UF students don’t always make memes, but when they do, they’re in Lindsey Woodworth’s economics class.
Public economics instructor and Ph.D. candidate Woodworth created a Facebook group for her students to post memes about public economics, which are paired with an assigned paper.
Woodworth said she got the idea of creating memes for homework from another professor at a conference.
“It’s a good way to think about it in a fun way,” she said. She added that by sharing economics-based memes, it ingrains the concepts they are learning in the students’ minds.
She said she wanted to create homework that gets students to be more creative.
“It’s a more fun type of homework assignment,” she said. “We usually do a lot of math.”
Part of the assignment is to post the memes to the group, where students will vote for their favorite one by liking it. Woodworth said the one with the most likes will get extra credit.
Jason Wasserman, a 20-year-old economics junior in Woodworth’s class, said he enjoyed the assignment.
“My first thought when we got assigned it was I thought it would be very entertaining,” he said.
Wasserman has already created and posted his meme.
“It shows professor Woodworth understands us,” he said. “She’s trying to appeal to us and make it fun.”
A version of this story ran on page 4 on 11/15/2013 under the headline "UF economics students make memes for class"
