Theme 3: Teaching Economics Using Excel

We ran a virtual symposium on online teaching and learning over a series of Mondays in June, with the final theme in September. This is the third of four themes.

This session explored the significant and often unused potential of Excel in providing asynchronous resources for online economics teaching. The 22 June live session was in two parts:

• the use of Excel as a simulation tool in teaching economic theory;
• the benefits of using Excel to teach data-based subjects in comparison to more specialised tools such as Stata or R.

For this session, we used a range of technologies/tools that you can use in your own teaching:

• Session run over Zoom and live-streamed on YouTube
• Collaborative word documents produced in Google Docs
• Survey designed on Microsoft Forms (can also use Google Forms or Survey Monkey)

Part 1: Using Simulations in Excel in Teaching Economics

Presenters: Prof Wendy Carlin (UCL, The CORE Team); Dr Annika Johnson (Bristol), Prof Humberto Barreto (DePauw University);
Chairs: Prof Alvin Birdi (Bristol, EN), Dr Christian Spielman (Bristol, EN), Dr Stefania Paredes Fuentes (Warwick, EN)

Resources for this part:

Humberto Barreto:
Introductory video

• “Intermediate Microeconomics with Microsoft Excel” (PDF) - Corresponding workbooks
• Video from the symposium: 10:49 onwards

Annika Johnson (video from 5:08):

• “Profit Maximising with Isoprofits: An Excel Simulator” (XLSX)

Wendy Carlin (video from 18:59):

• "Using an Excel simulator in teaching macroeconomics" (PPTX)

Part 2: Using Excel for Teaching Data-Based Subjects

Presenters: Dr Lory Barile (Warwick), Dr Tim Burnett (Warwick/Aston Business School), Dr Eileen Tipoe (Oxford)
Chairs: Prof Alvin Birdi (Bristol, EN), Dr Christian Spielman (Bristol, EN), Dr Stefania Paredes Fuentes (Warwick, EN)

Resources for this part:

Lory Barile: (video from 1:06:42)

• Using Excel in Economics teaching: workbooks (with intro)
  • Workbook Example 1: histogram and cumulative frequency distribution (XLSX)
  • Workbook Example 2: the Central Limit Theorem (XLSX)
• “Designing a statistics/econometrics assessment using Excel" (case study)

Tim Burnett (video from 1:15:20):

• “Do Not Feed The ducks! Using self-guided data exploration in Excel to facilitate discovery, promote engagement, build skills, and break the cycle of student dependence“
• Workbook Example 1

Eileen Tipoe (video from 1:21:53):

• Overview of Doing Economics

Other material to read

The Economics Network website provides a wide range of resources you may find useful for teaching. We highlight a few here:

• Excel in Economics Teaching
• Low cost, low tech online simulations with Excel
• Student handouts on Using excel in Economics Projects
• Worksheets and Projects in Intermediate Microeconomics
• Deal or No Deal – An Expected Value Game with Excel
• Creating Spreadsheets for use in Teaching: Examples
• A Trade War Simulation/Experiment in Excel