Drawing from content in superhero movies and books, the…

The author of this article describes a form of service learning called "learning by giving," as applied in a course on the Economics of Altruism, Philanthropy and Nonprofit Organizations. The motivation for employing such a model is described, and a detailed description of the course and how to use the Learning by Giving model in a…

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the status quo across higher education, including in the domain of pedagogy. The author of this article provides a case study of the changes made to one course, "Behavioral Economics," at Swarthmore College, in response to a set of unique, pandemic-related challenges. He begins by providing details on…

The derivation of conditions necessary for Pareto efficient production and exchange is a lesson frequently showcased in microeconomic theory textbooks. Traditional delivery of this lesson is, however, limited in its scope of application and can be unnecessarily convoluted. The author shows that the universe of application is greatly expanded and a…

Within the process of progressive digitization of materials and tools for teaching and distance learning of a subject of introduction to Microeconomics (quarterly, in year three of the Degree in Social Work), taught by the authors at the National University of Distance Education (UNED), a virtual assistant in the form of "chatbot," or…

This article's authors offer an organizational framework for an economics capstone course focused on analyzing current public economic policy issues. In this course, thesis topics often include public issues such as city planning, health care, transportation, education, law, the environment, and monetary and fiscal policies. The authors provide…

Undergraduate degrees awarded in economics by U.S. colleges and universities were stagnant from 2010 (2009-10) through 2013, increased rapidly (almost 15%) over the two years from 2013 through 2015, but have subsequently leveled off in 2016 through 2018.

The authors propose a classroom experiment implementing a simple version of a New Keynesian model suitable for courses in intermediate macroeconomics and money and banking. Students play as either the central bank or members of the private sector. The central banker sets interest rates to meet twin objectives for inflation and the output gap or to…

The authors adapted a lab-in-the-field experiment emulating the dynamic extraction of a fishery to create a Web-based classroom experiment. The game includes a multi-player version analogous to an open-access problem and a single-player version analogous to the social planner problem. This game is helpful in introductory microeconomics courses to…

In this article, the author presents two alternative approaches to the assessment of competencies in economics. The first is a concept assessment as a matrix puzzle. The rows of the matrix are the economic changes and the columns are the economic outcomes. To solve the puzzle, students state which change is associated with an outcome and which is…

The reality television show "Survivor" has been a ratings success on CBS for over 16 years. In the show, 16 strangers are marooned in a remote location, required to compete in physical and mental challenges and periodically vote to eliminate players from the game. The last person remaining wins one million dollars. The author uses this…

The author of this article describes individual pre-class and group in-class assignments based on current news articles. Guided student pre-class readings of periodical articles can form the basis for engaging in-class group assignments. Many economics instructors seek to develop student skills at applying the concepts under study to analyze…

Contemporary pedagogy encourages instructors to move away from memorization to teaching the ability to "do economics." In such an environment, students are taught to apply knowledge of economic measurement, the economic model, and economic policy to analyze current events and policies. In this article, the authors build on existing…