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Browsing by Author "Wooten, Jadrian"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    Assessing proxies of knowledge and difficulty with rubric‐based instruments
    Smith, Ben O.; Wooten, Jadrian (Wiley, 2023-09-28)
    The fields of psychometrics, economic education, and education have developed statistically‐valid methods of assessing knowledge and learning. These methods include item response theory, value‐added learning models, and disaggregated learning. These methods, however, focus on multiple‐choice or single response assessments. Faculty and administrators routinely assess knowledge through papers, thesis presentations, or other demonstrations of knowledge assessed with rubric rows. This paper presents a statistical approach to estimating a proxy for student ability and rubric row difficulty. Moreover, we have developed software so that practitioners can more easily apply this method to their instruments. This approach can be used in researching education treatment effects, practitioners measuring learning outcomes in their own classrooms, or estimating knowledge for administrative assessment. As an example, we have applied these new methods to projects in a large Labor Economics course at a public university.
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    ChatGPT has Aced the Test of Understanding in College Economics: Now What?
    Geerling, Wayne; Mateer, G. Dirk; Damodaran, Nikhil; Wooten, Jadrian (SAGE, 2023-04-08)
    The Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE) is a standardized test of economics knowledge performed in the United States which primarily targets principles-level understanding. We asked ChatGPT to complete the TUCE. ChatGPT ranked in the 91st percentile for Microeconomics and the 99th percentile for Macroeconomics when compared to students who take the TUCE exam at the end of their principles course. The results show that ChatGPT is capable of providing answers that exceed the mean responses of students across all institutions. The emergence of artificial intelligence presents a significant challenge to traditional assessment methods in higher education. An important implication of this finding is that educators will likely need to redesign their curriculum in at least one of the following three ways: reintroduce proctored, in-person assessments; augment learning with chatbots; and/or increase the prevalence of experiential learning projects that artificial intelligence struggles to replicate well.
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    Economics in a Crisis: A Cautious Approach to Being Relevant
    Wooten, Jadrian; Al-Bahrani, Abdullah (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2021-01-01)
    While this may appear to be a good opportunity to bring real-life examples into the classroom and show how economics applies during a global pandemic, we advocate instead for a more cautious approach. One of the joys of teaching economics is that it can be applied to “everyday life,” but there are some moments in life where caution may be warranted.
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    Economics of Squid Game
    Wooten, Jadrian; Geerling, Wayne (Taylor & Francis, 2023)
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    Facilitating Student Connections and Study Partners During Periods of Remote and Online Learning
    Wooten, Jadrian; Geerling, Wayne; Thomas, Nicola (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2020-01-01)
    We outline an early-semester social activity designed to engage students with course material at an early point in the semester, but also to foster social and academic connections. Social engagement among students has been shown to have a positive impact on learning and the move to remote and online teaching has placed students in an environment lacking social opportunities. We provide formal and informal feedback of the events as well as extensions for additional social events that could be completed throughout the semester.
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    Gender, risk aversion, and the "COVID" grading option in a principles of economics course
    Trost, Steve; Wooten, Jadrian (Routledge, 2023-05-12)
    As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the United States, colleges and universities faced the challenge of completing the academic term. Many institutions offered students the option of a "credit/no credit" grading system, which wouldn't affect their GPA. In this study, we examine which student characteristics are correlated with the decision to choose this grading option over a traditional letter grade. Our findings show that female students, particularly those with lower course grades, were more likely to opt for the "credit/no credit" option than male students. This aligns with previous research indicating that female students tend to be more risk-averse, particularly in economics courses.
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    Moneyball as a Resource for Teaching Economics
    White, Dustin R.; Wooten, Jadrian (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2022-01-01)
    The Teaching Economics with Moneyball website (https://www.moneyballsimulator.info/) includes material we have identified, created, and collated over the years and includes updates to a simulator that can be used to teach marginal revenue product. All material posted on the site is freely available to educators and submissions are encouraged.
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    An In-Class Experiment to Teach Marginal Revenue Product Using the Baseball Labor Market and Moneyball
    Wooten, Jadrian; White, Dustin R. (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2018)
    We describe a class project exploring principles of marginal revenue product and labor markets through the professional baseball labor market. No prior knowledge of baseball is required to implement this project. The objective is to provide the student a better understanding of economic principles by collecting and analyzing data about professional baseball free agents. This is intended to highlight economic principles while increasing student engagement. The project culminates in an in-class draft and season simulation activity that allows the students to apply the information they have collected in order to make decisions based on their work.
