Economics class explains the principle of elasticity

You're doing elasticities of demand, so you're going to line up. We're going to have students line up in order of a concept known as elasticity. So it's a complicated concept, but it is actually really simple in the sense that we're trying to look at how people respond to different prices. So if prices go up for one thing, do lots of people stop buying it or do just a few people stop buying it? The concept by itself is not too bad, but comparing different items is probably the hardest part of it. We're going to give each student an individual item. So there's things like tires and cars and cereal, bread is in there, chicken, all sorts of different products. And the students are going to keep that information to themselves, and they're going to act it out in front of a judge. And then the judge is going to rearrange them in the order that they think is right. There was a lot of interactive things, and I'm a very visual learner. Everyone in front of me could see what it was. So they were like trying to tell the person who was in charge of putting us in order from most inelastic to elastic. And they're just like, no, she's gassed. She's the most inelastic. And it was like a lot of fun. Dr. Wu-Ten's activities, like they helped me a lot. They put me in the situation. They like make it more hands-on. They helped me actually understand what everything means. Now I actually know what elasticity means when it comes to supply and demand. So there's two real things that I love about using active learning in the classroom. One is it keeps me engaged. And so in some sense, it's fun for me to come back in the classroom, see new students approach new problems to them, even though it's an old problem to me. So it keeps me really energized and really engaged with the classroom, but it also helps the students remind them that they actually can have fun while learning.