Two essays on increasing the learning effectiveness of economics education

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study:

This study develops, implements, and evaluates a new economics teaching pedagogy based on the U.S. Army's systems approach to training model. Using the approach, tasks are identified that compose the task domain for the Principles' of Microeconomics course. From the 130 identified tasks, 73 are used by Economics of Socials Issues classes for the evaluation phase. Next each task is expanded to include task conditions, task standard, task performance steps, and task performance measures. The developed document is called a teaching, learning, and evaluation outline (TLEO). The same process identifies 53 tasks used in unit 3 of Money and Banking classes. An experiment is used to assess the impact of using the TLEO documents to enhance learning. One section of Social Issues receives the TLEO pedagogical treatment and one does not. Completely randomized selection is used for the two Money and Banking courses. The treatment groups receive the TLEO documents for each task and are taught using the task, conditions, standard format from the document. Social issues students received the treatment for 16 weeks while the Money and Banking students received 2-4 weeks of treatment.

Findings and Conclusions:

The task identification and document generation process can be applied to economics and many other academic subjects. The process is time consuming and almost prohibitive for an individual instructor; however, the finished product provides a self-contained lesson plan for teaching and an outline format for class preparation and task learning. The effectiveness of the new pedagogy is mixed. Regression analysis revealed no significant pedagogical effect on the Social Issues classes. Difference of means tests for Money and Banking classes showed greater learning by the treatment group in one of the learning achievement measures. Two of the four learning achievement measures supported increased learning in the longer Money and Banking class. Student use of the TLEO documents as envisioned was inconsistent during the experiment. More research is needed to determine student attitudes toward the new task document. Lastly, to accurately measure the TLEO document and the pedagogy, further testing in an environment where students must rely upon the TLEO exclusively is needed.