Today, information overwhelms everyone. But how can people learn to make sense of it? One intensive economics course at MIT is built around doing just that, by getting undergraduate students to produce research papers while working closely with faculty.

Floods of data exist on scores of subjects, so the goal is to get students to think critically about the methods of economics, find areas of study that interest them, and “turn topics into research questions,” as Heidi Williams, an assistant professor of economics, puts it.

Williams taught Research and Communication in Economics last fall. It is actually a class in econometrics, the study of the methods of economics, and builds on an earlier introductory econometrics course. Although the introductory course surveys statistical tools more broadly, the students in Research and Communication in Economics are aiming to create applied research themselves.

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