Economics Experiments with Clickerss

Classroom response systems, or clickers, are increasingly used as a way to more actively engage students in the classroom.  We have developed a novel approach of using these devices to easily conduct some types of classroom economics experiments.  The primary benefit of this approach is that it can be used with large groups of students, and students do not need computers.

To most effectively use clickers to conduct experiments, we have created software which will allow you to graph student responses in ways which demonstrate economic concepts.  To date, we have created two pieces of software designed to work with clickers: the supply and demand graphing tool, and the public goods graphing tool.

 

Demand and Supply Graphing Tool

This software will aggregate willingness-to-buy and willingness-to-sell information collected from clickers and display the data as supply and demand schedules.  A few teaching scenarios which can benefit from the use of this software are described in the following teaching modules:

• Demand and Supply Teaching Module -- This module describes how to use a simple auction procedure to ilicit your students' willingness to buy and sell pieces of candy.


• Clicker Call Market Teaching Module -- This module presents how to use clickers to conduct a call market for candy.

This software requires Java software to be installed on your computer.

Launch the Demand and Supply Graphing Tool 

(Download for offline Use)

 

Public Goods Graphing Tool

This software allows students to participate in a voluntary contribution public goods experiment with clickers.  The software will aggregate student submissions and display data across multiple rounds of the experiment.  The following teaching module presents a classroom experiment for teaching about public goods:

• Public Goods Teaching Module -- This module presents a hand-run public goods experiment, which can easily be adapted for use with the clicker software below.

This software requires Java software to be installed on your computer.

Lauch the Public Good Graphing Tool 

(Download for offline Uses)