The Behavioral Economics of Instructional Decision Making

Faculty members' decisions to alter teaching practices is often driven and restricted by both institutional and personal factors ill. When examining these factors, faculty make judgments as a mechanism to evaluate the cost-benefit of enacting such a change. Behavioral economics concepts, such as satisficing, meliorating, path dependence, and bounded rationality [2], provide a lens to examine if and how faculty decide to alter a teaching practice or implement an evidence-based instructional practice. This special session engages participants in an agent based simulation to examine faculty members' responses to stimuli that may affect their decision to change their instructional practices. The simulation will result in a model that can be used by faculty and instructional specialists to further analyze and support the use of evidence-based instructional practices.