Xtranomics: Where Xtranormal Meets Economics

Abstract

Students are often quite good at memorizing and replicating definitions and concepts on exams in the context in which those definitions and concepts are taught. What many students have more difficulty with is applying the material they learn in the classroom to a broader range of scenarios. This website presents the design and instructions for implementation of an exercise I have devised that allows instructors to identify if out of context learning is lacking or has been achieved. Using the website Xtranormal.com and its embedded software, I require students to create a short animated film that works basic economic concepts into the script. Students are instructed to be creative and not simply have their characters recite textbook definitions. Viewing the finished product allows one to see which concepts students understand well and which concepts students are having difficulty applying outside of the context of the classroom.

The motivation for this assignment came from reading a section of Ken Bain’s book What the Best College Teachers Do (2004). Bain reports the findings of Halloun and Hestenes (1985). Halloun and Hestenes report that even students who passed a physics course with an A did not have their preconceived and wrong notions about physics change. I was curious if this was also the case for my students in a Principles of Economics class. By having my students write scenes that include the economic way of thinking I am able to find if my students suffer from a similar problem. I assign this project early in the semester allowing ample time for additional instruction and practice on any problem areas uncovered.

This project is easily adaptable to nearly any topic. I have found that unleashing student creativity is both very fun and very rewarding in the amount of learning and teachable moments it produces.

Keywords: Economic Education, Multimedia, Student Engagement, Pedagogy

JEL Classification: A12, A20, A22