School:Economics

The Wikiversity School of Economics

Welcome to the Wikiversity School of Economics!

At Wikiversity the roles of teachers and learners often merge, since teaching is often the best way to learn. Please read this page for information about learning projects and for ideas on how you might like to contribute.

If you are currently procrastinating, you can spend the time here doing something constructive. The Wikiversity School of Economics is an asylum run by its inmates, so just go crazy and contribute to the public good.

The Wikiversity School of Economics has started a project to provide students and teachers with links to Wikipedia entries and other learning materials that support the economics syllabus and to establish sets of questions and answers that students can use to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of economics. Your help with this project would be great.

Wikiversity emphasizes the value of learning by doing. If you would like to incorporate this principle into your own classroom, why not learn about the use of classroom experiments? Follow this link to a comprehensive archive of Economics Classroom Experiments.

Economics Q & A

Are you teaching or studying economics and need a question answered?

Just edit the text below using the link at the right-hand side of the page and replace the text below with your question/s, include the name of your course or topic, and someone might answer it for you. (It is assumed that all questions start with "Given some assumptions ..." and end with "..., ceteris paribus").

If you need help writing mathematical formulae please read Help:Formula.

Questions and answers will be archived on the Economics Q & A page and could be added to the testbank of questions and answers in the economics syllabus project.

Please help answer this question:

what is productive efficiency and how do you calculate production efficiency?

Wikiversity does not currently have a resource on productive efficiency. There is an entry in Wikipedia on productive efficiency which is not well-documented but may be of help. Please feel free to start a resource here on this topic. Please also feel free to end your contributions with four ~ marks. Thank you for asking and we hope you will open a Wikiversity account and contribute to the school of economics. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 15:00, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

If the prices are expected to decrease, it is expected that consumers will suspend current consumption?

If the current price is the optimal price, then a decrease in price will lower sales. Other factors such as gains in economies of scale can lower costs. If producers pass some of this on to consumers, prices drop and current consumption can increase. Prices usually arise from a balance between supply and demand. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 14:04, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Another brick in the wall

You can help build the Wikiversity School of Economics by adding another brick.

A brick is a short lesson or study guide on one topic. Choose any topic you like. These bricks can later be added to the economics syllabus to help other people teach or learn.

1. Describe the topic you are learning and/or teaching.

2. Add links to relevant Wikipedia entries and other learning materials.

3. Write about how you learn about this, e.g. reading, watching a video, or playing a game.

4. Write one or more questions and answers that test knowledge and understanding of this topic.

Visit this page to add a brick.

The Wikiversity School of Economics

New project - Wikiversity School of Economics syllabus

London School of Economics Statistics Machine Room 1964

A new project has been started to establish a Wikiversity School of Economics syllabus. The long term goal is to construct a syllabus for an entire economics degree. The short term goal is to construct a syllabus for first year university or principles level course called Introductory Microeconomics. This project aims to organize links to relevant Wikipedia entries, other learning materials, and to provide teachers and students with an organized test bank of exam questions and answers online. Via collaboration on Wikiversity, this project aims to describe the set of questions and answers that test a student's knowledge of the topics in the economics syllabus and serve as the basis for the economics university curriculum.

By answering sets of questions that are designed to rigorously test their knowledge and understanding, students will be able to build confidence in their mastery of the economics syllabus. Once a critical mass of questions and answers has been compiled online, the help of anyone with the skills to create new pages that translate these questions and answers into the interactive form made possible by the Wikiversity quiz extension will be greatly appreciated. Questions and answers in an interactive format are themselves useful learning materials.

Students often study by asking each other questions and helping each other learn by correcting wrong answers and congratulating each other when they answer correctly. The Wikiversity School of Economics syllabus/testbank project provides an opportunity for students around the world to encourage each other to learn. We've crunched the numbers and there are 100s of 1000s of students around the world taking almost identical courses to you right now - you can help each other by putting questions and answers online.

