Virtual Journal Club, A COVID Idea with Staying Power

When the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in June 2020, Karen Bernhardt-Walther, MBA ’11, PhD ’11, realized how isolated many of her students felt. In response, Bernhardt-Walther, an assistant professor of economics at York University in Toronto, planned a weekly Zoom discussion group based on an independent-reading course she had been teaching for years.  
 
The following month, she learned that the German Academic Exchange Service offered funding for virtual exchange programs. Bernhardt-Walther connected with Matthias Lang, then an assistant professor of economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The pair quickly wrote a proposal and received funding approval. In October 2020, the Virtual Journal Club in Economics launched its first cohort with 10 undergraduates from YorkU and LMU.  

Five years later, the VJC is still going strong. Students read books and papers on economic aspects of trade, history, information, business, luck, and geography. They exchange thoughts on asynchronous discussion boards and come together for a 90-minute transatlantic Zoom discussion once a week.  

Zoom sessions always start with an icebreaker question, such as: “If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Bernhardt-Walther says the icebreakers are a popular part of the program. “It adds a cultural exchange element to our interactions that students really enjoy. Students connect and open up, which fosters deeper and often unexpected economic discussions,” she says.  

The group also live streams presentations from the National Bureau of Economic Research’s annual Organizational Economics Working Group meeting each December. “Undergraduate students in economics rarely get any conference exposure, and this is an opportunity for them to observe and discuss what happens at high-level events,” Bernhardt-Walther notes.  

Last year, the European Economic Association recognized Bernhardt-Walther and Lang’s work by presenting the VJC with the 2024 EEA Award for Innovation in Teaching.  

“The way I think about our readings and what I want students to get out of them traces back to my time at Booth,” Bernhardt-Walther says. “I’m excited to bring a bit of Booth-inflected entrepreneurship to postsecondary education. We are proud of what we’ve accomplished and the impact it has had on our students.