BSc Economics Student Qiyue Wang, was a Conference Facilitator at this TeachECONference2023. In this blog, she gives her perspective on Track 1 of the online video poster presentations, “Harnessing Technology to Improve Teaching.”

Acknowledging the numerous challenges faced by educators during online teaching, this year’s conference featured a diverse array of speakers who delved into thought-provoking subjects. These topics spanned from valuable lessons learned during the pandemic to effective strategies for fostering student success in economics. With the emergence of AI in today’s world combined with the new experience of online teaching, technology plays a significant role in improving both teaching and learning efficiency. Some views about how different technologies in economics teaching could improve teaching result feedback and learning outcome from students have actively been shared by scholars in the TeachECONference 2023.

Gradescope: Improving Marking and Feedback in Economics Courses.

Most assignments and exam papers are uploaded by students themselves online during and after the pandemic. It is a large workload for teachers and tutors especially for those with hundreds of students, and it’s also an extra admin burden if there is any change in mark deduction scheme. Meanwhile, the traditional online marking platforms such as Moodle are not ideal for providing quantitative feedback. Antonio Mele from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) introduced a platform called Gradescope to cope with the above situations, which has the following characteristics:

1. Create a rubric dynamically, that markers could change the deduction points even after they’ve marked, and it would automatically apply to every paper under the same circumstance.

2. Allow instructors and students to upload assignments, exam, and other assessments to be marked electronically by multiple markers.

3. Economics of scale which applies a rubric across many scripts.

The implementation of Gradescope at LSE has shown promising results in terms of a more efficient grading and effective feedback as well as high consistency between markers. The implication of this also faces few challenges such as the merge with original learning management system and less applicable in essay or idea-illustration questions.

As a student, I understand the workload would be too much for teachers if they provide feedback individually for each assignment and exams. Therefore, a consistent but comprehensive rubric applied on each wrong question specifically would help us quickly understand our mistake. The economics of scale feature of this may also help us get quicker feedback during the study process to enhance the understanding of the next chapter’s material. From my perspective, if there is a system that could reduce the workload of the grader and the time waiting to receive grades with comprehensive rubric of assignments, it would be a win-win situation for both teachers and students.

Improving student comprehension through interactive model visualization.

https://www.econgraphs.org/ link to ECONGRAPHS example graph of Total and Unit Revenue and Costs from the Econ-graphs:

Also, during study process, Visualization could help students gain a more comprehensive understanding for the subjects such as architecture, physics, engineering. It is also crucial in Economics by connecting the real-world statistics into the theoretical models that we’ve learnt in economics.

Simon Halliday from University of Bristol emphasised the importance of selecting an appropriate model across STEM disciplines. He introduced a model visualization software developed by Chris Makler called EconGraphs.org. It contains 20 different model visualizations at micro level, including models that could be applied for Profit maximization with market power, price discrimination and Oligopoly. Economic graphs could easily be changed by simply changing the number, the economic questions relate to the graph is also illustrated nearby. Simon Halliday and his group filed these interactive exercises in 3 different institutions, and most students found it could help them get a better understanding by the visualization model rather than trying to juggle all concepts mentally. Only a few students reacted that they do not have the habit of visualization learning.

It would be very exciting if I could combine my course material’s example with the visualization model by myself. During the study process, I find it tricky to understand how every model works graphically and dynamically. Repeatedly drawing these graphs by hand to get a clearer map is also a challenge. I feel very surprised when I first saw this software and I believe it would largely help us to understand the principle of microeconomic models better during the learning process. From my personal experience, when I learn the Economics of labour, drawing graphs of reservation wage was complex especially for measuring the change of substitutional and income effects after the implication of policies. If I could have access it by the Econgraph, it would be more straightforward.

Gamification – F2F, Online, Synchronous? A Case Study Comparison

Besides the visualization software in assisting student’s study, experiments and games are also common teaching tools in economics and aid student learning. Traditionally, the games would be done by pen and paper, more recently online. However, the different delivery formats would also have different impact on students.

To fill this gap, Matthew Olczak from Aston University and Christopher Wilson from Loughborough University composed a case study by adapting three different formats:

1. Polling: the traditional in-person delivery by using polling software.

2. Asynchronous: the online platform in a remote and asynchronous context.

3. Platform face to face (F2F): the combination of both online platform and in-person context.

They found some behaviour features that students might show the primacy effect and left-side bias by picking options that on the top or with the largest number under a tight time pressure. This is very useful in connecting marketing, pricing, and regulations in many settings.

By delivering these formats into different classes of students, they found that the intended learning outcomes are very consistent across different formats. But specifically in terms of participation and response rate, engagement, and satisfaction, F2F platform shows the best results. From my own perspective, the “menti” platform we were using during lectures is very interesting, which we are required to give our answer to an open or multiple-choice question online while we are in a F2F lecture. It could let me quickly check that if I understood the main point of the current class, and I could see my peer’s answer and learn from their ideas. I also believe that it would give teachers a direct reflection about whether students understand the main concepts.

As student, I really appreciate the efforts that our teachers have been trying to make the class and learning materials more approachable. Technologies such as the new grading system, in-class gamification, and model visualization have proved their effectiveness in terms of teaching and learning outcomes. If possible, an anonymous online peer-evaluation system after we received our grades of assignment would help us reduce the anxiety and learning from our peers, and it could help us gain a more comprehensive map of the subject by getting to know more answers from our peers.

Written by Qiyue Wang, BSc Economics

Photo credit: Marvin Meyer