More Talk, Less Chalk: Communicating Economics in the Modern Classroom

Communicating Economics is a first-year undergraduate course which explores the range of ways in which economics is communicated. Its second purpose is to impart core communication skills to new economists. I set out my approach to teaching this new course, focusing in on a sequence of lectures and small-group discussion classes which are all about “economics as literature”. Here I introduce students to the study of economists’ use of narrative storytelling to persuade others, and apply ideas from this literature to discuss the economic narratives that drive popular science fiction stories. This topic is meant to accompany, and contrast with, the “scientific lens” through which new university students are typically first exposed to economics.