Wayne Geerling discusses his research and work in utilizing pop culture to engage students in introductory Economics courses. Pop culture, from Squid Game to Taylor Swift, can tell us quite a lot about various core economics concepts, and Dr. Geerling has leveraged the accessiblity and appeal of pop culture to engage early students, providing them with strong motivation to continue pursuits an otherwise math heavy and technically intimidating field. Wayne additionally comments on the new reality of Chat GPT and how it has impacted the university classroom, and his approaches to adapting to this new reality. Overall, I see a lot synergy between Wayne’s work in pedagogy as it applies towards economics, and how it could apply to optics or other technical and math heavy fields. Additionally, his approach to Chat GPT is fascinating and seems like it will be universally true for teaching at any level.
This was a really fun interview for me, Wayne was a wonderful guest. Would you have preferred or enjoyed Wayn’es approach to using pop culture or other fun analogies to your first year courses? Have you used Chat GPT in the classroom? Please share below!
Links:
- “ChatGPT has Mastered the Principles of Economics: Now What?” https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4356034
- “The Economics Behind the Billions: How Taylor Swift and MrBeast Can Be Used to Teach Economics” https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4640484
- “Using Squid Game to Teach Game Theory” https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3990316
- The Rest is History Podcast: Latest Episodes - The Rest is History
