Software in Principles of Microeconomics

Understand economics is a CD-ROM based interactive tutorial with an assessment module, produced by BPP Learning Media. There are lessons on each of microeconomics, macroeconomics and the business environment. The assessment module presents a randomly generated set of questions, and produces reports of student performance. The package is expected to take 20 hours to complete and is only available to subscribers.

This is an online set of teaching material, including multi-player classroom experiments, interactive text and problem sets, combined with a course management system. It runs over the Web, using standard browsers with the Flash plug-in. The system tracks student use of the system, and produces reports for the instructor. The material can be customised by the instructor using a Web interface. Material is available to support a range of standard textbooks and can be broken down by subject / course.

Classic economic models is a set of economic models that run through a web browser, some of which are available as free trials. The models are divided into micro and macro models, covering topics such as perfect competition, Keynsian models, price discrimination and utility-based valuation of risk. The models take the form of model link files which can be read by the EconModel plug-in. Access to the non-free models requires an annual subscription, currently 20 USD for a year. Most of the models have exercise sheets in PDF suitable for printing.

Farmersi is a business game in which players manage their virtual farms in the Wild West - they grow crops, raise cattle and make investments. Individual games are 1-15 players at a time and last for 6-17 turns, with turns calculated every 4 or 8 minutes, 12 hours or 24hours. It is a basic simulation of business skills and how economies and markets function. Farmersi is entirely browser based and does not require the downloading of any software.

LiveEcon combines animated tutorials, interactive models (with graphs and charts that respond to user choices) and self-evaluation questions. Each chapter starts with a tutorial, which combines concise text with animated charts and tables, illustrating clearly the key points which are being described. Formative assessment / self-evaluation questions then allow users to evaluate their progress and understanding of each chapter. Packages are available covering macroeconomics and microeconomics, which are available to individual or institutional subscribers.

Thinkwell is a commercial learning tutorial service that supports economics, microeconomics and macroeconomics courses. It consists of video lectures that give simultaneous views of the lecturer and his slides and animations. Online interactive exercises with feedback, review notes, course management tools and a dedicated website for users. Lecturers can customise the course and view the results of interactive tests taken by their students. The materials are available online via subscription and require Flash / QuickTime / Java to load.

WinEcon is an interactive learning software package for economics, business economics, maths for economics and the range of Sloman textbooks designed to support economics courses. The software provides many hours of tutorial material and includes: all the relevant theory, interactive exercises, self-assessment questions, economics databases and an economic glossary. Teachers of economics can integrate WinEcon into their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) by creating links from any Web page, Word, Powerpoint or Excel document to specific WinEcon topics. Students working on their own machines can also make full use of these features to link to specific WinEcon screens from their lecturer's Web pages by installing the single user software.