In a Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research article, Assistant Professor Brandon Sheridan examines student television and music preferences to see if they align with the resources available to economics educators.
Brandon Sheridan, assistant professor of economics in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, has published an article in the Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research, exploring if student television and music preferences differ from the media resources economics educators currently have available.
In the article, titled “The Great Digital Divide: Using Popular Media to Teach Economics,” Sheridan and co-authors Abdullah Al-Bahrani, Northern Kentucky University; Kim Holder, University of West Georgia; and Darshak Patel, University of Kentucky; found there is “a great divide between what faculty and students think in terms of TV/music popularity, at least when considering the resources faculty have invested time to develop.”
The article’s abstract reads: “Economics instructors have increasingly embraced the use of popular culture as a teaching resource to enhance their lectures. The use of television shows, music and media clips presumably makes economic theories, concepts, and terms more relevant to today’s students. For example, shows like The Simpsons, The Office, The Big Bang Theory, Seinfeld and many others have been suggested as great teaching tools for Economics due to students’ familiarity with the content. We evaluate this claim by surveying students at three institutions over two years to identify which television shows and musicians are most popular with students. Our results indicate that the popular media frequently used by instructors are not always correspondingly popular with current students.”
The Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research (JEEER) is sponsored by the Academy for Economics and Economic Education, an affiliate of the Allied Academies. The journal is double blind, peer reviewed with an acceptance rate of 25 percent, and publishes theoretical, empirical, applied or qualitative research and educational or case studies into economics or economic education.