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ECON 2: Creating an Educational Video

Activity Description

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Students in a large-enrollment introductory economics course create their own fun, but educational video demonstrating an economics concept learned in the course.   See Economics of Poker and the hip-hop video on Externality for example projects.

“The purpose of the project was to engage students in economic discourse outside the classroom and to get students to think at a much deeper level about what they’re doing” – Dirk Mateer

About the Course Project

Course: ECON 2 – Principles of Microeconomics
Instructor: Dirk Mateer, Department of Economics
Number of Students: 1200+ students split into teams of four
Semester: Spring 2009
Duration of Assignment: 6 weeks

Benefits

Students need to learn material to present material in an educational video. Project requires long term planning and conceptualization.

“Anytime you get outside the classroom learning environment and you’re asking somebody to do just a little bit more, they're now the teacher. And if they’re the teacher and they know enough information to be able to teach others, they’re really learning the materials themselves.” – Dirk Mateer

Applications to Other Courses

This assignment is an excellent way for students to synthesize and present information learned in a course, and could be applied to many courses.

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Description for Students

The goal of this project is to extend what you have learned by designing a teaching video about economics. YouTube, and other video-sharing websites, provide a platform for sharing user-generated content. You can use whatever video filming and authoring tool you prefer, as long as it is supported by the YouTube. 

Please create your video for someone who does not have any formal college training in economics. The best submissions will be showcased on YouTube for economic educators to use in high school AP classes and other introductory college economics courses. The project should be straightforward, captivating, and professionally done. You will works in teams of four.

Objectives

The objectives for this assignment were:

  1. Effectively illustrate economic concepts.
  2. Utilize technology to present your ideas.
  3. Reach plausible conclusions and express your ideas succinctly.

Project Stages

Students are placed in groups of four to create a four-minute video. Students are encouraged to specialize in different video production tasks based on their prior background.

  1. Students are first instructed to refer to the textbook
    Miller, Roger LeRoy, Economics Today: The Micro View, New York:Addison Wesley, Penn State Edition.
  2. Submission of a draft for the introductory section is due during the 8th week of the semester. Each group is expected to submit a 250 word prospectus that describes their idea for the project.
  3. Once that is excepted  accepted the groups are to plan the story line for their video project.
  4. Students contact MediaTech services to borrow a video camera (if needed): http://www.libraries.psu.edu/mtss/
  5. Students can schedule time with a Digital Commons consultant for help with editing (if needed)
  6. Videos must include title screen listing references used, student names and their roles in the project.
  7. Students upload a video to YouTube and put your their group and section as keywords.
  8. Extra credit is given to those groups who turn their projects in a full week ahead of the due date.

Skills Utilized

  • Digital video authoring
  • Teamwork
  • Teaching skills
  • Creative storytelling
  • Time management

Equipment and Software Used

Duration of Assignment

From assignment to due date was 6 weeks.

Grading Process

The video project was worth 20% of the course. The following grading rubric was used in this course. Sample rubric:

Criteria Percentage
Economic Content 50%
Entertainment Value 20%
Production Quality 10%
Title Screen: Division of Labor Credits  5%
Title Screen: Works Cited  5%

Rubric Information for Students

Below is the grading information given to students

Economic Content. 50%.
Be rigorous and demonstrate mastery of the subject. Some concepts are easy to show and others are more difficult to present. Selecting TWO concepts that are challenging and effectively demonstrating them carries more weight.

Entertainment Value. 20%
The video should be captivating. Your GEN ED TA will be watching hundreds of videos – if it is boring or inappropriate this is where a markdown will occur.

Production Quality. 10%
Check the sound quality and make sure you have good transitions, lighting, and that the camera is not too shaky. Producing a video and uploading it to YouTube is easy. Most digital cameras have a video feature. The video you capture on your camera can be downloaded into Windows Movie Maker or another editing program. Even if you have never done any video work, editing, or uploading, you will find that the process is not complicated. For those who would like additional help, or are interested in learning more about the video capabilities provided by Penn State, please visit:

http://digitalcommons.psu.edu/universitypark (The staff helped many students with their projects last fall.)

Each Video Should be Four Minutes Long. 10%
A sliding scale will be used to make deductions the farther away from 4 minutes you are.

Division of Labor (Credits). 5%
Please state that you worked together on the project by all appearing in a scene together in the credit section. If there is a slacker hold up a piece of paper with their name on it so we can give them a zero.

Works Cited. 5%
Every project requires sources. At the end of the project include a works cited screen that includes the sources you used in pulling this together.