Active Learning in Undergraduate Education Using the Iowa Electronic Markets (iem)

经济学(82)发展学习环境以促进经济学和政治学的本科生教育非常重要，因为经济学和政治学对公民的生活产生了巨大的影响，但许多学生对它们知之甚少。事实证明，有效地教授经济学很困难，因为经济学建立在一个数学方程式的框架上，许多学生认为这个框架相当抽象。该项目正在开发、测试和实施课程材料，以利用成功开发的爱荷华州电子市场技术(IEM)，在一系列经济学(和政治学)本科课程中使用。大多数研究金融资产、商品、服务和观点交易市场的功能的现有课程，原则上都将受益于这些材料。该项目正在开发完整的、可上网的教学材料，这些材料将适应包括远程教育和基于网络的教育在内的各种学习方法。他们的共同主题是将IEM用作实验室练习，允许主动学习，就像实验室促进其他科学的学习一样。这有助于克服经济学的抽象本质，同时鼓励学生学习技术概念。在这个项目中，来自30多所HBCU、HSI和农村社区学院的60多名教职员工正在学习如何在其特定的学生群体和学习环境中使用IEM。教材正在向学生介绍互联网(通过IEM交易)，并鼓励学生将其用作信息来源，以做出更明智的经济决策。因此，该项目涉及本科教育部门的所有四个主题：教师准备、多样性、教师发展和将技术融入课堂。

Economics (82) The development of learning environments to facilitate undergraduate education in economics and political science is important because economics and politics impact citizens' lives dramatically but many students have little understanding of them. Teaching economics effectively has proven difficult because economic science rests on a framework of mathematical equations that many students find quite abstract. This project is developing, testing and implementing curricular materials to make use of the successfully developed Iowa Electronic Market technology (IEM) in a range of undergraduate courses in economics (and political science). Most existing courses that study the function of markets for trading financial assets, goods, services, and opinions will, in principle, benefit from these materials. The project is developing complete, internet-accessible instructional materials, which will adapt to a wide range of learning approaches including distance and web-based education. Their common theme is to use the IEM as a laboratory exercise, allowing active learning in much the same way laboratories facilitate learning in other sciences. This helps overcome the abstract nature of economics while giving students incentives to learn technical concepts. During this project, over 60 faculty from more than 30 HBCUs, HSIs and rural community colleges are learning to use the IEM with their specific student populations and learning environments. Materials are introducing students to the Internet (through IEM trading) and encouraging students to use it as an information source to make more informed economic decisions. Thus, this project addresses all four themes of the Division of Undergraduate Education: teacher preparation, diversity, faculty development and the integration of technology into the classroom.