Experiential Exercises in Economics
January 20, 2016
Your Learning Goals
What do you hope to get out of today's workshop? Write your responses on post-it notes (1 response per sticky note) and post them on the front white board.
Current Practice
What strategies do you currently use to engage students in your economics classes?
Which topics do your students struggle with the most?
Economics for Real Life Ideas
Filing taxes
FAFSA / TAFSA
Action Research Proposals
Tracking expenses / income
Go Fishing! Simulation
Vocabulary used in simulation:
- incentives
- scarcity
- Adam Smith
- free enterprise
- private property
- Tragedy of the Commons
- Government intervention
- Environmentalism
- Resource Allocation
How can you use this simulation in your classroom?
- Every group does the simulation
- Break it up using online timer
- Different situations per group - international ocean boundary, pond, lake with two companies on it
- Incentives matter - "Goldfish" different colors = different incentives
- Tie-in to externalities, short-term vs. long-term thinking, Law of Unintended Consequences
- Debate: Classical vs. Neo-Classical Thinking
- Relevant examples for shifts in supply and demand
- Black market organ donors
- Tie to current events
- Video the simulation and upload
Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility
Vocabulary:
- Diminishing marginal utility
- All decisions are made at the margin
- opportunity cost
- marginal cost
Making Muffins
Simulation promotes respect for entrepreneurs
Vocabulary:
- Invisible Hand
- Self-interest
- Profit Motive
- Output
- Supply
- Competition
- Substitutions,
- Supply and Demand Schedule
- Market efficiency
- Making decisions at the margin
Ken Karrer
Retired Austin ISD educator and administrator and FTE Consultant and Presenter
Email: kkarrer@austin.rr.com