Using Writing to Enhance Student Learning in Undergraduate Economics

Using Writing to Enhance Student Learning in Undergraduate Economics. Traditionally, principles of economics has been taught predominantly as a lecture class. Recent literature on pedagogy suggests that students learn more from an "active learning" approach, which engages students in ways that lectures often do not. One method of promoting active learning is to incorporate student writing in the principles course, especially when instructors apply the principles of the "Writing Across the Curriculum" approach, as described by Petr (1990), and Cohen and Spencer (1993). This paper explains an experiment I did last year to test this approach. I taught two sections of macro principles, which were identical, except that one included a series of writing assignments, while the other did not. The examinations for both sections were the same. I assessed the experiment using several measures and concluded that the writing augmented section showed greater learning. The results were striking enough, that I thought I'd like to share them with other faculty who are interested in teaching.