A Little More than Chalk and Talk: Results from a Third National Survey of Teaching Methods in Undergraduate Economics Courses

Michael Watts and William Becker

The Journal of Economic Education, 2008, vol. 39, issue 3, 273-286

Abstract: In 1995, 2000, and 2005, the authors surveyed U.S. academic economists to investigate how economics is taught in four different types of undergraduate courses at postsecondary institutions. They especially looked for any changes in teaching methods that occurred over this decade, when there were several prominent calls for economists and postsecondary instructors in other fields to devote more attention and effort to teaching and to make greater use of active, student-centered learning methods, with less use of direct instruction ( chalk and talk ). By 2005, although standard lectures and chalkboard presentations were still dominant, there was evidence of slow growth in the use of other teaching methods, including classroom discussions (especially teacher-directed discussions), computer-generated displays (such as PowerPoint), providing students with prepared sets of class notes, and computer lab assignments in econometrics and statistics courses. Internet database searches were used by a small but growing minority of instructors. Classroom experiments were used by a small share of instructors in introductory courses. Assignments or classroom references to the popular financial press, sports, literature, drama, or music were used somewhat more often. Cooperative learning methods were rarely used.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3200/JECE.39.3.273-286 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:jeduce:v:39:y:2008:i:3:p:273-286

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/VECE20

DOI: 10.3200/JECE.39.3.273-286

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Economic Education is currently edited by William Walstad

More articles in The Journal of Economic Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().