Research pick: Students at the movies - "Assessing the effectiveness of using western movies in elucidating economic concepts"

Higher education establishments in Malaysia take many innovative approaches to teaching, particularly in digital learning. Work published in the International Journal of Education Economics and Development suggests that the careful choice of western cinematic output, movies, can be useful in teaching certain economic concepts and how these relate to the real world.

Siew King Ting, Sze Wei Yong, Tze Wee Lai, and Geetha Subramaniam of the Universiti Teknologi MARA in Cawangan Sarawak and Selangor, together with Brian Dollery of the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, suggest that digital approaches to education have complemented traditional “chalk-and-talk” approaches for many years now. The approach lends itself to innovation as the digital world itself innovates continuously. As such smartphones and tablets, websites and apps, social media and social networking have all been used as teaching tools. They can enrich and engage students in various ways. Recently, educators in business schools teaching economics have employed movies, music, videos, and TV shows to explicate economic concepts to students.

The team writes that those conventional chalk-and-talk lectures often represent a unidirectional monologue with the educator essentially disseminating information to the students with little mutual engagement. As such, they are often criticised as being ineffective, although the approach does have its benefits. Conversely, innovative approaches add to the workload of the educators who must maintain their own up to date knowledge of the digital realm and be constantly under pressure to find ways to use the digital in novel teaching approaches.

Traditional lectures are tried and tested, the digital can be a distraction.

Either way, teasing apart the benefits of traditional as opposed to modern methods in learning and teaching economic courses is difficult. It is appreciated that young students can struggle to understand economic concepts because of their youth, attitudes, and limited worldly experience.

“The net outcome of using conventional and innovative instructional methods thus remains inconclusive and further empirical research is essential,” the team writes. This is their motivation for investigating the pros and cons of one particular novel teaching tool – the use of movies in education to impart knowledge about particular aspects of economics. The team also suggests that the analysis of movies could be used to enhance writing and critical thinking skills. They add that making short movies of their own might also be used to reinforce understanding.

Ting, S.K., Yong, S.W., Lai, T.W., Subramaniam, G. and Dollery, B. (2021) ‘Assessing the effectiveness of using western movies in elucidating economic concepts’, Int. J. Education Economics and Development, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.45–60.