ISSUES IN DELIVERY AND ASSESSMENT OF ONLINE COURSES: E-LEARNING IN ECONOMICS

Pedagogical approaches in teaching Economics varies by course. The common approach to content delivery is the lecture, and assessment is conducted through examinations. This paper presents the author’s experiments and experiences over the past decade in teaching three different online Economics courses—Principles of Economics, Money and Banking, and American Economic History. It examines the different set of challenges that delivery and assessment of each course presents to both the Professor and the student in the use of technology. While the course content can be delivered effectively with some effort, student-Professor communication and course assessment are two major problems. The former assumes access to necessary software (e.g., MS-Office, PDF creator etc.) and the knowledge of their use in creating documents that would communicate charts and mathematical symbols. The latter is to ensure the authenticity of the answers to exams by student. Strategies to address such problems have been more successful in American Economic History courses than the Economic theory or applied courses.

Online teaching of Economics courses are enhanced by using links to online news, articles, films and economic games and simulators. These can enhance an in-class course also. The key to success and the technological challenge in e-learning in Economics rests with assessment. In this paper, I will also discuss my experiences with online participation and group communication.