ECONOMICS - WINECON - A NEW-GENERATION COMPUTER PACKAGE FOR INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS

In October 1992 the U.K. Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCs) provided grants totalling pound 22.5 million (approx. $34 million)(1) for the development of technology-based learning materials for undergraduate education through the Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP). Under this initiative a consortium of economics departments was granted pound 640 thousand (approx. $1 million) funding to produce a computer-based learning package for teaching introductory economics. This program, called WinEcon, will be provided free of charge to all U.K. higher-education economics departments in September 1995 and will be the first such package to cover the whole syllabus for first-year courses in economics. The consortium is committed to sharing the outcomes of its work with colleagues in other countries. In particular the consortium plans to develop a U.S. version of the software in collaboration with American coauthors. In this paper we describe the approach that the consortium has adopted in the development of WinEcon, its features and uses, as well as an assessment of its likely impact on student learning.