L'économie expérimentale comme outil pédagogique : quelle efficacité ?

In this article, we report the results of a pedagogical experiment involving 118 first-year undergraduate students. In a course on the ?tragedy of the commons?, some students (in ?experimental? sections) participated in a brief classroom game while others (in ?control? sections) received a traditional lecture-oriented presentation. We compare student achievement in tests specifically devoted to common resources. We find no significant difference between students in the experimental sections and those in traditional lecture-oriented sections in the answers to a multiple-choice test implemented at the end of the session. However, we do find a very strong effect on the results of evaluations made three months later, with students of experimental sections being significantly more successful. These results seem to indicate that the main advantage of experiments is to improve the long-term retention of knowledge.