The first day of fieldwork was incredibly exciting! In order to both get to know the students a little bit, and start to introduce the topic of economics to the class, my fieldwork group created an auction. The students each got a certain amount of monopoly money to start with, and then we "sold" questions. The more students wanted to answer the question, the higher the bidding price went. So, for example, if students were really excited to answer "If you could have any super power what would it be?" the bidding might go up to $100 before it was sold, whereas if less people wanted to answer "What is your favorite color?" the bidding might only go up to $25.
The activity we planned went really well. The students were engaged in the activity, and got more and more involved and enthusiastic about it the further we went along. Even students who seemed reserved and soft spoken found at least one or two questions that opened them up and had them involved in the process as well. Then, we would ask the students to make the connection between how many people wanted to answer a question and the price, and used that as the basis for explaining supply and demand.
I was very happy with how well the students responded to the activity, as it can sometimes be difficult to have students volunteer information and answers the first day meeting new people. The students seemed very eager and excited to have us in the class and to learn from us, just as we all were very excited to have the chance to teach them. Overall, I think it was a great start to our fieldwork journey this semester.
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