This course provides a strong foundation in microeconomic theory, whether preparing for further study in economics, the social sciences, business, or other disciplines. Designed to help students think like economists, course materials use engaging, real-world examples to explore how individuals and firms make economic choices. Key topics include supply and demand, elasticity, utility, production and costs, and an analysis of types of markets: perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly. Content coverage also includes public goods and externalities, labor markets, income distribution, globalization and trade, and exchange rates and international finance. An orientation module helps students refresh skills around modeling, graphing, and algebra for economic problem-solving.

This course, based on OpenStax Principles of Economics, was developed 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.