Professor: Tom Geurts
Department: Finance
Title: Leveraging Real Estate Education with Students’ Real-World Observations: A Diary Approach
Description: Together with colleagues from other universities I am working on a new educational approach: Instead of the traditional “Lecturing with Assignments/Exams” approach students need to keep a Scrapbook in which they not only record their classroom notes, but where they 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. Important is that each each entry somehow raised the 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.
