An invention activity is a teaching technique that involves giving students a difficult substantive problem that cannot be readily solved with any methods they have already learned. The work of Dan Schwartz and colleagues (Schwartz & Bransford, 1998; Schwartz & Martin, 2004), suggests that such activities prepare students to learn the “expert’s solution” better than starting with a lecture on that solution. In this paper, we present six new invention activities appropriate for a college econometrics course. We describe how we introduce each activity, guide students as they work, and wrap up the activity with a short lecture.
Douglas McKee and George Orlov
McKee, D., & Orlov, G. (2021). Using Invention Activities to Teach Econometrics. Journal of Economics Teaching, 5(3), 64-82. DOI: 10.58311/jeconteach/0db52f4cfd821dbcc713e9671bed129ce2d92030