Abstract
This paper documents and provides a framework for implementing the key elements of cooperative learning in a course on the College Fed Challenge and gives instructors a framework for introducing and enhancing elements of active learning in their classes. The College Fed Challenge is a competition at the district and national level where students present an update on current economic conditions, make forecasts, and provide a monetary policy recommendation. Advising College Fed Challenge teams provides a unique opportunity to implement and develop the five key elements of cooperative learning. Specifically, summer and in-class preparations focus on individual accountability and small group social skills. Conducting mock presentations and mock question and answer sessions encourages positive interdependence, promotive interaction and group processing. This paper finds that Fed Challenge students learn more economics, enjoy learning more, and develop skills transferable to the workplace.
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Notes
Cooperative learning is one category of active learning. While many of the activities in the CFC are structured to require interdependence among the students, which is the key feature of cooperative learning, some of the learning that takes place is active learning, where the students are actively participating in contrast to a lecture based course where students are passive.
See Gulley and Jackson [forthcoming] for more suggestions on how to start a CFC course.
Given that the many of colleges and universities are outside the five Federal Reserve districts where the competition takes place and many college and universities cannot dedicate the resources to teaching a class to ten or fewer students, we provide information on setting up a mock Fed Challenge in a course with a larger enrollment.
Brusentsev and Miller [2011] use survey data from students to establish that the CFC helps students gain higher-order cognitive skills.
Starting Point is an online tool to help economists discuss and implement innovative teaching ideas. http://serc.carleton.edu/econ/index.html. Starting Point is an easy entry point for economists who are interested in learning more about interactive teaching strategies.
See Kagan [2003] for PIES alternative list of 4 elements: Positive Interdependence, Individual Accountability, Equal Participation, and Simultaneous Interaction.
See http://serc.carleton.edu/econ/cooperative/proficiencies.html and Hoyt and McGoldrick [2012] for more details.
At both Lafayette College and St. Lawrence University, the College Fed Challenge is taught as an economics elective with limited enrollment. At other institutions the College Fed Challenge is an extra-curricular activity and started as extracurricular activity at Lafayette College.
The College Fed Challenge team from Lafayette College won the National Championship in 2009, was the runner-up at the National Championship in 2010 and received honorable mention at the National Championship in 2011 and 2012.
See Gulley and Jackson [forthcoming] for a discussion of the cost and benefits of having a small class size. In section 6, we provide an outline for completing a mock version of the CFC in a larger class.
See http://www.richmondfed.org/education/for_teachers/academic_competitions/college_fed_challenge/ for greater detail about the rules of the CFC.
The presentation team is chosen approximately one month before the district level competition. Students are motivated to remain engaged throughout the semester since we consider all members of the class to be part of the team even if they are not chosen for the formal presentation team. Gulley and Jackson [forthcoming] implement a peer review system to hold students accountable whether or not they are on the presentation team.
The students at Lafayette College use Laurence Ball’s Money, Banking and Financial Markets (2011, 2nd edition).
See Supplementary Appendix B for sample presentation and script materials and links to online videos from past competitions.
At both St. Lawrence University and Lafayette College, the students in the course vote for whom they think should be on the presentation team.
All students whether or not they are on the presentation meet outside of class time. The students not on the presentation team have a role of helping prepare the presentation (gather data, make graphs) and critique the style of the presentation team.
Each institution may only send one team to the official competition. However, some institutions have students make individual presentations in order to be considered for selection on the team. See Gulley and Jackson [forthcoming] for more details.
The scores were between very good (4) and excellent (5) with most scores closer to 5.
Compared to other St. Lawrence University courses. This table complies the results from four sets of course evaluations, which covers from 2008 to 2011.
While we do not know how instructors teach in every other economics elective, discussions with our colleagues indicate that almost no other course rises to the level of active and cooperative learning as the CFC course
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Vera Brusentev, Kate Carson, Ed Gamber, Alexandre Olbrecht, Allan Zebedee, two anonymous referees and the participants of the 2011 Teaching Economics and Research in Economic Education conference at Stanford University and the 2012 Lilly West conference for helpful comments. Kelly Liss and Jesse Way provided excellent research assistance.
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Bansak, C., Smith, J. The College Fed Challenge: An Innovation in Cooperative Learning. Eastern Econ J 41, 470–483 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2015.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2015.10