Bryn Mawr College

ECON242: Economics of Local Environmental Programs

David Ross, Bryn Mawr College

This intermediate-level course focuses on human impact on the environment at the neighborhood and community level and policies that local governments adopt in response. ECON105 Introduction to Economics is a prerequisite for the course, and David is using modules from the OLI Experiments in Economics course to help students re-acquaint themselves with and master basic economic concepts they will use in ECON242.

Syllabus | OLI Experiments in Economics

Economics 119: Principles of Economics 

Liang Ding, Macalester College, Spring 2013

This is an introductory level economics course that introduces basic concepts and theories in economics including both Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. This course is a required course for Economics Majors and aims to provide an appropriate background and foundation for future coursework in the economics major.

Professor Ding believes adopting blended approaches, such as computer-based simulations and games can stimulate students’ motivation and interests in the class, which in turn will improve their learning efficiency. Computer-based quizzes and online video illustrations will provide practice opportunities for students outside of the class, which will improve their academic performance. The computer based games and experiments are from EconPort. Out of class discussion can be shared on Google documents. Professor Ding planned to use Adobe Presenter to make online automatic quizzes. Jing will be used to videotape solving and instructions of sample problems.

Economics 207: Statistical Analysis for Economics and Business

Soma Ghosh, Albright College, Spring 2013

This is a 200-level required course for all business majors. It is a pre-requisite for most of the upper-level courses in the business curriculum. The main purpose of this course is to provide students with an understanding of the basic concepts and tools in the field of statistics and its applications in business and economics. Mostly business majors and business co-concentrators take the course. This course requires a basic knowledge of algebra, but not calculus.

Microsoft Excel (with an add-on package that comes with the textbook) is used throughout the course because of its computational ease and availability. Professor Ghosh hopes the blended learning component of this course will make the material more comprehensible and the real world applications, easier to understand and apply. It will allow students to spend more time practicing the concepts learned in class and have more opportunities to use and apply the real-world applications on their own. Professor Ghosh plans to use the modules available through OLI and learn about other modules that might be available elsewhere. In addition, Professor Ghosh plans to use “CONNECT” that is available as an online homework management system/learning tool for most textbooks.