General:

First, I read through the whole course. This course discusses the importance of economics in everyday life and the need for individuals to understand economic principles to make informed decisions. it also describes two books that comprehensively overview economic principles and their application in real-world scenarios. I choose this because in our group, the topic of interactive learning is: personal finance, which shares many similar concepts. Therefore, it can be used as a reference for our topic.

Theory design and context:

I see that the theory used is the constructivist learning theory. you mentioned, “by engaging in these experiences and reflecting on them. Learners can construct their own understanding of the concept of opportunity cost and its applications in daily life.”. so, to help students understand the concept of opportunity cost, it is important to use real-life scenarios and examples that they can relate to. This can help make the learning experience more engaging and relevant. moreover, providing more examples will be great. While the example of a first-year university student deciding between attending a party or studying for an exam is useful, providing additional scenarios would reinforce the application of opportunity cost in daily life. This could include scenarios related to purchasing decisions, time management, or career choices (examples from our task: real-life case studies: saving 400 dollars to buy one headphone).

Direct instruction is a good idea, and I think our group will use the same idea. So the constructivist learning theory emphasizes experiential learning and reflection, and the direct instruction approach focuses on explicit instruction and practice. Combining them together makes students work smarter, not harder.

Outline:

This is actually the best part which drags my eyes to it at first, and I’m sure I will discuss it with my group members and use a similar outline to improve our task. for the feedback section, One-on-one communication with students through their homework might not be very efficient. My suggestion is that provide short feedback for homework and quizzes, yet one on one feedback for tasks like the final projects or final essays. Besides that, it is great that there is a clear task for each topic (very specific) which help students a lot. For the assessment, the combination of those methods is great, but I saw in the article that this course is aimed at beginners, so maybe the Financial Institution Analysis is kind of beyond the scope of the course.

Overall, it is a great course, and I definitely learn a lot from your work. I will apply some of the great concepts to our works as well!