‘Economics with Training Wheels’:Using Blogs in Teaching and Assessing Introductory Economics

Michael Cameron

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: Blogs provide a dynamic interactive medium for online discussion, consistent with communal constructivist pedagogy. This paper explores the use of blogs in the teaching and assessment of a small (40-60 students) introductory economics paper. The role of blogs as a teaching, learning and assessment tool are discussed. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected across four semesters, students’ participation in the blog assessment is found to be associated with student ability, gender, and whether they are distance learners. Importantly, students with past economics experience do not appear to crowd out novice economics students. Student performance in tests and examinations does not appear to be associated with blog participation after controlling for student ability. However, students generally report overall positive experiences with the blog assessment.

Keywords: economics education; blogs; teaching; assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A20 A22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2011-03-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.its.waikato.ac.nz/wai/econwp/1102.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: ‘Economics with Training Wheels’: Using Blogs in Teaching and Assessing Introductory Economics (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wai:econwp:11/02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand, 3240. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Geua Boe-Gibson ().