Economics 270:

Economics 270 Introductory Page

Course Topics

Syllabus

Economics 270 Home Page (password required)

Economics Online:

Economics Online at BCC

Is an online economics course for you?

Hardware/software requirements and recommendations

Papers for Online Economics Courses

Online Resources for Economics Students

Electronic Reserve Desk for Online Economics (password required)

Economics of Emerging Technologies Research Guide

Human Society and the Global Economy

Gallery of Economists

Other Online Economics Courses:

Economics 100: Survey of Economics

Economics 200: Principles of Macroeconomics

Economics 201: Principles of Microeconomics

Other Links:

Instructor's Home Page

Email Instructor

Distance Education Office (Registration Information)

The Syllabus is a Contract

Course Materials

Required Texts

Christopher Freeman and Luc Soete. The Economics of Industrial Innovation. Third Edition. MIT Press, 1997.

Kevin Kelly. New Rules for the New Economy. Viking Press, 1998.

Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian. Information Rules. Harvard Business School Press, 1998.



These books are available at the BCC bookstore. Or they can be ordered from:

Other Assigned Reading

Throughout the course articles may be assigned from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week, The Economist, Wired, Atlantic and other sources. Some of these publications maintain online archives that are available to the public -- and the assignment will include a direct link to the assigned article. For other articles, electronic copies will be available at the Electronic Reserve Desk for Online Economics. Registered students will receive a password which is required for access to the electronic reserve desk.

Other assigned reading may include government documents, company reports, and other materials that will be available on the Web.

Features of Online Economics

Course Content

This is where you find the main reading assignments and the weekly discussion topics. Course material is organized by numbered topics. We usually will cover one topic per week. While accessing the course material, you can also click on the "My Notes" icon to take notes of your own.

Bulletin Board

This is where you ask questions and post comments. You should check this daily, as this is also where the instructor will post additional reading assignments and other items. There is a menu bar to the left of the bulletin board. When you click on Forum you will be able to select the appropriate forum for the assignment. There will be a forum (Topic #1, etc.) for each weekly topic. There is also a General Questions/Comments forum for questions or comments that are not related to the weekly topic.

Note: While you can enter your comments, questions, etc., directly into a bulletin board message, you will be preparing longer items -- certainly your paper and probably some other materials -- on a word processor and pasting the material into the bulletin board. Do not post anything as an attachment.

When the bulletin board logo is surrounded by green rays it indicates that there are new materials there that you have not yet read. The same applies to the mail logo and many of the other logos.

Private Mail

This is for sending and receiving email. If you want to send a message to the instructor or to another student use the "private mail" facility. This is also where you will receive email from the instructor -- the grade and notes on your papers, for example. When you want to communicate with everyone in the class, use the bulletin board; when you want to communicate with the instructor or another student use the private mail. This is a handy feature -- if you are travelling you just need to get to a computer with an internet connection. As long as you have the course URL and your passwords, you can get and send your course-related email.

Note: Use the course email facility for all email communications with the instructor during the quarter. This will assure that the instructor knows it is from a student in this particular course. Your instructor gets a lot of junk email via his regular email address and messages sent to him there may inadvertently get deleted without ever being opened. Only use the instructor's regular email address (kitaylor@bcc.ctc.edu) before you get your course password and/or after the course ends -- and when you do, always put the course number and the quarter in the subject line (e. g., Econ 270, Spring 00). Email messages sent to the instructor via his kitaylor@bcc.ctc.edu address with missing or unclear subject lines will be deleted without being opened.

Password

All students initially get the same Economics 270 Home Page password -- so you will need to pick a password of your own and change it. But don't lose it! Note: You cannot change the password to the Electronic Reserve Desk.

Electronic Reserve Desk

This is the electronic version of the reserve desk at the college library. Often, I will be able to make a direct link to a reading assignment. Wired and the Atlantic, for example, keep archives of their past editions that are available without paying any fees. But many assigned and/or recommended articles are from other sources that are either not accessible without a paid subscription or are only available briefly. In those cases, I will put a copy of the article in the electronic reserve file. These articles are all covered by copyrights. You may read them onscreen, print one copy for yourself, or make one electronic copy for yourself -- but you may not make multiple copies, post them on a server, or email them to others. Note that the links for these assignments take you to the electronic reserve desk, then you have to find the particular article. That is one more step than most of us would like, but is required by copyright law.

Economics Resources on the Internet

This is a partially-annotated guide to resources that are available online. It is constantly evolving.

Economics of Emerging Technologies Research Guide

This is a new web page which is being designed specifically for this course. It will be evolving throughout the quarter. There is very little there as of yet.

A Typical Week:

• Monday -- The notes, reading assignments, and discussion topics for that topic will be available in the Course Content section. For Spring Quarter 2000 there is a BCC Monday holiday on the Mondays of Week 10 (May 29). For that week the notes and assignments will be posted on Tuesday.
  
  
• Wednesday -- I will look over your comments, questions, etc. on the previous week's topic to determine whether you get participation credit for that week or not. Note: I will only look in the appropriate forum on the bulletin board (e.g., the Topic 5 forum for your particpation on Topic 5 issues). So if you post things in the wrong forum you will not get credit for them.
  
  
• Monday through Friday -- I usually check the bulletin board and course email for each online course two or three times a day. Sometimes I will answer questions on the bulletin board right away; sometimes I will wait to see if another student answers them. Any additional assigned and/or recommended reading will be posted in the forum for that week's topic.
  
  

How to Succeed in Economics 270 Online

• 'Attend' class daily by reading the new postings on the bulletin board.
  
  
• Read the assigned reading.
  
  
• Ask lots of questions, make comments, remark on links between the theory you are learning and what you have found in the news media. That is one of the things that the bulletin board is for. Forty percent of your course grade will be based on class participation via the bulletin board. Each week -- starting with the second week -- you will get either credit or no credit for your class participation that week. The quality of your questions and comments is more important than the quantity.
  
  
• Start thinking about a term paper topic from Week 2. Use the bulletin board to explore various ideas for topics. Once your topic has been approved, post your notes, ideads, and sources on the bulletin board so that the instructor and other students can make suggestions. Write the term paper. See Papers for Online Economics Courses. The finished paper should be from 3500-5000 words in length.

Grades

Your grade for the course will be based on the weekly participation credits and the paper. Weekly participation will be graded as either credit or no credit. Each weekly credit will make up 5% of the course grade -- for up to 8 weeks, or 40% of the course grade in all -- so you can miss one week of class participation. Partiocipation during the first week is not graded.

The term paper will make up 60% of your course grade. This will be broken into three parts: your paper proposal/outline (10%); your reading/research notes (20%); and the final paper (30%).

The grading scale for this course is strictly as follows:

Students who fail to complete the course but do not withdraw by the deadline will receive an F for the course.

Students caught cheating on any item will receive an F for the entire course: See BCC Social Science Division Policies.

• Back Up All Your Work: Blessed are the pessimists for they hath made back-ups. Veteran computer-users do this as a matter of course. Keep a backup of all your work somewhere other than in your computer's hard drive.
  
  
• Have a 'Crash' Plan: Find another computer -- with an internet connection -- that you can use temporarily if something happens to your regular computer.
  
  
• Do Everything Early: Deadlines are the latest that you can turn something in and get credit for it. There is nothing to prevent you from posting your assignments early. Everything in this course is structured to allow a minimum of 48 hours for posting an assignment.
  
  
• Excuses, Excuses: Remember, I've heard them all, so don't give me any excuse that you wouldn't give your employer or the IRS. If you do not meet the class participation deadlines for one week, that will the be the week that is left out of your final grade.