WVU Ph.D. student Noah Trudeau teaches economics through video gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic. (WVU Photo)
What’s the news?
Students in Noah Trudeau’s class at West Virginia University are learning principles of economics through video games, a method Trudeau, a doctoral student in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics developed as the COVID-19 pandemic was escalating. He implemented the approach just before WVU students were sent home for the remainder of the semester and they now use the games to question pandemic-related events, including why some products are leaving store shelves quicker than others.
Quotes and comments
“People are like, ‘Where's the economics?’ It’s all over every video game. There are tons of different weapons and manufacturers, and they're all competing. They all have to have their unique thing — quirks to them that makes those manufacturers interesting.”
“I pointed out that we have price gouging laws, which means you can't raise the price of something in time of crisis. What that does is, it signals to the public that there's an amount, an availability of that thing that's above what you see in the store. Keeping the price the same says that we have more in the back or there's more in the warehouse.”
“I'm trying to make economics accessible because often, as economists, we do our research and we publish in our journals, but we don't talk about it to like the mass public. That's, I think, one of the best things about being like an econ teacher is I'm teaching to undergrad students, and I'm trying to communicate incredibly deep theories in simple ways.”
“This is something that's a little more routine. I'm playing this for stress release. There’s comedy, I’m making jokes, so I hope that it’s helping them to relax a little bit.” — Noah Trudeau, economics Ph.D. student and professor
Resources
Link to original story:
Level up: Chambers College Ph.D. student teaches economic principles through video games
Chambers College Economics Department
Target audiences
- Economics students
- Business College professors
- Video gamers
-WVU-
bm/04/21/20
CONTACT: Brittany Murray
Senior Writer, Office of Strategic Communications
John Chambers College of Business and Economics
304.293.5927; brittany.murray@mail.wvu.edu
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