Design based research
Research is also carried out in the Oldenburg Experimental Laboratory for Economic Education. The focus is on the learning effectiveness of economic experiments or different variations of the same experiments. Economic Education research has yet to produce empirical evidence on the effectiveness of economic experiments or of different experimental approaches on learning success. In particular, little is known about the conditions for successful experimental learning in Economic Education and the design requirements needed for success. Other subject-related didactic questions (e.g. on students’ perceptions, on student knowledge, on out-of-school learning locations or on the link between theory and practice in formal teacher training) lend themselves as subject matters for invention studies in the laboratory. Research is conducted into economic teaching and learning processes as well as their requirements and outcomes.
Current projects
In the following you will find the current and past projects relating to the "Oldenburger Experimentallabor Ökonomische Bildung".
In the context of the project supported by the German Federal Environment Foundation (DBU), IÖB is developing and trialing materials for lessons in Economics. The aim is to make approaches to behavioural economics accessible to didactics by promoting individual action-oriented competences (in the sense of debiasing) and by taking into account a decision-making environment that supports or inhibits sustainable consumption (nudging). The OX-Lab records influences on sustainable consumption situations in an experimental study, which also forms the basis for the development of the teaching materials.
The Oldenburg Experimental Laboratory for Economic Education is part of the University of Oldenburg´s OLE+ project. OLE+, a project for biography-oriented and multi-phase teacher training in Oldenburg, is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). OLE+ is a development project with the purpose of increasing the quality of teacher training at the University of Oldenburg. Operating within this framework, it is expected that structures and processes in teacher training at the University of Oldenburg will be optimised on the basis of a biography-oriented and cross-phase approach.
With the financial support of Joachim Herz Stiftung, the Institute for Economic Education carried out a study on the design requirements for classroom experiments. Three selected experiments were played out and evaluated with students with 10th grade students.