Whiteboard Videos

The current economic crisis has made teaching economics more difficult in many ways. Chiefly, there is the problem of how to explain the crisis to students who do not know much about economics or the economy (no surprise there). The problem of of teaching difficult and complex material is something that teachers are constantly dealing with. Consider the problem of teaching the Holocaust - not a simple task at all. Typically, teachers try to break it down into smaller parts that students can relate to and in terms they can understand.

However, one of the big problems with the current crisis is that the smaller parts fit together in complex ways and the basic terms are obscure. This is especially the case with the financial terms and concepts that are at the core of the crisis.

The radio program Marketplace has a good series of videos that deal with all aspects of the crisis. In the videos, Paddy Hirsh, the commentator, diagrams a concept or term and explains how it fits into the crisis. The videos are an ideal teaching tool because they are short (less than 10 minutes), simple and entertaining. This is a link for the videos. I recommend starting with the one comparing the economic crisis to an Antarctic expedition.

I have used these videos in my economics classes for the past year and my students love them. Typically, I assign them as homework (I have bandwidth issues at my school) and quiz the students to see if they have watched them. I have also used the model of the whiteboard video as a project for my class. I have my students pick a concept that the course has covered and make a short whiteboard video on the topic, which the whole class watches. The results have been very entertaining and lead to some good class discussions.