Rationale

This project aims to help direct efforts in the Wikiversity School of Economics to creating organized sets of questions and answers, rather than recreating Wikipedia-type entries on the School of Economics pages. Establishing a syllabus and sets of exams will allow students to test their knowledge and demonstrate their achievements. With an emphasis on assessment tasks in many university courses, the tests used to assess students' knowledge and understanding of a subject tend to become the de facto syllabus of a course and the learning activities that enable a student to complete assessement tasks successfully tend to become the de facto curriculum. Improving the quality of tests then provides one way to improve the quality of a course. Establishing a set of questions and answers that embodies the economics syllabus might also help identify the types of learning materials and experiences that will best help students to learn economics.

Tests measure student performance but they also indirectly measure the quality of learning materials and teaching methods. Sets of questions and answers that embody the syllabus can be used as a yardstick for measuring the effectiveness of alternative learning materials and methods of learning in order to design new learning materials and thereby improve educational outcomes. The learning materials that are currently available can be used to create sets of questions and answers that test students' knowledge of the syllabus, which in turn can be used to help test and develop the next generation of learning materials.

Additionally, by investigating the possible limits for questions and answers to embody the economics syllabus and curriculum, this project will also help identify other academic skills and learning experiences that are important for a university education in economics. It is possible that tests of these additional components of a university education generally take the form of tests of participation and records of attendance in classes, ultimately depending on the reputation, status and branding of a university institution. However, alternative hypotheses include the possibility that answering appropriate questions under exam conditions can be a sufficient test of a student's knowledge and understanding and the possibility that other forms of participation in learning activities, online or in person, can serve the same purpose as a conventional enrolment.

This BBC News article includes some discussion of the "tricky question" of accreditation and online courses. This Wikiversity School of Economics project will investigate the degree to which online education will need to test participation using homework assignments with regular deadlines (the model currently being tested by edX) versus the degree to which freely available online questions and answers can serve as the basis of assessment (albeit by subsequently testing students' knowledge and understanding under conventional exam conditions).

Wikiversity itself does not seek to provide accredited qualifications. Instead, students can use sets of questions and answers to test their own knowledge of the syllabus. They can also use their performance on tests to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding to others. It is, however, possible for other university institutions to adopt any examinations developed by the Wikiversity School of Economics as the basis of their own processes of assessment. One aim is to establish a set of questions and answers that a teacher would feel comfortable using for the purposes of assessment, even though students will have had access to this set of questions and answers before they are asked to answer the questions under exam conditions. For examples of the kind of question that might satisfy this criterion please visit Authoring Questions and Answers for the Economics Syllabus.

One interesting possibility if the syllabus and examination questions compiled by the Wikiversity School of Economics reach a sufficiently high level of quality and academic standard, is that they could be then adopted by the OER University. The syllabus of Introductory Microeconomics could become part of the OER University inaugural Bachelor of General Studies degree, which will be accredited by participating universities around the world. A completed Wikiversity School of Economics syllabus could even eventually serve as the basis for a Bachelor of Economics, accredited by the OER university partners. A compatible syllabus of economics adopted by many universities around the world would give students the opportunity to study in different locations at different stages of their coursework, whilst seeing the world.

Progress so far

So far, a page has been created for the economics syllabus, by starting with a syllabus for a first year university or principles level microeconomics course called "Introductory Microeconomics". If you'd like to help with this project please visit the syllabus pages, and either add links to Wikipedia entries and other learning materials or add questions and answers to the relevant pages.

Alternatively, if your area of interest is not introductory microeconomics, it could be a good idea to start creating pages for other common university courses, e.g. introductory macroeconomics, introductory mathematical economics, intermediate microeconomics, and so on, and to start compiling lists of topics for syllabus modules and associated test banks of questions and answers. For something different, consider putting together a syllabus for a course/s based on John Quiggin's book Zombie Economics. What would the prerequisites be?

What's the next task?

Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone 1931

The next task is to add links to relevant Wikipedia entries and other learning materials and to add questions and answers to the syllabus of Introductory Microeconomics.

Work has started by creating links to the best online videos available that seek to teach elements of the Introductory Microeconomics syllabus. Why should students listen to different people present half-baked explanations of the same concepts when everyone could learn from the best?

The best found so far are the Economists Do It With Models online videos and the MIT Open Courseware. Links need to be added to the videos that match the topics listed in each module of the syllabus. Then, questions and answers related to these videos needed to be created on the Q & A pages.

