This macroeconomics course prepares students to think like economists and analyze decisions made by individuals, businesses, and governments. Students will learn about the key macroeconomic indicators of GDP, unemployment, and inflation, then apply these concepts to analyze economic behavior. Content coverage includes choice and scarcity; supply and demand; elasticity; applications of supply and demand; elasticity; gdp and economic growth; unemployment and inflation; the aggregate demand-aggregate supply model; Keynesian economics and neoclassical economics; the income-expenditure model; fiscal policy; money and banking; monetary policy; policy applications; globalization and trade; exchange rates and international finance.

This course, based on OpenStax Principles of Economics, includes additional significant contributions by the Lumen Learning team and Steve Greenlaw, Clark Aldrich, Jennifer Pakula, Veronika Dolar, Michael Fusillo, Sophie Haci, Shawn Kilpatrick, and Melissa Walker.

Course Improvements

Several topics proved to be consistently difficult for the thousands of students who took a Waymaker Economics course during Fall 2017. We have made specific data-driven improvements to address these difficult topics, as well as general improvements to the course as a whole:

• Improved course organization
• Try It embedded practice questions
• “Learn By Doing” pages for even more practice
• “Watch It” embedded videos that explain and reiterate key concepts throughout the course
• Interactives that explain complicated graphs in a step-by-step process
• Discussions and Assignments for every module
• Problem Sets for every module

For more information on these improvements, please visit the About this Course page.

Lumen OER courses apply learning science to engage students and better support the learning process. Lumen materials aim to deliver an active learning experience. They include text, images, videos, assessments, directed feedback, practice questions, simulations, and other interactives that invite students to apply their knowledge, improve their understanding, and perform better. Term over term, Lumen’s Waymaker courseware makes it possible to use learning data to identify where content improvements are needed. We work collaboratively with faculty and subject matter experts to develop and test iterative, continuous improvements aimed at increasing efficacy and learning.