Teaching Microeconomic Principles through a Simulated Economy on the Internet

Youngstown State University, Youngstown OH

Investigators

Abstract

Economics (82) This project is developing and testing software that allows students enrolled in principles of microeconomics classes to participate in a simulated economy over the Internet. In the simulation, prices and output are determined by the decisions of the students as they try to maximize their households' utility and their firms' profits. The simulation has two sequential components. It starts with a barter economy with household production and then transitions into a monetary economy in which output is produced by firms. In this project, the emphasis is on (1) the refinement of the user interface, (2) the creation of support materials for both faculty and students, and (3) rigorous testing of the impact of this simulation on student attitudes and learning achievement, using control groups. The evaluation of the simulation is being done through a large-scale testing. This is one of the few such evaluations of computer-assisted instruction in the economics. If the evaluation results confirm that the simulation is an effective teaching tool, the principal investigators are planning to promote the use of this simulation model at the national level through workshops, publishing, and presentations at professional meetings.