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Reforming ECO 101

I started my lecturing career in 1997 and the first course I taught was ECO 101 (introductory economics). My class had 200 students and it took two technicians 30 minutes to set up the huge data projector for my PowerPoint slides - this was the first time PowerPoint was used in the university to teach economics! It was a fun course to teach. This was the first time that most students had come across economics, and the power of economics to explain what happened in the real world really captivated them. My first assignment required students to write a paper explaining why house prices in Northern Ireland had increased 50% between 1992 and 1997!

ECO 101 is one of the most popular courses at universities today. Click here to read a piece on Bloomberg which makes a variety of suggestions as to how ECO 101 could be changed to make it more realistic and relevant (hat tip: Chris Colvin). One suggestion is that students play Deregulated Monopoly!

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