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=========================================== Economics UPDATE The monthly Economics LTSN Email Newsletter =========================================== 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. ========== CONTENTS ========== 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 =============== 1. WHAT'S NEW =============== 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 ================ 2. NOTICEBOARD ================ 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] =================== 3. AND FINALLY.......... =================== 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. ============ CONTACT US ============ 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