Conference and seminar sessions in Online and distance learning
The ‘forum effect’: how does participation in online forums affect student retention and academic performance at a distance learning university?
Presentation at DEE 2025,Using an online interactive textbook for content delivery in large quantitative units
Presentation at DEE 2023,Teaching data analysis and econometrics asynchronously with social media and peer support
Presentation at DEE 2023,Economics Education in the Covid-19 Pandemic: what was done and what should be done?
Workshop at DEE 2021,Intimate, intimidating or interminable? Lecture chat culture versus live Q&A
Presentation at DEE 2021,‘I have been kicked out of the class!’ COVID-19 move to webinars in higher education: a process evaluation
Presentation at DEE 2021,What do business students value in the emerging virtualisation of learning and teaching that is accelerated by COVID-19? A pilot
Presentation at DEE 2021,Exploring student study habits in a large, online, macroeconomics module in order to design effective interventions
Presentation at DEE 2021,Student engagement with online learning
Presentation at DEE 2021,Online lecture recordings during the Covid pandemic
Presentation at DEE 2021,Which learning resources do students perceive as most valuable and does usage contribute to student module success
Presentation at DEE 2021,The effect of online education on the academic performance of students during COVID-19 pandemic
Presentation at DEE 2021,‘Catch you on the flip side’: Translating online learning into hybrid delivery
Workshop at DEE 2021,- Extended abstract
- Slides
- Video on teaching with OneNote
Blended learning for public engagement
Presentation at DEE 2019,We have been running an innovative blended course for government officials and others since early 2018, and will discuss the design, content and assessment of this course at DEE. In particular, we will focus on lessons learned about designing online courses for busy in-work learners who are completing the course as part of employment requirements but with few other incentives (the course is currently not part of the promotion or review process). We discuss the choice of online platform, learning pathways, interaction opportunities with learners, assessment and evaluation of the course. A second focus of our discussion will be the use of such courses as a way to engage with various stakeholders on important social issues such as financial crises, climate change, globalisation and inequality, and a way to introduce potential influencers to state of the art academic research on these topics. Thus we highlight the use of online learning to engage with non-economists about the power of economics to study and suggest policy on the hot-button issues of the day.
Joining classrooms across borders
Presentation at DEE 2019,Starting out from ubiquitous online communication platforms, we propose to explore ways to bring these into the classroom, to generate engagement and cross-border collaborative learning. First, we capitalise on the similar topics covered in a European Economy module by two universities. Second, we bring the online conversation into a structured classroom setting and use it as a tool to enhance communication skills, while exploring real-life applications of the economics of integration and fragmentation. Thus, Skype and Google Hangouts have been used in our respective lecture rooms, to generate a face-to-face conversation for two groups of second year students in Romania and the UK, between 2017 and 2019. The online discussions were designed to encourage students’ questions, feedback and reflection on the European economy, from their own countries’ perspectives. In the ensuing discussions we focussed on recent developments and significant policies affecting the European economy, and explored students’ understanding of how integration and fragmentation in the EU context affects their countries’ economies. In a first session students were invited to put questions and reflect on the economic implications of Brexit, within a Skype facilitated joint lecture framework. In a second session we collected students’ questions of potential interest, via PollEverywhere, before a joint lecture facilitated through Google Hangouts. Students were encouraged to consider questions from the partner institution in advance of the joint lecture and these became the basis of the subsequent joint lecture and debate. In a third and final session, we are inviting students to consider the priorities of the presidency of the Council of the European Union, and link these with the theory covered in their module. Relevant issues related to the digital single market and environmental policy are then discussed with students and staff in the partner institution in a Google Hangout facilitated joint lecture and debate.
Online learning: lessons from first-year undergraduate courses
Workshop at DEE 2019,At Heriot-Watt University, online learning now plays a key role in the delivery of principles courses in economics. These introductory courses are taught to a very diverse student population: students differ in many respects, including their degree programmes, the stage of their studies, their prior exposure to the subject, and their work experience before starting their degree. These differences reflected in their expectations, confidence, interest in the content, and potentially their success on the course. Jointly, these factors could also influence whether students choose to pursue economics further in their studies. Through a series of focus groups, we hope to investigate each student group's perception of online materials, their efficacy last semester, and their adequacy for future use.
Learner paths
Presentation at DEE 2017,In economics and business, MOOCs are developing fast and this evolution raises many questions. The most publicised facts concern the dropout rate: only a small proportion of students finish courses. All courses experience the same phenomenon, which probably depends on factors like the duration and length of the course at least as much as on its content, but there may be more systemic factors. In order to delve into the question of course efficiency, we record all that individual learners do in a recent course hosted by FutureLearn: “manage your prices, an introduction to revenue management and pricing strategy.” We have a wealth of quantitative information on learners’ behaviour, including performance measurement, time spent on resources, steps completed, messages posted, etc. Qualitative information, like comments made by learners, connexions between them, is also rich in content. We focus here on the available information on learner paths. In what respect do they enable us to assess the course efficiency? We design indicators that can be computed with available data, for the first and second session of the course and analyse different types of learner paths. Are social learners (those who participate in discussions) more likely to complete the course? More generally, what can we discover from the individual learning paths? Do students need more than one session? What would we like to have in order to model the course efficiency better? This paper is an attempt towards a general reflection on the use of data for answering these questions.