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    Lesson Plans for Teaching Economics with The Big Bang Theory
    Geerling, Wayne; Mateer, G. Dirk; Smith, Ben O.; Tierney, James E.; Wooten, Jadrian (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2018)
    Using examples in the classroom from current and past television shows and movies is becoming increasingly common. Being able to relate ideas back to a popular clip or episode allows the instructor to reach students in ways the traditional lecture cannot. Building on the work of Tierney, Mateer, Smith, Wooten, and Geerling (2016), this paper introduces five lesson plans tied to clips from The Big Bang Theory that can be used in high school (9-12) economics courses.
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    The Most Magical Way to Teach: Disney Music In The Classroom
    Jaeger, Michael; Wooten, Jadrian (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2022)
    The Walt Disney Company, and its subsidiaries, are responsible for some of the most popular movies in existence. One of the things that makes the classic Disney movie unique is its soundtracks. Many of the movies have key songs that can be used to teach various economics concepts in the high school and postsecondary classroom. We provide three detailed lesson plans that outline how to use Disney music to teach foundational concepts, but also include a more extensive table that includes concepts covered in a variety of Disney songs.
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    Teaching Economics Using Scenes from Superstore
    Wooten, Jadrian; Lynch, Brian (Inderscience Publishers, 2021)
    Superstore follows a group of employees working at Cloud 9, a fictional big-box retailer in Missouri. The television show aired on NBC for 6 seasons and offers economic educators an abundance of scenes that can be used to teach undergraduate economics. All of the scenes mentioned in the lesson plans, and many more, are freely available online on the Teaching with Superstore website. A benefit of using a show like Superstore to teach economics is that it features a diverse cast and a familiar setting to any student who has shopped in a big box retailer. We highlight four episodes that are rich in teaching content and include assessment questions that instructors can assign in their classrooms. Each of the scenes outlined in the paper pose a particular economic problem faced by characters on the show with clear pedagogical economic concepts.
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    Teaching Economics with Breaking Bad
    Muchiri, Steve; Paraschiv, Mihai; Wooten, Jadrian (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2022-01-01)
    This paper builds on the existing literature, to expand the stock of “chalk-and-talk” alternatives and reduce the cost of implementing such alternatives. Specifically, the paper proposes three lesson plans that are based on a series of Breaking Bad scenes identified in Duncan, Muchiri and Paraschiv (2020) and featured as part of the associated online companion, BreakingBadEcon.com. The lesson plans rely on the economic content within the scenes to introduce and emphasize a notable array of microeconomic concepts while also facilitating the assessment of concept comprehension and student learning.
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    Using Squid Game to Teach Game Theory
    Geerling, Wayne; Nagy, Kristofer; Rhee, Elaine; Thomas, Nicola; Wooten, Jadrian (Journal of Economics Teaching, 2022)
    This paper uses Netflix’s dystopian Korean-language drama series Squid Game (2021) to illustrate an active learning technique to support the teaching of game theory in undergraduate courses. The series is chosen because it demonstrates different games with which the characters have to engage as part of the narrative. Geerling, Mateer and Addler (2020) show that using popular films in class is an effective way to introduce and motivate the deeper learning of core game theory concepts. We build on this work by providing instructors with a menu of quick teaching scenes and extended teaching guides, from which they can freely select and adapt to their particular needs. These resources provide summaries of the scenes, links to the clips, key concepts, and assessment questions. This teaching material is suitable for use in both principles-level courses, where game theory is first introduced, and advanced-level courses.
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    Using K-Pop to Teach Indifference Curve Analysis, Behavioral Economics and Game Theory
    Geerling, Wayne; Nagy, Kristofer; Rhee, Elaine; Wooten, Jadrian (2022-04-21)
    Economic educators have been teaching with pop culture for decades, but until recently the focus was on English-based media. In this paper, we build on the work of Wooten et al. (2021b), who show how K-pop can be integrated into the principles-level curriculum. We develop three teaching guides that can be used to teach aspects of behavioral economics, game theory and indifference curve analysis – topics which are taught at the end of most principles-level courses but are also standalone upper-level courses. The three artists chosen – BTS, BLACKPINK and TWICE – have huge global followings. We hope this paper will contribute to the library of diverse and inclusive teaching resources while helping to address the deficit of resources available to instructors of upper-level courses.