Author: Cillian Ryan, c.ryan@bham.ac.uk

Author: Mike Walsh, m.walsh@coventry.ac.uk

JISC e-Learning Activity Area: Technology-enhanced Learning Environments

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: Economics

This case study illustrates...use of specialist software, an effect on learning, student satisfaction with e-learning, an influence on policy, management of learning assets

Lessons Learned

Although it is too early to provide definite results we would expect that the project would lower the cost in terms of time for staff to embed WinEcon in VLEs. This in turn would make it easier for students to access WinEcon directly from schemes of work/lecture notes/seminar sheets, for use in labs and at home.

There were problems with links working in some cases, and the project focused on resolving these during phase 2. The initial survey results indicate students found these relatively easy to use. In addition, there were unanticipated benefits;

• A move from a relatively expensive individual product to low cost downloading to individual students
• Generic links were developed
• WinEcon was made more user friendly

The project led to an Economics Network mini project at Coventry which is assessing the application of economics threshold concepts using WinEcon via a VLE for business students. This acted as an additional incentive to embed WinEcon, and the results from Coventry students are positive.

A key feature of this project is the dissemination process, which could be readily applied to other disciplines.