Data and Code for: The Effect of Teaching Economics with Classroom Experiments: Estimates from a Within-Subject Experiment

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Sacha Gelfer, Bentley University; Jeffrey A. Livingston, Bentley University; Sutanuka Roy, Australian National University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
README TEWCE.pdf	application/pdf	178.9 KB	05/02/2022 06:11:PM
TEWCE AEA P&P dataset creation.do	text/plain	12.6 KB	05/02/2022 04:26:PM
TEWCE AEA P&P regressions and tables replication.do	text/plain	16 KB	05/02/2022 01:28:PM
TEWCE FX currency quiz.qsf	text/plain	12.3 KB	04/29/2022 01:22:PM
TEWCE labor and goods quiz.qsf	text/plain	12.6 KB	04/29/2022 01:26:PM
TEWCE macro PPF and gains from trade quiz.qsf	text/plain	11.8 KB	04/29/2022 01:26:PM
TEWCE macro final exam questions.qsf	text/plain	24.3 KB	04/29/2022 01:27:PM
TEWCE micro PPF and gains from trade quiz.qsf	text/plain	13.9 KB	04/29/2022 01:18:PM
TEWCE micro final exam questions.qsf	text/plain	44.5 KB	04/29/2022 01:27:PM
TEWCE monetary policy quiz.qsf	text/plain	11.8 KB	04/29/2022 01:23:PM

Project Citation:

Gelfer, Sacha, Livingston, Jeffrey A., and Roy, Sutanuka. Data and Code for: The Effect of Teaching Economics with Classroom Experiments: Estimates from a Within-Subject Experiment. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-02-06. https://doi.org/10.3886/E169143V1

Project Description

Summary: Classroom experiments are a commonly-used teaching tool in economics classes. As their prevalence has grown, more and more services have been created that facilitate classroom experiments. For example, econport.org, games.moblab.com, classex.de, and Charles Holt's veconlab.econ.virginia.edu each offer numerous easy-to-implement online experiments, many of which are designed for use in Microeconomics or Macroeconomics principles classes.

A large literature studies the impact of classroom experiments on student achievement with experiments that randomize treatment across sections of a course, yielding mixed results. We extend this literature with an experimental design inspired by Wozny, Balser, and Ives (2018), who recommend randomizing treatment across topics within a given course section. Each student is taught some topics using a classroom experiment and other topics without one in a within-subject design.

We use this design to evaluate the impact of classroom experiments on overall student achievement and separately for male and female students. Avilova and Goldin (2018) show that the degree to which women have been underrepresented among economics majors has been steady for the last 25 years. If classroom experiments boost achievement in introductory classes differentially by gender, they might be used to help address this imbalance by encouraging more women to major in economics. We find our classroom experiments have little overall impact on student learning overall and for both male and female students, but these null results may mask heterogeneous effects across the various experiments used to teach the different topics involved in the study.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: classroom experiments; active learning

JEL Classification:
A22 Economic Education and Teaching of Economics: Undergraduate
C93 Field Experiments

Geographic Coverage: Massachusetts, USA

Time Period(s): 6/2021 – 12/2021 (Summer 2021 and Fall 2021 semesters)

Collection Date(s): 6/2021 – 12/2021

Universe: Subjects were students in Bentley University Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics courses.

Data Type(s): experimental data

Methodology

Response Rate: ~90%. Students did not take particular quizzes if they were absent from class on the day that they were administered by the instructor.

Sampling: All instructors of Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics were invited to participate in the experiment. Instructors who volunteered to do so made the teaching methods a part of their syllabus, so all students in their sections were required to participate.

Data Source: All data was generated by the experiment. Quizzes and final exam questions were administered by Qualtrics.

Collection Mode(s): other

Scales: n/a

Weights: n/a

Unit(s) of Observation: individual student scores on a quiz on a particular topic. Each student could have up to four observations on a quiz or final exam.

Geographic Unit: n/a

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-02-06]

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