{"title":"A picture is worth a thousand words: The effectiveness of infographics in microeconomic principles courses","authors":"Lauren Calimeris , Edward Kosack","doi":"10.1016/j.iree.2024.100300","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We investigate the impact of infographics on student learning in principles of economics classes. Infographics display facts, data, and information about a specific topic in a clear and easy to understand manner, using graphics and pictures to help summarize, explain, and display information. Creating an infographic can be a fun, engaging, and powerful educational tool for learning new topics in both introductory and advanced courses. We use a randomized classroom experiment to evaluate the effect of creating infographics on student learning in principles of microeconomics courses as measured by exam performance. The randomization across topics enables a student-fixed effects estimation of the effect of infographics. We find students were 2.1–2.2 percentage points more likely to answer a multiple-choice question correctly relating to the topics for which they completed an infographic relative to those they did not. We provide suggestive evidence that infographics may help higher ability students most, increasing their scores on both multiple choice and short answer questions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":1,"journal":{"name":"Accounts of Chemical Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":16.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Accounts of Chemical Research","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388024000185","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"化学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CHEMISTRY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We investigate the impact of infographics on student learning in principles of economics classes. Infographics display facts, data, and information about a specific topic in a clear and easy to understand manner, using graphics and pictures to help summarize, explain, and display information. Creating an infographic can be a fun, engaging, and powerful educational tool for learning new topics in both introductory and advanced courses. We use a randomized classroom experiment to evaluate the effect of creating infographics on student learning in principles of microeconomics courses as measured by exam performance. The randomization across topics enables a student-fixed effects estimation of the effect of infographics. We find students were 2.1–2.2 percentage points more likely to answer a multiple-choice question correctly relating to the topics for which they completed an infographic relative to those they did not. We provide suggestive evidence that infographics may help higher ability students most, increasing their scores on both multiple choice and short answer questions.
期刊介绍:
Accounts of Chemical Research presents short, concise and critical articles offering easy-to-read overviews of basic research and applications in all areas of chemistry and biochemistry. These short reviews focus on research from the author’s own laboratory and are designed to teach the reader about a research project. In addition, Accounts of Chemical Research publishes commentaries that give an informed opinion on a current research problem. Special Issues online are devoted to a single topic of unusual activity and significance.
Accounts of Chemical Research replaces the traditional article abstract with an article "Conspectus." These entries synopsize the research affording the reader a closer look at the content and significance of an article. Through this provision of a more detailed description of the article contents, the Conspectus enhances the article's discoverability by search engines and the exposure for the research.