This is not based on the final version of the syllabus. Expect a few small changes during the first week of class.

Refer to the  Full Syllabus for more detailed information and the latest updates. To view the schedule of Due Dates click on  COURSE DEADLINES in the upper right corner of any syllabus webpage.

This class is a MacroEconomics class with Global emphasis. For the analysis assignments, you chose a country (other than the US). The assignment emphasis will be on understanding your country's economic situation.

Mandatory Orientation 

Orientation for this course is executed by taking a quiz over the course's syllabus (The document you are reading right now).

This Orientation Quiz must be taken and submitted before you can take any of the assignments. The quiz consists of more than 20 questions. You must submit at least 18  correct answers to gain access to the first exam in the course. This includes having signed up for messages on REMIND.com for this course. REMIND is a free communication tool, and the invitation to join will be posted on BlackBoard 

The Orientation Quiz itself can be found on your course's ACC Blackboard site http://acconline.austincc.edu. Go to the START HERE link in BB (BlackBoard, on the lefthand-side of your start page in this course)

Blackboard: Blackboard is an online classroom management tool. It includes a gradebook, an announcements page, and a facility for administering online tests and quizzes.

Course Announcements will be posted to Blackboard; midterm exams will be administered through Blackboard, and your course grades can be accessed through Blackboard. In addition to the email address given above, communication can be through the Discussion Board that is part of the course's Blackboard site.

Blackboard's URL is http://acconline.austincc.edu. This is the URL for ACC's Blackboard site. Do not go to blackboard.com, the company's own site.

 Grading and Competency-Based Education:

The course consists of four main units: UNIT 1 - UNIT 4. Each unit covers four chapters of the book (except UNIT IV which covers 3 and four analysis papers), and you complete the relevant MyEconLab assignments. Once you completed the MyEonLab assignments for those four chapters with a minimum of 65% in each Homework and Quiz you can take the Unit exam which covers those four chapters.
After you completed all 15 chapters and the four UNIT exams, you may move on to the final exam, to complete the course.

All analyses are country-specific. You pick one country early in the semester and stay with it. You will collect economic data for that country and write short paragraphs about its economic implications. The emphasis is NOT on writing but on interpreting your data. An analysis is not an English paper and if you are able to communicate better in an alternate form to writing words in paragraphs on paper, I am happy to discuss your suggestions.

Grading Overview

Alternatively, UNIT Challenge Exams can replace (one, several, or all of) your regular Unit Exams (plus MEL assignments) for a total of 700 points or 70% of your grade. Each unit exam is worth a maximum of 175 points.

For a Competency-Based education course, grades assigned are based on mastering the UNITS (Competencies) in the course. Once you have shown mastery of one UNIT (or competency), you may move on to the next UNIT. UNIT Challenge Exams are available in the Challenge Exam folder on the course's Blackboard site for each of the four UNITS (Competencies). They are optional: you can ignore them and start the MyEconLab assignments in each UNIT. One attempt will be allowed for each UNIT Challenge Exam AND it must be taken in a secure setting using Respondus LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor (you will find more details about this in the course's ACC Blackboard site. From the left navigation column in Blackboard, follow this sequence of links: Course Content/Challenge Exams/Instructions on how to use Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor).

If a grade of 80% or better is made on a UNIT Challenge Exam, then you may move on to the next UNIT without completing the MyEconLab assignments in the UNIT for which the UNIT Challenge Exam was taken. If a grade of less than 80% is made on a UNIT Challenge Exam, then you will have to move through each of the MyEconLab assignments in the UNIT in the order they are assigned. After you have completed these assignments with a 65% or better grade on each, you will be able to take the UNIT Exam. Three attempts will be allowed on each UNIT Exam without the instructor's permission--an initial test and two re-tests. The highest score is recorded for grading purposes. These exams are "take-home exams" in that they can be taken without using Respondus LockDown Browser and Monitor on your Internet-connected computer at home.

You must make a 65% or better on a UNIT Exam to move on to the next UNIT Challenge Exam OR the next UNIT MyEconLab assignments and UNIT EXAM. If more than three attempts are needed to make a 65%, You must set up an appointment with your professor to discuss the difficulties you are having with the UNIT Exam. Once a UNIT Exam has been passed with a 65% or better, the process will repeat itself on the next UNIT/Competency.

