Continued Engagement (Beyond the Life of the Project)

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Continued Engagement (Beyond the Life of the
Project)

• Cillian Ryan and Rebecca Taylor

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What we learnt from WinEcon Dissemination project

• Aim was to facilitate dissemination of existing
  prize-winning software by creating team of
  implementers.
• Implicit test of hypothesis of main barrier to
  dissemination.
• Evidence mixed.
• Tried to carry over lessons to other Economics
  projects

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What we learnt from WinEcon Dissemination project

• PROS
• Student focussed
• Bite sized, reusable objects
• Core material
• Mostly time-invariant

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What we learnt from WinEcon Dissemination project

• CONS
• Based around toolkit
• Not Microsoft compatible
• Originally web links version dependent
• Originally largely mainframe dependent

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What we learnt from WinEcon Dissemination project

• Questionnaires and use evidence indicates that
  students more likely to use if product is
  web-linked

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What we learnt from WinEcon Dissemination project

• Implementation needed to be durable.
• Links Not version dependent
• Easy access essential (easily downloadable by
  students).
• Microsoft compatibility desirable

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What we learnt from WinEcon Dissemination project

• Product needed to be portable between successor
  lecturers
• Where will existed use of implementation team
  was a success
• Presence of technical barriers often meant that
  work of implementation team was wasted
• No substitute for desire

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FAME (FDTL5 Economics)

• METAL - Mathematics for Economics enhancing
  Teaching and Learning
• FEELE - Finance and Economics Experimental
  Laboratory at Exeter
• Applying WinEcon
• ETC - Embedding Threshold Concepts
• g

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METAL

• Improve student engagement with Mathematics for
  Economics
• An interactive set of online resources
• Online question bank
• Over 50 video clips
• 10 lecturer-focused teaching and learning guides
• Real world Economics case studies

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METAL
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FEELE

• Encourage use of economic experiments
• Increase motivation and retention of students
• Each student participates in 25 - 30 experiments
  during the Exeter Economics programme
• Developed new classroom experiments for
  undergraduate modules
• Available via Wikiversity

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Embedding Threshold Concepts/

• Key ideas
• Give an insight into how economists think
• Microeconomics opportunity cost
• Macroeconomics the multiplier
• Deepen first year undergraduates acquisition of
  threshold concepts.
• Materials can be used in small and large group
  teaching sessions
• All materials are available via the ETC website

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Continued Engagement

• Dissemination strategy
• Encourage ownership
• Student engagement
• Subject Centres
• External links
• Future projects