ECON1401: Economic Perspectives

Oral Presentation - 15%. A nice short 3-minute long video of you talking about an economic issue to people who don't understand economics.

Lecture and Tutorial Participation - 20%. 6% from feedback given to students on their oral presentation, 6% from completing short quizzes in lectures, 4% for participation in tutorials (showing up and doing fun activities that were surprisingly educational), 2% for submitting your course journal throughout the term, 2% for participation in the two tutorial debates. Honestly fairly easy stuff to get, as long as you just show up and keep up with the work it's an easy 18/20.

Written Essay - 45%. You have to analyse one of four given economic issues facing Australia from the perspective of two economic thinkers, and then suggest ways to combat this. 4,000 words total. Interesting topics, but would've been much better as two separate essays, instead of one large one.

Course Journal (Reflections) - 20%. This is where the course fails the most. Each week you're given a set of readings, and to ensure that you've actually read them you're required to write about your reactions to them in a course journal. 500 words for every ~30 pages you read, along with 500 words on each week's lecture and tutorial content. 10,000 words total. Seems ok right? Only 1,000 words a week? No. Not at all. There are two weeks where there were no classes, three weeks with no readings, so in reality, it's closer to 1,500 words a week. That's before you realise that there are weeks where you just don't learn anything at all. I spent hours just trying to make up my reactions to course content. It needs to be changed to only require reflections on readings.

ECON1101

Way too much to handle at times, especially for a first-year course. I spent so much time just trying to extend my reflection to reach the word count, which felt like a waste of time when it only made up 20% of my final grade. The assessments need to be urgently rebalanced, a sentiment felt by many others doing this course this term.

2 x 1.5 hour lecture per week. 1 x 1.5 hour tutorial per week.

1/5 Content. 4.5/5 Assessments. The content is very simple, you don't really need to "learn" any of it, just be awake enough in class to get a broad understanding of the topics. The assessments are nuts. 10k+ words for reflections is way overkill, could have easily been 7,500 and we would've gotten the same out of it. 10k+ is just begging for students to make up their own reactions, needlessly extend their response, and was an unnecessary amount of stress. The essay was alright, but really was just two essays submitted at the same time. I would've much preferred how the essay portion was handled in previous years as two different submissions, instead of one final one. It's not difficult, it's just a lot of things to balance all at once, and I easily spent twice as much time on this subject as my other two combined.

Yes.

Gigi Foster, 3.5/5. Ok lecturing, but she dedicated a half-hour of every class to just discussing economic issues which was good fun, especially when there were a few people all debating over a topic.

Nalini Prasad, 3/5. Decent lecturer, but very limited by the course content. Similar to ACCT1501, there's only so much you can do to make this interesting.

Full slides given out, only really useful to reference when writing your reflections though.

1/5. Soley for the assessments.

2021/T1

88 HD.