This #Take5 is brought to you from Ravshonbek Otojanov, Queen Mary University of London who discusses how he uses ‘thought experiments’ to help students think like economists. This is an interesting approach to tackling active learning in large group settings where the space may inhibit physical interactivity – but where you harness problem solving to initiate epistemic thinking.
A challenge for us might be: What thought experiments can we harness in LD and other disciplines to help students understand and take ownership of their disciplinary learning?
Think like an economist
Students are not just engaging with and learning content, they are becoming sociologists or social workers, nurses or forensic scientists: they are learning to think like professionals in their fields. An often unspoken goal of every teaching situation is the initiation of students into disciplinary or epistemic knowledge. We need students to grasp what counts as knowing and what counts as knowledge in their subjects.
Yet, achieving this transformation is a formidable task, especially in large introductory courses. In economics, for example, physical limitations of lecture halls make active learning methods ineffective, while students hesitate to participate in classroom activities for fear of being judged by fellow students. Besides, teaching economics involves the use of theories and quantitative models that students find overwhelming and frustrating. Some students may even suffer from the effects of “maths anxiety”. Having said that, these challenges are not unique to economics as any discipline grappling with complex concepts and abstractions in large classes faces similar hurdles.
An effective way of helping students overcome anxiety and the limitations of large-group teaching is to involve them in pre-class thought experiments. In this case study, I demonstrate how simple polling scenarios used in my introductory economics courses can help students think like an economist. This approach can be applied in any discipline to encourage students to think like disciplinary experts by making abstract concepts easy to grasp through personal experience.
Think like a Senior Manager
Your University spent a quarter of a million to accredit its MBA programme over the past five years. The university recruited sufficient MBA professors on high salaries and has invested in various resource providers from the US. The programme is ready to be rolled out, but the market has cooled down. At this point, you ponder what to do.
Put yourself in the shoes of an economist. What would you do?
Set up and engagement
A thought experiment is a mental exercise where students are asked to imagine hypothetical scenarios to explore ideas, understand concepts, test models and theories without actually conducting the physical experiment. I conduct the experiments via polls which I set up on the course VLE (e.g. Moodle, Canvas) with hypothetical scenarios and accompanying questions a few days before classes. Students are invited to complete the poll before the class. If response levels remain low when the class begins, I give students a few minutes to participate in the poll at the beginning of classes.
Once everyone participates in the poll, I begin the session with a brief discussion of the thought experiment and show students their responses, often in a bar chart. Students have a chance to analyse the distribution of their answers and reflect on their answers. I then encourage them to tell the class about their choices and explain their reasoning. I close the discussion by explaining how an economist would think in the context of the experiment.
Examples
In the following, I present and examine two thought experiments to demonstrate how pre-class polls can effectively engage students in thought experiments centred on their own experiences. The polls were conducted in introductory economics courses along with similar experiments. The courses are open to economics and non-economics students including students studying politics, computer science among others.
IMAGES: Two thought experiments – and the student polling data
Discussion
Let’s have a brief discussion of the two examples to illustrate the useful contribution of thought experiments to student learning. I use the Michelin 3* Restaurant experiment to help students understand and apply sunk cost, thinking at the margin and marginal benefit vs. marginal cost concepts in practice. The responses show that students were not necessarily familiar with those concepts. I asked the students who answered Yes to elaborate on their answers. A typical answer was “I paid the full price; I will eat everything”. On the other hand, those who answered “No” said that they would stop if they did not enjoy eating the next meal.
The second example illustrates the concepts of opportunity cost, economic vs. accounting cost and economic vs. business profits. In this example, critical mass centred around ‘The Economist’ and ‘Both’ categories shows that students were familiar with the concepts to some extent. However, they were not familiar with why economists incorporate opportunity costs when calculating economic profits.
Feedback and impact
Thought experiments are not only effective active learning methods but can also be integrated into assessments and reflective class discussions. In my course, students write reflective statements in an assessment in which they discuss how thought experiments help them think like an economist.
The comments below reflect students’ learning and the insights they developed through the thought experiments:
- From the experiential learning activities in class, i learned how to apply Economic laws and rules to everyday questions. It made me think like an economist on an everyday question.
- I gained valuable insights into the practical application of economic theories. The experiments vividly demonstrated how theoretical concepts play out in real-world scenarios, particularly in understanding consumer behaviour and market dynamics.
- The thought experiments … It asks you economic questions as an individual. I learned that in some cases, e.g the restaurant question, that my intuitive answer was not the same as the economically rational answer.
Conclusion
Student participation in thought experiments can be a great way to actively engage students in their own learning as they generate data through their own decisions. Thought experiments elicit more active learning than traditional lectures and turn lecture halls into labs where students discover disciplinary thinking through their own responses.This approach works across various disciplines by transforming abstract concepts into memorable personal experiences
From my experience, pre-class thought experiments enhance engagement, strengthen understanding of economic concepts, build confidence in working with economic theory and numerical material, and help students begin to think and reason like economists. It is particularly useful in motivating non-economics students to engage with abstract economic theory and helping them avoid “maths anxiety”.
Recommendations
To successfully adopt thought experiments with pre-class polling, start with one simple relatable scenario per topic on VLE. It is important to emphasise that polling is anonymous as students may not participate due to anxiety and fear of being judged by the instructor. I found it helpful to mention that the experiment is not set to find ‘correct’ answers, instead, it seeks to explore what students would do in realistic scenarios. The key is classroom reveal; show poll results live, invite students to assess where they stand relative to the rest of the class, and have them explain their reasoning before introducing disciplinary thinking. The experiment helps students think like disciplinary experts by revealing how their intuitive choices differ from disciplinary reasoning. Make sure to celebrate diverse responses as learning opportunities before closing the discussion.
BIO:
Ravshonbek Otojanov is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queen Mary University of London, where he also earned PhD in Economics. He is passionate about making economics accessible to non-economics students and developing metacognitive awareness among learners. His innovative teaching approaches include using thought experiments and active learning methods to help students from diverse backgrounds engage with economic thinking. His research sits at the intersection of quantitative methods and economic history, focusing on empirical analysis with historical insights to understand long-term economic development.
