ECON 645 is a semester long course focusing on giving students a foundation to understand the economics of international trade and international finance. This course serves as the first course for two separate advanced theory courses. This course was taught Spring of 2019 and met once a week for 3 hours. This meant I needed to design the course such that students would not lose the knowledge that they gained in between each week’s lecture. In these classes the last 30 minutes was reserved for an end of the day “group work” highlighting a particular set of skills that would be needed to complete the upcoming homework assignment. Additionally, students were expected to read the chapter corresponding to that week’s lecture. To ensure students both completed the reading and had some grasp of the key topics, they completed an online quiz prior to coming to class. Topics covered included: basic trade models under perfect competition, simple exchange rate models, and input flow models across countries.
Students were assessed via pre-class quizzes, homework assignments, and exams. These were all written to help gauge students’ conceptual understanding of the course material, as well as demonstrate their thought process as they grapple with theoretical economic topics. The end of the day activities also served to help students grow their meta-cognitive skills by identifying what I think is important and gauging how well they’ve learned the topic.
My goal for this class is to equip students with knowledge of the core theories of international economics to guide their thoughts in making conclusions on core political-economic questions regarding international trade and financial markets.