Students work in groups to examine excerpts from primary source documents. They identify social and economic factors affecting specific categories of people when the Great Migration accelerated in 1916 to 1917: black migrant workers from the South, southern planters, southern small-farm farmers, northern industrialists, agents, and white immigrant workers in the North. Each student group creates a "perspectives page" to post for a gallery walk where students analyze the causes of the Great Migration and the changes it brought to both the North and South. Students also discuss the specific economic factors that influenced the Great Migration: scarcity, supply, demand, surplus, shortage, and opportunity cost. Using the PACED decisionmaking model, they analyze the alternatives and criteria of potential migrants.

If you look at what psychologists consider to be high-level stressors, you'll find a list of about 40 life events. We have no control over many of these events, but for more than half, we do. So much of our stress and success in life depends on the decisions we make. In this short course, your students will learn the economic underpinnings of the need to make decisions, why every decision bears a cost, and how to make informed decisions.

In this lesson, students hear a story about Brother and Sister Bear, who seem to want everything. The little cubs learn that they must make choices because they cannot have everything they want. Students follow along with the story by completing an activity listing all of the goods that will satisfy the cubs' wants. The students then take part in an activity to construct a word web and graphic organizer (table) to identify goods that will satisfy a want. They will make a choice, identify the problem of scarcity, and recognize their opportunity cost.

Water is a limited resource that we use over and over again. The idea is to teach the science behind the water cycle, where water comes from and is located on the Earth. After research and developing and understanding of conservation students will create a water tower that will collect and store rainwater. Students will also create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) on water conservation.

As the Rolling Stones song says, "You can't always get what you want." So we make choices. Every day, governments and individuals choose how much money to spend and what to purchase. The January 2013 issue discusses opportunity costs and scarcity and how they effect our spending decisions.

This is presentation of some basic economic ideas for the beginning community college student.

Looking for engaging content for your economics courses? The Institute for Humane Studies has curated this collection of educational resources to help economics professors enrich their curriculum. Find videos, interactive games, reading lists, and more on everything from opportunity costs to trade policy. This collection is updated frequently with new content, so watch this space!

The Economy is a course in economics. Throughout, we start with a question or a problem about the economy—why the advent of capitalism is associated with a sharp increase in average living standards, for example—and then teach the tools of economics that contribute to an answer.

Oil prices affect the U.S. economy in many ways. For example, fluctuations in the price of oil can influence inflation, unemployment, and disposable income. Some local economies with close ties to the oil industry, however, are affected even more directly in both positive and negative ways. The May 2015 issue covers one recent example of the local impact of oil prices.

This lesson requires two class periods. In the first class period, students are asked to think of a way to decide who gets 100 pennies and how many each person gets. They learn about the concept of allocation and about different resource allocation methods. They evaluate the different methods using a graphic organizer. Next they listen to different scenarios and try to determine which allocation method was used. Then, after listening to the story Four Feet, Two Sandals about two girls who face some resource allocation issues, they identify the methods used in the story. In the second class period, the students are placed into groups to act out skits illustrating a resource allocation method that their classmates then try to guess. Finally, they read a news article about a resource and write letters to a city council outlining the ways the city could allocate the resource.

Economists traditionally divide the factors of production into four categories: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. Land refers to natural resources, labor refers to work effort, and capital is anything made that is used to make something else. The last resource, entrepreneurship, refers to the ability to put the other three resources together to create value. In this video, we define each of the four factors of production and provide examples of each.

For the first time in history, the global demand for freshwater is overtaking its supply in many parts of the world. The U.N. predicts that by 2025, more than half of the countries in the world will be experiencing water stress or outright shortages. Lack of water can cause disease, food shortages, starvation, migrations, political conflict, and even lead to war. Models of cooperation, both historic and contemporary, show the way forward. The first half of the course details the multiple facets of the water crisis. Topics include water systems, water transfers, dams, pollution, climate change, scarcity, water conflict/cooperation, food security, and agriculture. The second half of the course describes innovative solutions: Adaptive technologies and adaptation through policy, planning, management, economic tools, and finally, human behaviors required to preserve this precious and imperiled resource. Several field trips to water/wastewater/biosolids reuse and water-energy sites will help us to better comprehend both local and international challenges and solutions.

This video from the Explore Economics series helps kids understand that people buy and use both goods and services. Kids learn that goods are objects that satisfy people’s wants and services are things people do for us that satisfy our wants. Kids are encouraged to draw a picture of a good or service that starts with the first letter of their first or last name and to write a sentence that describes the good or service they drew. They learn a song about goods and services.

Kiddynomics: An Economics Curriculum for Young Learners is a set of lessons designed to introduce young children to the economic way of thinking. Informed decision-making is a critical thinking skill that students can use throughout their school, personal, and work lives. And, as citizens in a democratic society, they should understand basic principles of how the economy operates. Beginning economic education early and building on that learning throughout students’ education is the best way to ensure they develop vital decision-making skills.

This is an introductory course in Microeconomics. This course aims to introduce students to the basic concepts of microeconomics such as scarcity and choice, and their influences in the decision-making process of individual consumers, firms, and governmental entities. Economics involves all types of decisions. This class will help you understand how different actors, business, households, non-profits and government institutions act. You will realize that this class helps you to put in economic terms the many daily decisions you make about how you allocate your resources. You choose daily what products to buy, businesses decide what products they produce and how many and what services they offer. This class will give you the structure you will need to make decisions more rationally, improving the way you utilize the limited resources that you have at hand.

Students listen to the story and identify the scarcity problem the monsters had not enough chairs for every monster to have one. Students wear a picture of a want they have drawn and play a version of musical chairs in which the chairs are labeled goods. Students learn that a good can satisfy a want. They also learn that, because of scarcity, not everyone's wants are satisfied.

In this first episode of The Economic Lowdown, we will introduce three topics in economics: choice, scarcity and opportunity cost.

In segment 1 of this 3 part series, student will learn about the production possibilities frontier (PPF), scarcity and opportunity cost. This video is 5 minutes long and will aid in the mastery of standard EPF. 1(a).

In segment 2 of the 3 part series on the Production Possibilities Frontier, this 5 minute video provides information on the factors of production, scarcity, opportunity cost and productivity. It will aid in mastery of standard EPF. 1 (a) and (d).

Remember when airlines started charging for checked bags? What happened to the number of checked bags after this added charge? And what happened to the availability of in-cabin storage space on planes? The April 2013 issue answers these questions and discusses the pivotal role price plays in a market economy.