Using The Interactive Graphic Syllabus In The Teaching Of Economics

Abstract

Syllabus is essentially a concise outline of a course of study, and conventionally a text document. In the past few decades, however, two novel variations of syllabus have emerged, namely “the Graphic Syllabus” and “the Interactive Syllabus”. Each of these two variations of syllabus has its own special advantages. The present paper argues that there could be devised a new combined version of the two mentioned variations, called “the Interactive Graphic Syllabus”, which can potentially bring us the advantages of both at the same time. Specifically, using a well-designed Interactive Graphic syllabus can bring about many advantages such as clarifying complex relationships; causing a better retention; needing less cognitive energy for interpretation; helping instructors identify any snags in their course organization; capability of being integrated easily into a course management system; appealing to many of learning styles and engaging students with different learning styles.  In addition to the introduction of the notion of the Interactive Graphic Syllabus, in order to put this idea into action in the context of economics, the present paper takes advantage of the visual “big picture” of intermediate macroeconomics that has already been proposed by Moosavian (2016a). The present paper describes a web-page that contains a web-based interactive graphic of the aforementioned macroeconomics visual “big picture”. It is argued that this graphic can be used as a cyber-resource to technologically support the above-mentioned visual “big picture”, which comprises twenty-seven interrelated macroeconomic diagrams, and gives some details on the types of their relationships. Furthermore, it provides numerous internet links to other relevant instructional resources offered by well-known universities, allowing the students to somehow zoom in the macroeconomics “big picture”. Moreover, this web-page provides roughly one hundred links to short instructional videos. More interestingly, it responds interactively, if one hovers over a particular diagram, by highlighting the routes through which the final macroeconomic general equilibrium is affected by any change in that particular diagram. The interactive graphic went online on 10/30/2015 at the URL http://zeytoonnejad.com/macrobigpic.aspx and is still under minor modification.