Technology in the Aid of Delivering Economic Content to Teachers: Virtual Economics v. 3

We examine the impact on student achievement of a face-to-face teacher workshop that also provides economics instructors with access to an electronic library of instructional and reference material for their economics classroom—Virtual Economics v. 3 (VE3), offered by the Council for Economic Educat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: John R. Swinton, Benjamin Scafidi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Hindawi Limited 2012-01-01
Series:Education Research International
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/126313
Description
Summary:We examine the impact on student achievement of a face-to-face teacher workshop that also provides economics instructors with access to an electronic library of instructional and reference material for their economics classroom—Virtual Economics v. 3 (VE3), offered by the Council for Economic Education. Based on evidence using student and teacher-level administrative data from the Georgia Department of Education and controlling for students’ prior achievement in mathematics, we find evidence that the VE3 workshop experience increases student achievement in high school economics. Our difference-in-differences estimates suggest that teacher participation in the VE3 workshop increases student achievement by 0.061 standard deviations on Georgia’s high stakes economics end-of-course test. Future research should seek estimating the effect of treatments in education such as the VE3 workshop using randomized controlled trials (RCT).
ISSN:2090-4002
2090-4010