ECO 500: Fundamentals of Micro and Macroeconomic Hi, My name is Gerald Geile and I'll be teaching the ECO 500 online course Fundamentals of Micro and Macroeconomics. ECO 500 is designed primarily for graduate students who either didn't have Principles of Economics as an undergraduate or perhaps may have had it long time ago and need a little refresher. As far as what we're studying during the semester, since ECO 500 is designed to replace the traditional two-semester micro macroeconomical principles courses, it's almost like two-in-one. Well, maybe not really two-in-one. The regular macro principle micro principle actually have a lot of overlap-a number of topics are repeated in both courses. And since we won't have to duplicate those topics, maybe it's more like one and a half classes in one. Yah, it'll be kind of fast-paced but nothing you can't handle. Content-wise, most of what we're studying is contained in the textbook. Of course the way we study-what you're listening to a professor, what you're reading in a book, what you're watching in a video, the economic principles don't change. And so what we'll study is much as same as what we would study in a traditional classroom setting. But of course you're not coming to class. And so you might think of this more like an independent study where you're be reading the textbook, learning the topics on your own and then occasionally we'll have testing. More or less traditional tests, timed exams on particular days, the schedule will be put up to see if you've learned, if you remember the topics. But you're not on your own. It's not an independent study. If you have questions, you can always contact me, telephone or e-mail, and I'll help you out. We can help each other-asking questions of people in the class, offering comments on the discussion board function provided with the Blackboard system. In addition to the basic topics in the textbook, I'll also ask you to submit regular essays over articles that you read in the Wall Street Journal. By reading Wall Street Journal, you'll be able to see how the theoretical topics that we learned in the textbook or we talked about in the discussion board actually show up in real world events. And by connecting the economic theory to actual events that you read in the news, I think economics will become much more real for you. You'll see how we're really explaining things that happen in the world. So as far as your grade, as far as your requirements, primarily studying from the textbook, participating in the discussion board, taking tests, and submitting the short weekly essays. OK, I might think of a few other things to throw in here and there, but I think you'll learn something and I think you'll enjoy the course and let's have fun. |