Abstract

Supported by the Learning by Giving Foundation or other philanthropic sources, many college courses are allowing students to give away charitable grants to nonprofit organizations. In this article, the author shares the experience of a Learning by Giving Economics of Altruism class taught at an introductory level. The class is taught using best practices from service-learning, and its course design, curricular content, challenges, and outcomes are discussed. The class provides the unique opportunity to teach microeconomic principles to a diverse population of students while making a positive impact on the community. Data show that student learning and overall experience with the service-learning exceed their initial expectations.

Increasingly, universities are offering classes that allow students to give away real philanthropic dollars. Classes incorporating philanthropic grant-giving are found in a number of disciplines ranging from public policy and business to social work and philosophy. Just like their counterpart courses in economics and finance that enable students to invest real money to maximize profit, these classes focus on effective investments that maximize social impact. An introductory course on the Economics of Altruism lends itself to this approach because the process of giving away money brings up many economic concepts, including utility maximization, allocation of resources, behavioral economics, social welfare, game theory, and measures of effective philanthropy. These topics appeal to today’s Generation Z (post-Millennial) college students who are characterized by a community-centered, social-change mindset (Grace and Seemiller 2016 Grace, M., and C. Seemiller. 2016. Generation Z goes to college. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. [Google Scholar]; Uche 2018 Uche, S. 2018. Generation Z and corporate social responsibility. M.S. thesis. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University. [Google Scholar]). In the course, students actively engage with community organizations as they consider how to allocate a $10,000 grant from the Learning by Giving Foundation. While such a course can easily be targeted to higher-level students, the following details how the Learning by Giving model has been incorporated into an introductory course on the Economics of Altruism. I offer a practical discussion of the course design, challenges, and outcomes of the course based on five years of experience. The class relies heavily on best practices in service-learning in order to impact learning outcomes.

摘要

在“通过捐赠学习基金会”或其他慈善资源的支持下，许多大学课程都允许学生向非营利组织捐赠慈善捐款。在本文中，作者分享了在入门级授课的“通过利他主义的经济学进行学习”课程的经验。该课程使用服务学习中的最佳实践进行授课，并讨论了课程设计，课程内容，挑战和成果。该课程提供了独特的机会，可以向各种各样的学生讲授微观经济学原理，同时对社区产生积极的影响。数据显示，学生在服务学习方面的学习和整体经验超出了他们最初的期望。

大学越来越多地提供允许学生捐赠实际慈善资金的课程。从公共政策和商业到社会工作和哲学的许多学科中都发现了结合慈善捐赠的课程。就像他们的经济和金融对口课程一样，这些课程使学生能够投资真实货币以最大程度地提高利润，这些课程着重于有效投资，以最大化社会影响力。利他主义经济学入门课程适合这种方法，因为捐钱的过程提出了许多经济学概念，包括效用最大化，资源分配，行为经济学，社会福利，博弈论和有效慈善措施。2016年 Grace，M .和C. Seemiller。2016。Z世代上大学。加利福尼亚州旧金山：约翰·威利父子（John Wiley＆Sons）。 [Google Scholar]；乌切2018 乌切，S. 2018。Z世代与企业社会责任。硕士论文。纽约州锡拉丘兹：锡拉丘兹大学。 [Google Scholar]）。在课程中，学生积极参与社区组织，他们在考虑如何从“学习给予基金会”中分配10,000美元的赠款。尽管此类课程可以轻松地面向高年级学生，但以下详细介绍了“通过学习进行学习”模型如何被纳入利他主义经济学入门课程中。我将基于五年的经验对课程设计，挑战和课程结果进行实用的讨论。该课程在很大程度上依赖于服务学习的最佳实践，以影响学习成果。