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Economics UPDATE
The monthly Economics LTSN Email Newsletter
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01 March 2004

Welcome to Economics UPDATE, the Economics LTSN Email Newsletter.  This
newsletter is intended to inform ECON-LTSN subscribers about our activities
and to provide other information that may be of interest. Economics UPDATE
will be distributed on the first Monday of each calendar month.


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CONTENTS
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1. WHAT'S NEW
 Assessment Question Bank Taster
 New Publications on the Web Site

2. NOTICEBOARD
 Student Survey 2004

3. AND FINALLY.....
 Google Web Tip


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1. WHAT'S NEW
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ASSESSMENT QUESTION BANK TASTER
We’ve added over a 100 new questions to our Assessment Question Bank. This
service is free to teachers of Economics in UK Higher Education. We only
ask that they supply a small number of their own questions to the bank,
which they can do via a link on the question bank home page. We have
recently introduced a new ‘taster’ feature will allows users to sample
questions from the question bank:
http://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/qnbank/

NEW PUBLICATIONS ON THE WEB SITE
Two new articles have been added to our Good Practice Showcase section:

Illustrating the Social Consequences of Economic Change By Telling Stories
On the Web.
Jocelyn Paine has kindly allowed us to reproduce his presentation from last
year’s DEBE Conference, which describes his project using computer-
generated stories and headlines to show how individuals are affected by
macroeconomic conditions.
http://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/debe2003/paine.htm

Case Study: Skill Development in Industrial Economics
http://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/showcase/bailey_skills.htm


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2.  NOTICEBOARD
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STUDENT SURVEY 2004
Economics LTSN is seeks your support in conducting our second National
Student Survey. We’ve sent e-mails to all Heads of Departments asking if
they’d like their students to take participate. As with the 2002 survey, we
will ask students to evaluate their courses and learning experience in
economics.  The results of the 2002 survey are available at:
http://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/projects/stud_survey2002.htm

Many departments that took part in that survey have found their results
very useful and have expressed interest in participating again this year.
Several departments have used the results to provide data for programme
review, finding that students’ comments were more considered and thoughtful
than the normal responses in student questionnaires – perhaps because they
considered our survey to be genuinely independent.

This survey will provide valuable information on students’ perceptions of
your courses and will allow you to compare the views of your economics
students with the national average and with those of the 2002 cohort. The
results will be confidential to you, and your department will not be
identified in any way in the national results. The national results will be
posted on our Web site and you will be informed individually of the views
of your students. As an incentive for students to complete the survey, we
are offering five national prizes of GBP50, with names drawn at random.

If your department agrees to participate, we will send you further details
to disseminate to your students. We are planning to run the survey in March-
April 2004. If you have any questions please contact:

Dr Inna Pomorina, Research Officer, Economics LTSN
Tel: (0117) 7163
Email: [log in to unmask]


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3.  AND FINALLY..........
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GOOGLE WEB TIP
Google can help you search for specific kinds of files such as Excel and
PowerPoint documents. You just have to add "filetype:" and the appropriate
suffix to your search terms. For example, "indifference filetype:xls" as a
Google search right now produces 173 hits, which are mostly interactive
workbooks. "monetary filetype:ppt" brings up thousands of presentation and
lecture slide shows on monetary policy and monetary union.


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CONTACT US
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If you have any suggestions, feedback or comments please contact:
Bhagesh Sachania, Information Officer, Economics LTSN
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel.:(0117) 928 7071