IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ireced/v25y2017icp35-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Humanities as technology in teaching economics

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner, Jeffrey

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider the promise of humanities as technology in the teaching of economics. Many students expect humanities and technology to be substitutes rather than complements. This paper seeks to leverage this expectation by challenging students to instead consider humanities as itself a technology—indeed, a very powerful technology. Three examples of humanities as technology are discussed. First, as an extension of essay examination technology, instructors might ask students to prepare one-act plays that are situated in the context of the work students would most wish to engage upon graduation. Second, we might ask students to prepare term papers in which they discover principles of economics in poetry. Third, instructors might feature philosophical tracts such as Plato’s Republic as a platform for discussing a number of economic concepts at both the principles and upper-division levels. These technologies arguably make learning economics more interesting and more permanent for students than would otherwise be the case.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner, Jeffrey, 2017. "Humanities as technology in teaching economics," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 35-40.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ireced:v:25:y:2017:i:c:p:35-40
    DOI: 10.1016/j.iree.2017.05.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388016300585
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.iree.2017.05.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven Shavell, 2002. "Law versus Morality as Regulators of Conduct," American Law and Economics Review, Oxford University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 227-257.
    2. Ilya Segal & Michael D. Whinston, 2007. "Antitrust in Innovative Industries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(5), pages 1703-1730, December.
    3. Kenneth G. Elzinga, 2001. "Fifteen Theses on Classroom Teaching," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(2), pages 249-257, October.
    4. Jeffrey Wagner, 2007. "Plato's Republic and liberal economic education for the twenty-first century," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 1(2), pages 1-10.
    5. Sam Allgood & William B. Walstad & John J. Siegfried, 2015. "Research on Teaching Economics to Undergraduates," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(2), pages 285-325, June.
    6. Dale R. Deboer, 1998. "The Business-Plan Approach to Introductory Microeconomics," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 54-64, March.
    7. Sheryl B. Ball & Catherine Eckel & Christian Rojas, 2006. "Technology Improves Learning in Large Principles of Economics Classes: Using Our WITS," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 442-446, May.
    8. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:1:y:2007:i:2:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Davis, Mary E., 2015. "Bringing imagination back to the classroom: A model for creative arts in economics," International Review of Economics Education, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 1-12.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jeffrey Wagner, 2021. "Concrete Strategies for Economics Tenure-Track Faculty and Their Mentors," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 449-459, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rogmans, Tim, 2022. "The Impact of an Online Macroeconomics Simulation Game on Student Engagement and Performance," MPRA Paper 115283, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Michael R. Hammock & P. Wesley Routon & Jay K. Walker, 2016. "The opinions of economics majors before and after learning economics," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(1), pages 76-83, January.
    3. Hongbin Li & Mark Rosenzweig & Junsen Zhang, 2010. "Altruism, Favoritism, and Guilt in the Allocation of Family Resources: Sophie's Choice in Mao's Mass Send-Down Movement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 1-38, February.
    4. Denicolò, Vincenzo & Zanchettin, Piercarlo, 2012. "A dynamic model of patent portfolio races," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 924-927.
    5. Thomas Hellmann & Veikko Thiele, 2019. "Fostering Entrepreneurship: Promoting Founding or Funding?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2502-2521, June.
    6. Lau, M. W., 2011. "The Economic Structure of Trusts: Towards a Property-based Approach," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199602407, Decembrie.
    7. Rita A. Balaban & Donna B. Gilleskie & Uyen Tran, 2016. "A quantitative evaluation of the flipped classroom in a large lecture principles of economics course," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(4), pages 269-287, October.
    8. Anna Maximova & Steve Muchiri & Mihai Paraschiv, 2023. "A Stroll Down the Dollar Street: Teaching Per-Capita GDP Using Internationally Comparable Photographs," Journal of Economics Teaching, Journal of Economics Teaching, vol. 8(2), pages 87-113, May.
    9. Joshua S. Gans & Lars Persson, 2013. "Entrepreneurial commercialization choices and the interaction between IPR and competition policy," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 22(1), pages 131-151, February.
    10. Zhiyong Liu & Yue Qiao, 2012. "Abuse of Market Dominance Under China’s 2007 Anti-monopoly Law: A Preliminary Assessment," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 41(1), pages 77-107, August.
    11. William B. Walstad & Jamie Wagner, 2016. "The disaggregation of value-added test scores to assess learning outcomes in economics courses," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 121-131, April.
    12. Yann Algan & Pierre Cahuc & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "Teaching Practices and Social Capital," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 189-210, July.
    13. Brett Hollenbeck, 2020. "Horizontal mergers and innovation in concentrated industries," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 1-37, March.
    14. Erik O. Kimbrough & Vernon L. Smith & Bart J. Wilson, 2008. "Historical Property Rights, Sociality, and the Emergence of Impersonal Exchange in Long-Distance Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1009-1039, June.
    15. J.R. Clark & Joshua C. Hall & Ashley S. Harrison, 2017. "The Relative Value of AER P&P Economic Education Papers," Working Papers 17-23, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    16. Jadrian Wooten, 2022. "Book Review: Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, by Goldstein, J," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 67(1), pages 155-158, March.
    17. Grace Finley & Charles Holt & Emily Snow, 2019. "The welfare costs of price controls and rent seeking in a class experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(3), pages 753-771, September.
    18. Steven Shavell, 2012. "When Is Compliance with the Law Socially Desirable?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(1), pages 1-36.
    19. Jonathan Guest, 2015. "Reflections on ten years of using economics games and experiments in teaching," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1115619-111, December.
    20. Gerald Eisenkopf & Pascal A. Sulser, 2016. "Randomized controlled trial of teaching methods: Do classroom experiments improve economic education in high schools?," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 211-225, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ireced:v:25:y:2017:i:c:p:35-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-review-of-economics-education .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.