INCORPORATING AND ASSESSING RISK ANALYSIS IN UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING ECONOMY COURSES

As spreadsheets have become commonplace in the teaching of engineering economics, it is time to adjust our curriculums to include more advanced material. Specifically, financial mathematics calculations can be reduced to teaching the meaning of ((P/F,i,N)) and all other calculations can be eliminated, as they are unnecessary with the use of spreadsheets. Eliminating this material will allow more time to focus on tools for making good financial investment decisions, such as cash flow estimation, risk analysis and multi-attribute decision analysis. We report on how this material can be covered in a large-class setting, including how it can be examined. Our data suggests that spreadsheets must be incorporated into quizzes and or examinations in order to assess student abilities in these areas. Thus, while our teaching has evolved to include spreadsheets, so must our examination procedures.