Sat Jul 8 12:00:20 EDT 2006
Andrea: A few suggestions come to mind. First, a few years ago,
I heard Patrick Conway of the Economics Department at U. of North
Carolina Chapel Hill give a presentation at a workshop on active learning
in Economics on using case method techniques to cultivate active learning.
He has some material on this in the teaching section of his website
and you may find this of interest. In his presentation, he mentioned
teaching a freshman seminar on the economics of North Carolina in which
he would focus on specific North Carolina policy issues--I recall one
segment on the economics of the Carolina Panthers. His teaching website
has a link on this seminar. His teaching website is
www.unc.edu/home/pconway/teaching.html
One way of setting up a case approach in economic history courses with
international
coverage is to assign each student a different country to follow over the
course of the term (or students can be grouped into teams focusing on a
given country). I have used this in teaching both Asian and European
economic history. And I non-historian colleagues of mine at UMBC have
used this approach in teaching an international trade policy course for
non-majors and in teaching a course on current Latin American economic
development. In teaching U.S. economic history, each student could be
assigned a different state etc.
Also, sometimes, I have had students do family history oriented projects
in U.S. economic history and I suppose having each student do something on
their family could be viewed as sort of a case approach.
In business history, of course, one could assign each student a different
company. Perhaps other list members have had experienes with this.
>From my experience, assigning students individual cases can focus their
interest and get them engaged. However, one has to work to integrate what
is done in individual case work into the overall course--I cannot claim
any great success at this point with that aspect.
David Mitch
co-editor, eh.teach
University of Maryland Baltimore County