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Heather Kohls’ Gamified Economics Class

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Professor Heather Kohls brings gamified learning into her Principles of Micro and Principles of Macro Economics classes at Marquette University. Combining the use of Top Hat with innovative games allows students to participate in a new and exciting way that she looks forward to teaching.

“I try to go through and identify the most boring things I dread lecturing on. If it’s boring for me, it has to be boring for them! I think, how can I take this concept and make it more exciting?”

Professor Kohls encountered Top Hat after several years of frustration with hardware solutions. She liked the system for its flexibility and knew that she could customize Top Hat to suit her needs. In particular, Professor Kohls enjoys bringing gamified learning into her classroom through fun and exciting hands-on activities.

The Margin Call Game

For example, Professor Kohls uses the “Margin Call Game” to illustrate how and why the stock market crashes. Each student is assigned a role, and when they are ready to sell they submit their Top Hat responses. She can then go back and see how many students voted in a particular period.

“Say the stock starts up at 60 dollars. Each student sees how much they have in the stock and how much they borrowed to buy it. If the stock drops to a certain point, one can sell it for the student to demonstrate what a margin call does,” she explains.

Play-Doh Production Theory

In her Principles of Micro course, she uses games to demonstrate production theory. Students break into groups of five and build Play-Doh things and have to wear plastic gloves. By the time you get to five, you get way too many hands in the Play-Doh. “It’s a great way to show diminishing marginal returns: too many people doing something is inefficient.” She loves to use old-school props to demonstrate concepts and bring technology to further enhance these active learning environments.

With Top Hat, Professor Kohls assigns partial points for correctness and partial points for participation. Using the platform helps breaks things up in a long lecture and forces students to be more engaged. “That said,” she elaborates, “Top hat is hands-down preferred by students and myself; ease-of-use is significantly higher.”

Modern Educator Bio

Heather Kohls, Director of Global Business Learning, Adjunct Associate Professor of Economics

Dr. Heather Kohls is an environmental economist with a focus on public policy efficiency. She received her BS from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and her Master’s in International Business Studies from the University of South Carolina. After several years living abroad, she returned to the U. S. and pursued her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. During that time, she spent eight years working as a financial supervisor in the insurance industry. She is also the faculty director for MU-Global Business Brigades sending students to develop communities around the world by working with entrepreneurs to improve their businesses.

The post Heather Kohls’ Gamified Economics Class appeared first on Top Hat Blog.


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