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Rethinking Economics Education for Business Students: Enhancing Understanding and Engagement

Addressing challenges in teaching economics to business students through tangible concepts, hands-on learning, and targeted curriculum adjustments. Results show increased engagement and improved performance. Overcoming initial hurdles for a successful implementation.

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Rethinking Economics Education for Business Students: Enhancing Understanding and Engagement

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  1. Reconsidering the Teaching of Economics to Students on Business programmes

  2. The problem • Inability to grasp abstraction and the idea of assumptions • General aversion towards numbers and figures • Difficult in seeing the links between theory and practical application • Too much to learn in short period of time

  3. Suggested Solution/implementation • Focusing on tangible concepts (from student viewpoint)- The use of Threshold concepts • Hands on study- Enquiry based learning: students allocated firms from FTSE 100 • De-cluttering the curriculum-letting students study concepts relevant to their fields- threshold concepts

  4. Implementation • A total of 241 students in ten tutorial groups and a team of 4 teaching staff • Each tutorial group was allocated a firm from FTSE 100 • The lecturer also picked a firm to use in lectures as an example • The students were required to collect information on their firms and use these as the basis for their learning • Each student maintained a wiki page • The lecturer also maintained a wiki page of the firm used in class. • Regular feedback and three formal assessment points • Word limit was set for each point of formal feedback

  5. Results • Increased engagement • Number of updates between assessment points • >2 46%,38%,58% (affected by aversion to the use if wikis) • Improvement in work as measured change in quality of work • Quantity of data collected (more data: 75%,68%) • Quality of discussion: reproduction of data vs. engaged discussion (discursive: 43%,77%,87%)

  6. Improvement in total performance on module • Lack of control group • Lower failure rate • More students passing with better grades

  7. Challenges • The initial set up of the groups was very difficult • Timetabling • Changes in class sizes • Registration problems (year 1) • Majority of students using a wiki was difficult initially, especially in the context of learning • Demonstrations helped bust still a slow start • Portfolios preferred • Some students found it difficult to engage with enquiry based learning • Some students felt that they would have benefited from higher word counts. Compromises had to reached and word count had to be changes and the number of intervention points reduced.

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