Facilitating the use of WinEcon for interactive learning
WinEcon is a toolbook based interactive learning package available to higher education institutions containing learning materials for Economics. The objective of the project was to get students and lecturers to engage more with the software and exploit the benefit that such a package offers.
The project team worked with 18 universities (22 modules and 19 lecturers) who subscribed to WinEcon, and found that in general there was a very low adoption and use of WinEcon amongst lecturers at institutions who subscribe to it, generally used as an add on resource.
This was partly due to the 'not invented here' syndrome and that lecturers thought it would take too long to learn, and if they did spend the time learning it, then this time may well be wasted because they did not know how useful the learning materials would be to them, and were not sure that students would actually use them.
The project team trained seven people, mainly postgraduate students from English universities to communicate the benefits of WinEcon.
The project identified that there were many technical barriers to implementation, and that fear of such problems was a large factor in discouraging participation. The team therefore encouraged WinEcon Consortium to improve their product by making linking easier and improving the user interface. The team also provided educational material on setting up links to WinEcon.
They arranged for the product to be made available at more attractive cost to students.
The dissemination model used, provided a model for other activities.
There was an unanticipated need for a dedicated member of staff to maintain the project.
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