Buffalo State College
Course Title: The Economic System
Contact: Karen O'Quinn
Buffalo State College plans to redesign its introductory economics course for non-majors, The Economic System. During the 2001-2006 period, the course enrolled a total of 4041 students, making it the ninth highest enrolled course at the college. Structured in a traditional lecture format, the course enrolls ~500 students annually and typically experiences a 15% DFW rate.
The traditional course presents an increasing strain on the Economics and Finance Department’s resources. The department has grown considerably over the past five years, doubling the number of majors and adding a successful new graduate program. Thus their ability to offer non-major courses and meet student demand is declining. The redesign will allow the department to serve more students with fewer faculty resources, while maintaining high quality instruction.
Using the Replacement Model, the economics course will be redesigned in two phases. Phase I will pilot a hybrid section that will reduce formal class meetings by 50% to one meeting each week. This class meeting will be a combination of lectures, question and answer sessions, previewing materials and highlighting key concepts. The second class meeting will be replaced with online class discussions in groups of ~15 conducted by trained undergraduate learning assistants (ULAs). In Phase II, the course will be offered in one large, 240-student section with additional online learning materials replacing 11 of the 15 face-to-face meetings. The four remaining class meetings will be scheduled over the semester, one at the beginning, two in the middle of the semester and one at the end.
When fully implemented, the redesigned course will move from a traditional lecture format to a learner-centered, active-learning mode, enhancing course quality and improving student learning outcomes. The 15-student learning teams will work collaboratively on assignments. Group discussions and assignments will be actively monitored, and students will receive individualized assistance from the instructor and the ULAs both online and during office hours. Online quizzes will also provide immediate feedback to students.
The impact of the course redesign on student learning outcomes will be assessed using common examinations. In Phase I, performance data from parallel sections, one redesigned section (~120 students) and one traditional section (~120 students) will be compared. The Phase II full implementation assessment plan, using the same common examination, will compare the one large redesigned section (~240 students) to the Phase I sections.
The redesigned course will reduce the cost of instruction by reducing the number of sections from two per semester to one, and increasing section size from ~ 120 to ~240 students. The number of full-time faculty will be decreased from two to one each semester. These actions will decrease the cost-per-student from $94 to $51, a savings of 46%. The growth of Buffalo State’s graduate program has placed pressure upon the department to add more graduate courses, and the redesign will allow the department to schedule an additional graduate section.
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