Microeconomics Syllabus, Spring 2015 (undergrad)

It is here.

Using NPR's Planet Money Podcast in Principles of Macroeconomics

Unfamiliar with aggregate concepts like gross domestic product and inflation, many introductory students struggle to understand the big ideas in macroeconomics. Macroeconomic educators typically respond with boring lectures aimed at bringing students up to speed; or, by jumping to the interesting topics their students are not yet prepared to consider. In an effort to combat this problem, I have incorporated NPR’s Planet Money podcast into my Principles of Macroeconomics course. I describe the podcast and provide a list of episodes others might find useful. In my experience, the Planet Money podcast is well received. Students enjoy listening to the assigned episodes. They report that it made them more interested in the principles course, helped them understand the relevance of macroeconomics, and increased their understanding of many macroeconomic issues. Most students also feel more comfortable discussing macroeconomic issues having listened to the podcast. And nearly half of those students surveyed say they will continue listening to the podcast after the course ends.

That is from a paper by William J. Luther, and his class is designed around the Modern Principles textbook by Cowen & Tabarrok.

 Table 1 is also taken from the paper.

Teaching and Learning Economics in "The Age of Empires"

Initially the villagers can collect food only by hunting, gathering or fishing by the seashore. They can, however, use 150 units of wood to build a dock. It then becomes possible to create small fishing boats (for 75 units of wood each) that go fishing on their own, including in deeper water which villagers cannot reach without the boats. The building of the dock as well as the boats constitutes a first example of investing raw materials in creating capital, which then increases one’s productive capacity. Another interesting lesson introduced at this stage is the concept of diminishing returns. When too many villagers forage from a single bush, or when too many bring wood, stone or gold to the same storage camp, they often bump into one another, causing temporary delays. This is a classic example of diminishing marginal returns to labor given fixed capital, illustrated in an intuitive and self-explanatory way.

That is from this paper by Jacob Assa. The title is "The Age of Models: Economic Lessons in Real-Time Computer Strategy Games." 
Tyler Cowen talks here, among many other thins, about games as a tool to teach and learn econ.

Teaching Methods: Macro-Journals

From the JEE:

Incorporating currents events into an economics curriculum is a goal of many dedicated instructors. The benefits of doing so are obvious. Unfortunately, the costs associated with implementation are nontrivial. In the following, the authors introduce an experiential writing assignment, called the MacroJournal, which streamlines the process of incorporating current events into a macroeconomics course. The costs for the instructor are mitigated by a repeated structure of questioning and a well-defined grading rubric. By completing the assignment, students have an opportunity to become practitioners and link current events to classroom theory.

Aguilar & Soques are the authors and a draft of the paper is here. 

I do that in my intro to macro class (the syllabus with instructions for the macro, country-journal, is here). The method works really well for intro-macro and should also work for many applied fields in the social sciences.