Teaching CORE online

To help teachers prepare for delivering their courses online, CORE is developing resources for asynchronous teaching. In addition to the support materials available on our Resources page, we will provide guides on how to teach CORE online, including a library of activities teachers can use in their course, as well as videos and interactive applications that can be assigned for self-study.

Video tutorials

Together with Dr Ramin Nassehi (UCL), we are producing a collection of video tutorials which take students through key features of some of the models in The Economy and ESPP. The run-throughs are designed to complement the ebooks and to support students learning the models at their own pace.

Videos on selected models from The Economy Units 2 to 9, and ESPP Units 2, and 4 to 8 are now available on CORE’s YouTube channel and Bilibili channel, and also for download (click the three-dot button on the bottom-right corner of the video player):

• Isocost lines: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 2.4)
• Technology choice: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 2.4)
• Industrial revolution: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 2.6)
• Income and substitution effects: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 3.7, 3.9, ESPP Unit 4.9)
• Invisible hand game: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 4.2, ESPP Unit 2.5)
• Coordination game: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 4.13, ESPP Unit 2.12)
• Angela and Bruno I: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 5.4 and 5.6, ESPP Units 5.3 and 5.4)
• Angela and Bruno II: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 5.7 and 5.9, ESPP Units 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7)
• Labour discipline model: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 6.6 and 6.7, ESPP Units 6.8 and 6.9)
• Cost curves: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 7.3)
• Profit maximization: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 7.4, 7.5, ESPP Units 7.3, 7.4, 7.5)
• Price-taking firms: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 8.3, 8.4, ESPP Unit 7.10)
• Efficiency in competitive markets: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Unit 8.5, ESPP Unit 7.11)
• The labour market: YouTube, Bilibili, Download (The Economy Units 9.3-9.6, ESPP Units 8.4-8.6)

Videos on selected models from The Economy Units 10-16 will be made available over the next weeks.

Playing three games with ClassEx

Prof. Cloda Jenkins (UCL) delivered the lecture on The Economy Unit 4/ESPP Unit 2 to her students by playing three games on ClassEx: a Prisoners’ Dilemma, a Public Good Game without punishment, and a Public Good Game with punishment. You can watch her lecture in the video below.

Other video options: Bilibili, Download

The live lecture delivered by Prof. Jenkins complements the variety of asynchronous activities that Economics students at UCL need to complete each week in order to progress smoothly through their module. These are set out in a ‘Route Map‘ that students receive on a weekly basis, to help them in their learning activities. (A PDF version is available by clicking here).

Explore COVID-19 using transmission networks

The following resources help to gain insight on the economic impact of the virus diffusion:

• the COVID network simulation, by modelling simple networks of people, shows how the virus can spread across a population over time, and its associated effects on the economy and income inequality. Different parameters can be set by users: number of individuals in the networks, number of ties connecting them, probability of infection, and the severity of social distancing policies imposed by the policymaker
• the COVID Transmission and Economic Networks pathway on LabXchange. A collection of slideline figures, text, and items for assessment illustrates the economic concepts related to virus transmission and the model we use

The COVID network simulation was developed by Eileen Tipoe, co-author of Doing Economics, and Dan Mead, former MPhil Economics student at the University of Oxford.

Economist in Action videos

In CORE’s Economist in Action videos, used in The Economy and ESPP ebooks, prominent economists explain how they use research to answer questions. You can find the full list of videos in The Economy and ESPP contents pages.

A new video titled “What promotes or kills innovation?” is now available as part of The Economy Unit 1.10 and Unit 21.2. In the video, Lisa Cook (Michigan State University) investigates the relationship between capitalism and innovation, asks why Russia’s transition to capitalism in the 1990s did not spark a wave of innovation, and documents how some inventions contributed by African American inventors were cut short by a wave of attacks and anti-black mob violence.

Guides to teaching The Economy online

These guides provide instructors with advice on how to structure their courses online, with the possibility of easily adapting to a face-to-face context. Each unit is structured in five ‘days’ – learning events which help students to better understand the question of interest and structure their time. For each day, a number of asynchronous and synchronous activities are suggested – such as pre-recorded videos, essay peer marking, or collaborative work.

You can access them below (teacher access required):

• Unit 1
• Unit 2
• Unit 3
• Unit 4 (soon)
• Unit 5 (soon)
• Unit 6

Coming soon

• Guides for teaching The Economy online (Units 4 onwards)
• Interactive version of The Economy Figure 1.2 (‘Distribution of income’) which will enable students to interact directly with the “skyscraper” graph, with the possibility of visualising income distributions, Lorenz curves and 90/10 ratios for chosen countries and years.
• Interactive housing bubble model – a version of The Economy Figure 17.24 (‘A tipping point in the housing market’) intended to help students understand the dynamic nature of the housing bubble model. Students will be able to see how a housing bubble can burst, and how the housing market behaves afterwards. They will also be able to interact with the model, by deploying carefully designed policy tools to try and bring the market back to equilibrium.

We will update this page with more resources as we develop them, so please keep checking the page for new materials.

The CORE Team

Last updated on 18 December 2020.

CORE materials published on this page are licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND license.