Teaching Materials
My
teaching materials including syllabi, problem sets, and exams are contained
in Appendices 1 through 5. The
syllabi for ECO 235 and 335 have been improved each year as shown in Appendix
1 and 2. I now give an extra exam earlier in the semester,
make explicit reference to the class website and have a "Keys to
Success" section to guide students on how to do well in the course. Because the field of telecommunications is
so dynamic, I have added new material in ECO 235 on the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 and Internet Economics, covering almost half of the course
material. Because of student feedback,
I have added new material in ECO 335 that addresses the specific industries
of electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications.
As
mentioned earlier, ECO 436 has been changed from a telecommunications
course to include electricity and natural gas as well.
The different syllabi, problem sets and exams are contained in
Appendix 5. Since I have only taught ECO 320 (Appendix 3) and ECO 435
(Appendix 4) once, only one set of materials is available.
Printouts
of the website materials for all the courses are contained in Appendix
6. The "What's New" section shows the
active nature of the websites. I
try to post announcements and new materials at least weekly. The website is the most effective way to provide my lecture notes
which enable students to focus on understanding concepts rather than copying
definitions word-for-word. Although
problem sets are posted on the web sites mostly for students who miss
class, answer keys are also posted to reinforce the correct responses
to the questions that are reviewed in class.
Links to web resources are provided as a guide to students for
supplementary materials for each class.
Ungraded student papers are posted on the website for other students
to see. I believe this “public” scrutiny gives the students an extra incentive
to do their best work.
Materials
for the in-class simulation exercise which I developed for ECO 320 are
contained in Appendix 7. I developed
the numerical exercise from scratch and provided instruction sheets and
“pricing” sheets to each group. At
the end of the simulation, I led a class discussion of what happened and
why it happened. I found this
to be a great learning tool for the whole class.
Appendix
9 contains a small sample of students’ work including papers, exams, and
presentations.
Links
Copyright © 2004 David G. Loomis
URL: http://www.ilstu.edu/~dloomis/