DD209 Running The Economy : Course Review

Time for the DD209 Running the Economy course review.

Firstly, I really enjoyed this course and I think I did learn a great deal about economics. Certainly, headlines about interest rate changes, the dangers of inflation and the problems of world trade and tariff all make a lot more sense now. I would recommend this course to anybody with an interest in economics and it will improve as they iron out the wrinkles.

As the first run of a new course there were always going to be good points and bad points.

The good thing was that the material is pretty topical and was written specifically to look at the 2008 recession, so interesting from that point of view, as the previous course was apparently still talking about the end of boom and bust.

The downside was there were many errors in the course books and the website, and the course team seemed slow or disinterested in fixing these or communicating them. It should have been absolutely instantaneous that when they found an error they fixed it on the website or issued errata information, but the first communication we got on errata on Book 1 was the day we started Book 2 (?) and there are still further errors discovered in the book that haven't been communicated. This should be better for future courses, but maybe not the next one :-(

However, having said that I thought the online tutorials were excellent, a really good additional teaching environment and experience and a real enhancement to just reading the book. In fact unlike A222 or DD203 if you miss out on the online tutorials you miss out on a great deal of the course.

The face to face tutorials were the same as ever, poorly attended and of questionable academic value, really more of a social event and a chance to ensure that your tutor actually exists and is human. The way the OU is moving virtual reality tutors can only be a couple of years away.

There were also some online tutorials and the web conference system they used with this course is so much better than the Eluminate nightmare used with A222.

There was a Tutor Group Online Forum which was pretty moribund, to be honest the Facebook group galvanised and organised by Sheona was a far better forum for support, help and advice and one of the few groups I have seen in which there was a real feeling of support and a complete lack of friction or one-upmanship.

If I take the course TMA by TMA, Part by Part.


Part 1 -TMA 1: The crisis of 2008
This was a fairly good start to the course, quickly into important terms like GDP, the crisis, circular flow diagrams, public sector deficits and loads of graphs and tables.

The TMA at the end was a fairly short one broken into separate questions worth only 7% of overall score. It was probably of more value to the tutor than to you, as it would have let the tutor see what sort of level you were coming in at in terms of understanding the calculations and maths.


Part 2 - TMA2, iCMA41: Keynes and unemployment
Spent a good part of the first week trying to work out the iCMA numbering system and failing - why is it iCMA41?

Proper economic theories by somebody you have head of, with loads of graphs, tables and formula. Consumption, propensity to spend, Aggregate Demand, IS curves, fiscal and monetary policy, a really meaty 4 chapters with good supportive online activities.

If you have not done much maths or are not confident with graphs and simple algebra, I would strongly suggest some pre-study. Nothing too onerous, the main problem formula is on this blog somewhere if you can do that you are laughing. And if you understand the differences between upward and downward sloping lines and the effect that has on altering the vertical value then again this will be easy.

The TMA is a big 15%, and 1600 word essay. The iCMA is a open book online test which you can do over the whole 4 weeks and should be 7% in the bag, but careless mistakes cost points.


Part 3 - TMA 3, iCMA42: When Inflation Matters
For me this was the most interesting part of the course, and I really enjoyed seeing how the previous MEC, AG and IS curves worked with the Phillips curve to model inflation and plan actions to combat inflation. There was also a week online describing economics data which was a bit neither here nor there. Of the 4 chapters, the first three were really full and new stuff and the 4th was a bit of a recap.

The TMA was worth 20% but only because there was a very odd requirement to interface with the course tutor forum which was worth 5%, so the essay was just worth the normal 15%. The interface with the forum, in my experience, was not entered into with any sot of enthusiasm by anybody and the bare minimum was done to achieve the requirements of the TMA.


Part 4 - TMA4, iCMA43: Regulating Markets, promoting growth
This section and section 5 were micro economic modules.

Again this was very interesting with the supply and demand curves, and the problems of price capping or minimum wages. It was however quite complicated with the long run cost curves, and although it all made sense at the time, I didn't feel this was worth taking into the exam - a mistake as it turned out.

There was again a 1600 word TMA worth 15%, and another iCMA worth 7%.


Part 5 - TMA5, iCMA44: Global inequity in human well-being
This part was very interesting, especially global trade, absolute and comparative advantage and game theory. There was quite a lot of text (2 chapters) given over to game theory which seemed too much to me. All in all this was a big section in which they seemed cram everything they couldn't get in anywhere else.

There the now standard 1600 word TMA worth 15%, and another iCMA worth 7%.


Amount of Time Required
This course did require quite a lot of study, especially during the TMA weeks, probably 7 - 10 hrs a week, so the Christmas, Easter breaks plus the odd study week was really useful.


Continuous Assessment
So as far as the assessments go,
4 x1600 word essays at 15% each = 60%
4 x iCMA online tests at 7% = 28%
1 x short TMA essay at 7 % = 7%
1 x online interactive forum thing at 5 % = 5%

So, the traditional and more academically rigorous essays were only worth 60% of the mark, the rest was pretty poor and everyone should be getting pretty close to 30 to 35% out of the possible 40%, which makes the 40% overall pass mark pretty redundant.


Final Exam
The final exam, was for me, just do-able in 3 hours. Ideally another 30 minutes would have helped enormously. The questions were exactly what was expected for Parts 1 and Part 2 List A, but not at all expected for Part 2 List B. I guess this is the same as for DD203 which my tutor for that course said they made a "real pig's ear" of the first exam in an effort to ensure it was difficult enough and went a bit overboard.

If this exam hasn't been set at the appropriate level the bell curve of results will show that and hopefully we can all be edged a bit higher in the results.



So that is that until the results come out, then DD309 in October.