Professor: Tom Geurts
Department: Finance & Real Estate
Title: Leveraging Education with Students’ Real-World Observations: A Diary Approach
Description: Together with colleagues from other universities, I am working on a new educational approach outside of the traditional “Lecturing with Assignments/Exams”. In this approach, students need to keep a Scrapbook where they not only record their classroom notes, but where they can also add observations and articles about the material that is being studied. This can enable a main driver of students’ motivation to learn: curiosity about their own real-world observation. In their scrapbook entries, students describe current real estate issues, projects, or policies which they somehow encountered or read about. It is important that each entry somehow raises student’s wonder, leading him or her to question something, or to explain their observation using theory.
Duties: In order to measure the efficacy of the new approach, we have developed a questionnaire in which the students describe their experience with the Scrapbook method. The Research Assistant will help to analyze the data from the questionnaires. This is ideal for a student interested in pedagogy and/or statistical analysis.
Time commitment: 1-3 hours per week (average)
Credit hour option*: 1
Submit Cover Letter/Resume to: TGG@gwu.edu
*If credit is sought, all registration deadlines and requirements must be met. Students selected to be research assistants should contact Ben Faulkner at benfaulkner@gwu.edu whether they intend to pursue credit or not.
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