Create random assignments: A cloud-based tool to help implement alternative teaching materials

Research has shown that learning is enhanced by variety (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 2000; Halpern and Hakel 2003) such as popular press books, podcasts and videos. However, these mediums do not contain question banks and further, while learning management systems (LMS) can be used to generate random quizzes, they are not designed for long-form open-ended responses that might be answered over the course of a few days to weeks; open-ended questions are often ideal in upper-level undergraduate and MBA courses where there are less definitive correct answers. We solve these problems by developing software to generate assignments with randomized open-ended questions

Pundits: The confidence trick: Better confident than right?

Media pundits are the supreme example of self-belief and confidence in their own opinions. Through TV, newspapers and blogs they tell us with sublime certainty what will happen. But are they right? And does it matter if they are wrong? Ben Smith and Jadrian Wooten ask what we demand from pundits – accuracy or confidence

Assessing proxies of knowledge and difficultywith rubric-based instruments

The fields of psychometrics, economic education, and education have developed statistically-valid methods of assessing knowledge and learning. These methods include item response theory, value-added learning models, and disaggregated learning. These methods, however, focus on multiple-choice or single response assessments. Faculty and administrators routinely assess knowledge through papers, thesis presentations, or other demonstrations of knowledge assessed with rubric rows. This paper presents a statistical approach to estimating a proxy for student ability and rubric row difficulty. Moreover, we have developed software so that practitioners can more easily apply this method to their instruments. This approach can be used in researching education treatment effects, practitioners measuring learning outcomes in their own classrooms, or estimating knowledge for administrative assessment. As an example, we have applied these new methods to projects in a large Labor Economics course at a public university

March Madness: NCAA Tournament Participation and College Alcohol Use

While athletic success may improve the visibility of a university to prospective students and thereby benefit the school, it may also increase risky behavior in the current student body. Using the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, we find that a school\u27s participation in the NCAA Basketball Tournament is associated with a 47% increase in binge drinking by male students at that school. Additionally, we find evidence that drunk driving increases by 5% among all students during the tournament. (JEL I12, I23, Z28

Bazinganomics: Economics of The Big Bang Theory

url:http://www.bazinganomics.com The website is designed to provide instructors with clips, explanations, and lesson plans related to economics concepts from TV’s 2nd most watched broadcast show of the 2014-2015 season, CBS’s The Big Bang Theory. The site contains approximately 100 clips. As the show continues to air (currently signed through the 2016-2017 season) the authors plan to increase the number of clips and lesson plans

Lesson Plans for Teaching Economics with The Big Bang Theory

Using examples in the classroom from current and past television shows and movies is becoming increasingly common. Being able to relate ideas back to a popular clip or episode allows the instructor to reach students in ways the traditional lecture cannot. Building on the work of Tierney, Mateer, Smith, Wooten, and Geerling (2016), this paper introduces five lesson plans tied to clips from The Big Bang Theory that can be used in high school (9-12) economics courses

Improving Student Performance Through Loss Aversion

Framing an outcome as a loss causes individuals to expend extra effort to avoid that outcome (Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). Since classroom performance is a function of student effort in search of a higher grade, we seek to use loss aversion to encourage student effort. This field quasi-experiment endows students with all of the points in the course upfront, then deducts points for each error throughout the semester. Exploiting two course sequences in the business school of a Midwestern university, a control for domain-specific knowledge, this study examines the impact of loss aversion when controlling for the student’s knowledge in a specific subject. This quasi-experiment indicates that students perform three to four percentage points better when controlling for student ability and domain knowledge (148 subjects). This result is significant at the 1% level in our most robust specification (p = 0.0020). This result is confirmed by a specification including four courses and controlling for student characteristics (217 subjects, p = 0.0190)

APPLIED MICROECONOMIC TOPICS IN AMERICAN PROFESSIONAL SOCCER

The following research focuses on microeconomic topics in professional soccer. As a young, developing league, Major League Soccer faces many obstacles as they continue to grow their brand in the United States and Canada. The following chapters address how nationalities are valued in the United States, the effect of rivalries on game-day attendance, and how distance affects season attendance for clubs. The largest source of revenue for the vast majority of professional teams is through gate attendance and concessions, regardless of sport. Each chapter develops models to explain salaries or attendance for Major League Soccer and then uses recent data to estimate the impact of decisions on salaries and attendance. The results of each chapter have the ability to impact Major League Soccer's continued growth, while expanding the application of microeconomics to niche industries