Introduction

Students are often quite good at memorizing and replicating definitions and concepts on exams in the context in which those definitions and concepts are taught. What many students have more difficulty with is applying the material they learn in the classroom to a broader range of scenarios. This paper presents an exercise I have devised that allows for instructors to identify this specific type of weakness. Using the website Xtranormal.com and its embedded software, I require students to create a short animated film that works basic economic concepts into the script. Students are instructed to be creative and not simply have their characters recite textbook definitions. Viewing the finished product allows one to see which concepts students understand well and which concepts students are having difficulty applying out of the context of the classroom. 

The primary motivation for this type of assignment started with the reading of Ken Bain’s book What the Best College Teachers Do (2004). In this book, Bain reports the findings of Halloun and Hestenes (1985). Halloun and Hestenes report that even students who passed a physics course with an A did not have their preconceived and wrong notions about physics change. I was curious if this was also the case for my students in a Principles of Economics class. By having my students write scenes that include the economic way of thinking I was able to find that my students do suffer from this problem. I assign this project early in the semester, which allows ample time for additional instruction and practice on the problem areas uncovered.

The secondary motivation for this assignment is that it allows me to hit many of the key areas discussed in Wargo and Vilceanu (WC) (2011). WC state that learning is fundamentally social in nature. My xtranormal assignment is a collaborative project. WC state that designated brain circuits link perception and action. By creating a short film, my students are actively engaged. By viewing their own film and their classmates’ films, the students experience the learning that comes with perception. WC state that multiple retrieval and strong emotional content strengthen the path to long-term memory. My students are told to be as creative as they want (up to a PG-13 rating); and they have certainly demonstrated that they will push the bounds of this guideline. So they are definitely producing and viewing strong emotional content.

I have designed this project for my principles courses, but it is easily adaptable to nearly any topic. I have found that unleashing student creativity is both very fun and very rewarding in the amount of learning and teachable moments it produces.