Teaching and assessing intermediate macroeconomics: An innovative approach

Abstract

Research on pedagogica1 issues associated with the delivery and assessment of economics curriculum has increased noticeably since the early 1990s. This has been driven partly by necessity, as declining numbers in economics majors have caused departments to evaluate their performance, partly by the interests of some economists in pedagogy and partly by an increase in teaching of economics to students who have opted for majors other than economics. This paper arises from the latter two causes and reports on an innovation that has been used since 2000 with classes containing both business economics and international business students at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Auckland, New Zealand. Given that students in international business at AUT are drawn from a range of faculties, including business, science and arts, there is no guarantee that they have any background in economics when they enrol in Business and the Macroeconomic Environment, an intermediate level open economy macroeconomics paper and a core paper in both the Business Economics and the International Business majors in the Bachelor of Business Degree. The business economics major students have completed the equivalent of a first year macroeconomics course before they enter this paper. In order to meet the needs of the course and those of the students, the lecturers on this course have developed an innovative assessment and teaching approach. The emphasis of this approach is in aiding the students to cross the threshold from theory to application using real world data and a business application. The rationale for, and details of the approach are outlined and the performance of this new approach is briefly evaluated.