Utilising TRIBE (online-teaching and learning website) to bridge the gap between teaching Economics at schools, FE & HE
Presentation at DEE 2017,This paper examines the use of online technologies as a means of improving student engagement and improving student outcomes in the teaching of economics to level 3 BTEC students. The paper explores the impact of WBS-TRIBE www.scoop.it/t/WBS-TRIBE as a teaching & learning tool in the teaching of economics to BTEC level III Business students at Newham Sixth Form College (New Vic). TRIBE is an online economic and business news curation service, curated by Westminster Business School academics, with regular contributions from further and higher education students. The curated content is accessible via multiple access points (laptops, tablets and mobile phones). New Vic students and their teacher used TRIBE to facilitate learning and completion of Unit 38 assessment on the impact of the economic environment and government policy on business. The paper found that students were more engaged with their assessment and built good habits by keeping abreast with economic and business news. In this way the collaboration between the two institutions provided an excellent bridge to studying at University. It also provided an opportunity for students to get an insight into studying and researching at University. This more direct Outreach activity enabled the BTEC students to get a greater insight into the application of economics and the relevance of economic policy to business, than would have been possible using standard methods. It also proved to raise overall aspirations of the students and made them more likely to consider Westminster Business School for their degree.
Little, big and vast steps towards open education
Presentation at DEE 2017,In September 2007, the open education movement promised a “global revolution” in learning and teaching. A decade on, the changes in academia may seem less than Earth-shattering, but the world of online discussion and informal learning has been transformed. Meanwhile, “open” movements have become more mainstream in other fields, such as open access and open data. This session looks at the present and future of open education and the implications for universities.
- Powerpoint slides from this presentation
- "Open Educational Resources in Economics" draft chapter in Handbook
The improved art of flipping: Moving towards better teaching, learning and research potential in a macroeconomics flipped class
Presentation at DEE 2017,They started calling us the video class. More generally referred to as "flipped classes". To research students’ access to and use of videos, we needed to extract, compile and analyse data (logs and questionnaires) from the Learning Management System. Due to the design of the teaching and learning innovation (TLI) project, unforeseen data and issues were encountered. This paper reports on the process of our research of students’ access to and use of videos, identifies the data and issues encountered and suggests design modifications in setting up the TLI for better research potential. Critical analyses of the outcomes and process of discipline specific learning and teaching (also in Economics) has produced a growing literature on the scholarship thereof to draw from. Educational Design Research provides a framework for this “study in practice” research and emphasizes the importance of asking the right research questions before and after implementing a TLI. Using the flipped introductory macroeconomics class [2015 (n=211)] as case study we discuss the research process followed to report on the activity of students accessing videos [available to both the flipped class and a control group (n= 1692)]. Data problems arose due to the inability of linking logs on video usage to student information. We show the importance of the correct design of a TLI within an Educational Design Research paradigm and suggest design modifications that will help future innovations (in whatever context) to design not with only teaching and learning success as goal, but also optimal research potential.
Is Lecture Capture benefiting (all) HE students? An Empirical investigation
Presentation at DEE 2017,The arguments for and against lecture capture have been going for some time and the debate is far from being settled either way. Most of the existing research about the impact of lecture capture on student attainment seems to show negligible or little effects while examples of a negative relationship between lecture capture and learning outcomes abound. The main purpose of this study is to add to the existing literature by conducting a large scale investigation (involving 90 modules and several hundreds of Economics and other Business School students at a UK University) on whether lecture capture improves student performance. A secondary objective is to determine whether (i) some groups of students benefit from lecture capture more than others (e.g. International students, high performing students, etc) and (ii) whether lecture capture can lead to differing benefits for students in different subjects (e.g. mathematical subjects versus discursive subjects).
The impact of online message boards on student outcomes
Presentation at DEE 2017,With the growth of student numbers in undergraduate study, universities are increasingly using online message boards to allow for easy communication between student and teacher, and to allow peer to peer instruction; in addition, message boards allow for positive externalities for both staff and students, as when one student asks a question, this provides an answer for all students, and means that the instructor only need answer the question once. This paper examines the impact of the introduction of the Piazza online message board for a first year mathematics and statistical methods unit for economists. The same students are educated in two successive units (MSM1 and MSM2). The message board software was introduced in the second of these units (MSM2), with support offered only by statistics teachers (but students were free to ask questions of each other). Only 50% of students signed up for using the Piazza message boards, allowing for a difference in difference analysis; the results suggest that students who signed up for the Piazza message board gained no significant improvement in their statistics score compared with students who did not sign up. However, a strong, statistically significant effect is identified in the mathematics part of the unit for those who signed up, suggesting that peer instruction is more powerful for improving outcomes than teacher instruction. Whilst sign-up for Piazza may be non-random, it is likely that this is exogenous from the progress that students make. The results are backed up by student questionnaires, examining the mechanisms through which this improvement occurs.