This project does not aim to replicate the great work of Jodie Beggs, MIT, the UK Open University, Coursera, or edX. Instead, it will provide links to this material and contribute by compiling sets of questions and answers. This will serve the aim of describing the economics curriculum in question and answer form, which could become the basis of new learning activities once questions and answers begin to be translated into an interactive form using the Wikiversity quiz extension.

(The structure needs to be changed so there is one page, called "Introductory Microeconomics learning materials" for the collection of links to Wikipedia entries and other learning materials pages but retaining the multiple pages for the corresponding Q & A pages.)

If anyone is currently revising for an introductory microeconomics course, they might like to watch the Economists Do It With Models videos and the MIT Open Courseware videos and other learning materials and make up relevant questions and answers for the Introductory Microeconomics Q & A pages as part of their study.

If anyone is currently preparing questions and answers for an introductory microeconomics practice exam or final exam, please consider sharing these questions and answers on Wikiversity (before or after) the actual exam.

Tutors, please consider asking your students to write questions and answers to test each others' knowledge and understanding of introductory microeconomics. One half of a group could write questions to test the other half. These questions and answers could then be added online to the relevant Q & A pages.

Advice about creating good economics questions and answers can be found on Authoring Questions and Answers for the Economics Syllabus.

Goals of the School of Economics

These are the current goals of the School of Economics.

Long-term

Develop a syllabus for the School of Economics
Develop the world's best online guide to writing test questions for economics courses at Syllabus of Economics/Authoring Questions and Answers. Meeting this goal will encourage participation in the Wikiversity School of Economics and visitors to the site who are writing exam questions and answers might also contribute their efforts to the Syllabus of Economics testbank project.
Encourage the OER University to adopt the Wikiversity School of Economics syllabus

Short-term

Develop a syllabus for Introductory Microeconomics
Find the best recorded lectures and videos online that explain elements of the Introductory Microeconomics syllabus. List the links to these videos in order of rank from "Number 1. Best in the World", and so on down the rankings.
Provide the best set of lecture slides and handouts for an introductory microeconomics course in the world for anyone to use.
Encourage the OER University to adopt the Wikiversity School of Economics Introductory Microeconomics syllabus
Encourage participation in the School of Economics
Make the Wikiversity School of Economics the best School on Wikiversity. (Why not? Economists like competition).
Improve the quality of the test questions used to assess introductory micreconomics courses around the world
Either improve the Wikiversium grade by measuring up to its obscure standards or deleting the symbol from the top right of the page since it seems to be based on rather arbitrary criteria and imposes a negative vibe.

To Do List

We need your help! This is a list of tasks you could help with.

Develop the long-term goals of the school
Develop the short-term goals of the school
Create an economics portal to help people navigate Economics pages on Wikiversity
Add questions and answers to the syllabus of Introductory Microeconomics
Add links from the topic modules in the Introductory Microeconomics syllabus to relevant learning materials. Start with links to the Economists Do It With Models online videos. Then, create questions and answers for each module based on the content of these videos.
Establish a series of lectures with slides and handouts for each module in the Introductory Microeconomics syllabus. These slides and handouts will be freely available teaching materials for introductory microeconomics courses around the world. These learning materials can also act as a guide for creating new questions and answers for each module based on the content of this series of lectures.
Add examples of questions of different kinds that help people write new questions and answers for the syllabus. Example questions and approaches for creating good economics questions and answers can be added to this page: Syllabus of Economics/Authoring Questions and Answers
Create new pages that translate questions and answers compiled as a text format to an interactive format using the Wikiversity quiz extension
Organize lesson plans and list topics for lessons plans plus provide links to open education resources that can be used with these lessson plans, including teaching slides, videos, descriptions of activities, and worksheets.
Encourage participation in the Wikiversity School of Economics by improving the appearance and design of its pages.

Other projects under development

These are some other learning resources related to economics. These pages are under heavy development and should not yet be considered ready for classroom use.

Page Inventory

This is an inventory of pages in the economics category. Pages in the "Content" section likely have educational content which may be of value. They should be expanded or have their contents added to an active project. Pages in the "No Content" section are complete stubs or otherwise do not have anything useful. They should be expanded or removed. Pages that are part of actively developed projects or are good quality should go in the appropriate sections above.

Content