Classroom Games and Experiments for A-level Economics Teaching
I found Chris and Matt's session at the Bank of England Teacher Conference really interesting. I'm wary of overgamification, but this wasn't the type of 'game' they mean at all: the games here are simulations forcing students to think about incentives and are pretty powerful. I'm really pleased to say they have agreed to join us at the November EconEdChat on Tuesday 3rd November In June, Aston University hosted the Bank of England Teacher Conference. The conference brought together A-level teachers from across the country to explore practical ideas, current debates, and innovative approaches to economics teaching.
As part of this, Mathew Olczak (Aston University) and Chris Wilson (Loughborough University) ran a session on using classroom games/experiments in economics. These typically take 20-40 minutes to run and allow students to make economic decisions and/or experience economic incentives first hand in a deliberately designed setting. They are well evidenced to aid learning. In addition, they are great at increasing engagement, facilitating peer-to-peer interaction, and making teaching more fun!
After introducing this innovative teaching method, we outlined a few illustrative examples: the tennis ball game to demonstrate diminishing marginal returns, the prisoners' dilemma game, and market games involving buyers and sellers. We also highlighted that, as well as games focused on microeconomics, games based on monetary policy, multiplier processes, and beauty contests can be used to teach concepts in macroeconomics and finance.
Traditionally, these games were delivered manually with paper and pen. However, more recently, platforms have enabled them to be conducted online. For example, one platform that is free and popular is called ClassEx. To allow attendees at the session to experience participating in an online game, we ran a beauty contest game through ClassEx. In this game, each participant had to choose a number between 0 and 100 through their smartphone, tablet, or laptop. The software then calculated the average for all participants’ choices. The winner was the participant who selected the number closest to two-thirds of the average.
By building on this experience, we then helped the participants to reflect on their strategies. A naive strategy would be to pick a random number. More sophisticated strategies involve anticipating the choices of others. If I believe everyone else will choose randomly, producing an average of 50, my best response is to choose 33. Strategic thinkers then go a step further and consider what others believe about the behaviour of the group. We then highlighted that strategic thinking of this kind was central to Keynes' views about how stock markets operate. Furthermore, once we recognise this, we can see how herding behaviour, speculative bubbles and stock market crashes occur. Therefore, the game is a great way to introduce students to these topics.
We finished the session by providing some practical insights and general advice on using in-class games and some wider tips on using ClassEx. In particular, we stressed that in economics, games typically work best when run BEFORE the underlying topic is taught more substantially. This allows students to ‘feel’ the incentives first hand so that they well prepared, and engaged, to study the topic further.
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Mathew Olczak (Aston University) and Chris Wilson (Loughborough University)