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I think active learning is the key.
I think the idea of getting the students up and moving around and actively engaged in the subject matter is really important.
In my case, I tend to use these economic experiments,
but there are many other techniques that can be used in a variety of disciplines.
One thing I would encourage other faculty in other areas to think about,
is to try and take whatever it is that they do in their own research
and to make it something that students can participate in.
The sciences have been doing this for a long time with lab based, laboratory based, studies.
And so, they use their students to come in and conduct laboratory exercises in chemistry or in physics,
and it's much that same pattern that economists are working for with this approach.
And I think it could carry over just as nicely into the social sciences and the humanities and to many other areas.
As long as you get the students actively engaged in the discipline,
and thinking about problems in the same way that you yourself would think about a problem,
as a psychologist, as a sociologist, as a historian, then I think you're going to be successful.
Response has been overwhelmingly positive.
Students really like the idea of getting up and moving around.
I often have students stop me after class or catch me the next quarter even when
I'm walking through campus and mention how much they enjoyed the experiments
and how it helped them remember things.
And I remember a couple key phrases that students have put on their student evaluations,
on the course evaluations, over the last couple of quarters.
And one in particular sticks in mind.
A student mentioned that, doing the experiments,
if later on she was forgetting something that we had talked about,
she just had to think about what we did in class.
And the what we did part was very important, I think.
She was able to relate back to the experience,
not to the textbook, not to the lecture material,
but back to the experience itself and that was enough to help her remember the concept.