Tutors' Guides in Principles (General)

Collection of lesson plans that use New York Times articles for orientation round a specific economic issue, providing questions for discussion and ideas for class discussion or research. The exercises encourage students to draw on their own experience, look for economic principles, and consider perspectives from outside economics. Topics include offshoring of jobs, how skill shortages affect the economy, global stock market corrections, tax cuts and income distribution. Content is US-focused, aimed at school teachers, and not always focused on economic angles; but is up-to-date and offers a wide-ranging source of ideas for introducing real world content and practical assignments into teaching of economic principles.

Commanding Heights is a three-part television series and a content-rich companion website. This extensive site offers resources for students, teachers, and the public-at-large. It was produced by PBS, the US publicly-funded broadcasting service. The site provides a guide to globalisation, trade and economic development. There is a timeline of key events since 1911, and a storyline of the three two-hour episodes of the TV programme. There are transcripts of interviews with people who are involved with or comment on economics, e.g. Naomi Klein. The Ideas section of the site looks at theories or phenomena like Reaganomics, the British Welfare State, the Chicago School, Marxist economics and Keynesian Economic Theory. The Resources page has a list of websites and a bibliography of books, for further research. An online educators' guide is available on the site, with a short video describing the site's key features.

This website accompanies the textbook by Lipsey and Chrystal, Economics, 11th edition and is published by OUP. The site contains a glossary of economic terms presented in Flash, supplemental material (although this is presented as interactive, there appears to be no actual online interaction), online self-test questions, economics stories in the news related to each chapter and a few web links to relevant resources. Further lecturer resources, such as PowerPoint slides, figures, multiple choice tests and VLE / Blackboard content require registration with the website.

Embedding Threshold Concepts is a project of the Institute for Education Policy Research at Staffordshire University. It aimed "to improve students understanding in economics by developing first year undergraduates acquisition of threshold concepts" and applied to both students on specialist economics degrees and non-specialists, for instance those on business degrees. The site includes teaching materials, suggested student activities, working papers / readings and further information about the project.

This panel at the LSE brings together four leading economists to debate whether the economics being taught to students was responsible for the widespread failure to predict the timing and magnitude of the events that unfolded in 2008 and to discuss what changes in the economics curriculum and the way that it is delivered are desirable. The panel comprises: Geoffrey Hodgson is Professor of Business Studies, University of Hertfordshire, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics, Albert Marcet is Professor of Economics, LSE. Paul Ormerod is from Volterra Consulting and John Sutton is Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, LSE. The mp3 file lasts about 90 minutes.

Video of a presentation given by Simon Halliday on 9 September 2010 at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Features material from Edward Tufte, Garr Reynolds, Larry Lessig and others in a discussion of presentation techniques, then proceeds to look at the use of music and music videos, film and technology in teaching. Also looks at some of the challenges that face a prospective teacher wishing to use technology in a country like South Africa and in a university like the University of Cape Town with large classes and high bandwidth costs.

Adopters of the text Economics by Begg, Fischer and Dornbusch, can download the lecturer's manual here in PDF or Word (.doc) format.

This 22-page PDF paper offers advice on teaching economic literacy, from 2001. It uses as its focus, the teaching of economic principles course as used in the college environment - looking at applicable standards, how to update teaching and learning approaches and also contains a bibliography of further reading.

This brief guide to writing for economics by Deirdre McCloskey gives 10 top tips for students advising them to keep their prose brief and to the point.

This article, links to a 21-page PDF file, argues for the use of active-learning exercises in teaching economics, explaining the benefits of this method for students and for staff. Example activities and exam questions are included which bear on the concept of present value. Other active learning exercises linked from the same page cover "Money as a Cultural, Economic and Social Institution" and "Financial Markets".