Browsing by Subject "economic education"

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    A Multivariate Evaluation of Mainstream and Academic Development Courses in First-year Microeconomics
    (2007) Edwards, L J; Smith, L
    This paper analyses the impact of the University of Cape Town's first-year microeconomics academic development course on performance in examinations. The paper makes two advances to existing empirical literature in this area. Firstly, we compare performance with a control group drawn from the mainstream economic course. Secondly, we evaluate performance in subsequent courses in first-year macroeconomics and second-year microeconomics. The results suggest that the academic development course has a major impact on students’ performance in the structured/essay questions, relative to the control group, in first- and second-year microeconomics, and for the multiple-choice questions in first-year macroeconomics. Matriculation results, mathematics, English first language, physical science and gender are also important determinants of performance.
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    An analysis of the impact of pedagogic interventions in first-year academic development and mainstream courses in microeconomics
    (Wiley, 2009) Smith, Leonard C
    This paper analyses the impact of pedagogic interventions in first-year academic development and mainstream courses in microeconomics on students' performance in the final examination. The data for six cohorts, covering the years 1999 and 2001-2005, are pooled, and the Heckman two-part procedure is used to account for those students who started the course but did not write the final examination. The results suggest that the pedagogic interventions have a positive impact on the performance of academic development students relative to the mainstream cohort and on the performance of mainstream students.
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    Measuring the impact of educational interventions on the academic performance of academic development students in second-year microeconomics
    (Wiley, 2012) Smith, Leonard C; Ranchhod, Vimal
    This paper analyses the impact of educational interventions made in the first- and second-year microeconomics courses on academic development students' final mark in the second-year course. It also addresses issues of methodology, specification, and statistical analysis with respect to other studies in the field. The results suggest that the educational interventions in the first year had a positive impact on the academic performance of the academic development cohort, relative to the mainstream cohort for the first period (2000-2002). The results also suggest that the educational interventions introduced in the second period (2003-2005), in the form of voluntary workshops, improved the academic performance of the academic development and mainstream cohorts.
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    A multivariate evaluation of mainstream and academic development courses in first-year microeconomics
    (Wiley, 2007) Smith, Leonard; Edwards, Lawrence
    This paper analyses the impact of the University of Cape Town's first-year microeconomics academic development course on performance in examinations. The paper makes two advances to existing empirical literature in this area. Firstly, we compare performance with a control group drawn from the mainstream economic course. Secondly, we evaluate performance in subsequent courses in first-year macroeconomics and second-year microeconomics. The results suggest that the academic development course has a major impact on students' performance in the structured/essay questions, relative to the control group, in first- and second-year microeconomics, and for the multiple-choice questions in first-year macroeconomics. Matriculation results, mathematics, English first language, physical science and gender are also important determinants of performance.