Prerequisites to all UNIT and UNIT CHALLENGE EXAMS

The Final Exam completes the course. The prerequisite for being able to take the Final Exam is that you must have made an 80% or better on the UNIT IV Challenge Exam OR 65% or better on the UNIT IV Exam. The letter grade you will be assigned will be determined by the weighted average of the grades on the four UNIT Challenge Exams OR UNIT Exams and MEL assignments, and the grade on the Final Exam. 

NOTE #1: Because of the Extra Credit Points discussed later in this syllabus, the total points shown in the Blackboard gradebook might be closer to 1200. However, the letter grades will be based on points accumulated as shown in the above table. It is certainly possible that you might accumulate more than 1000 points.

NOTE #2: Finally there are several important pieces of information  to keep in mind when preparing for the final exam.
1) If a student makes an F on the final, (that is, makes less than 55% or 165 points out of 300 on the final exam), then the student can make no higher than a C in the course.
In other words, a student cannot make an A or a B in the course if he makes an F on the final.
2) If a student makes a D on the final, (that is, makes at least 55%, 165 points, but less than 65%, 195 points, on the final exam), then the student can make no higher than a B in the course.
In other words, a student cannot make an A in the course if he makes a D on the final.
3) If a student makes a 91.4% ( 274 points--not counting extra credit points) or above on the final exam, the student will earn an A in the course regardless of his total points.

The first two items are why a Practice Final is being provided to you. It is hoped that this Practice Final will help you to better prepare for the final and take away some of the anxiety some students feel when approaching a final exam. Starting in the summer of 2021, I am allowing you to retest the Final Exam once, but only BEFORE the due date. The highest grade of the two attempts on the Final Exam will be used to calculate your grade.

NOTE #3:To complete the logic of a Competency-Based Education course, a Course Challenge Exam will be available at the beginning of the course. This Course Challenge Exam will be just like the comprehensive Final Exam,  It will consist of 100 questions. The questions will all be correlated with specific learning objectives which will be listed on Blackboard. If you make 80% or better on this Course Challenge Exam, then you have demonstrated mastery of the material in this Principles of Macroeconomics survey course and the grade you will be assigned will be determined as follows:

If you score less than 80% on the Course Competency Exam, then you will need to show mastery in the four UNITS mentioned above. If you make a B on the Course Challenge Exam and want to raise your grade to an A, then you will need to proceed through the four UNITS as outlined above.

Extra Credit Points:

There are four ways to improve your grades by earning extra credit points. The total number of extra credit points possible is equal to 161 points of the 1000 points upon which letter grades will be determined. (In other words, there are actually 1161 points (and more) available in the course. Letter grades will be assigned based on the 1000 point scale discussed above.)

Testing* 

* will be determined during the first class with student input.

All regular tests in this course will be administered in the classroom. Either on paper or online using Blackboard and the RESPONDUS browser.
For more information about online testing at ACC, visit the Online Testing Resource Page.

I. The Course Challenge Exam (Optional)

A Course Challenge Exam is offered to all students who want to see if they can pass the course without working through all the Pearson MyEconLab assignments and taking all the UNIT Exams. If students make an 80% or better on this Challenge Exam they will have passed the course and need to do nothing more in it. As the professor of the course, I will give a letter grade of A or B to anyone who can do this.

The prerequisite for taking the Course Challenge Exam is to have completed the Mandatory Orientation Quiz with a grade of 80% or better.

This Challenge Exam is exactly like the final exam described below. By "exactly like," I mean all its questions will be randomly drawn for 100 pools of questions just like the Final Exam.

To learn more about the nature of this exam, please read the information given below about the final exam.

Like the Final Exam, the Challenge Exam must be taken using Respondus LockDown Browser and Respondus Monitor.

You must show your student ID and a photo ID when using Respondus.

If you make over 80%, you are finished with the course. If you make less than 80%, you will need to proceed through the normal assignments and exams required of the course.

Good luck if you want to try taking it. If you don't succeed, it will not damage your grade in the rest of the course in the least.

If you don't want to attempt taking it, you can proceed to the UNIT I Challenge Exam, or you can start working on the UNIT I MyEconLab assignments.

II. UNIT EXAMS, Regular FINAL EXAM, and UNIT Competency Exams

All UNIT Challenge Exams, the Course Challenge Exam, regular UNIT EXAMS, and the Final Exam are objective, multiple-choice question exams, unless they are given on paper.

All UNIT Challenge Exams, the Course Challenge Exam, UNIT EXAMS, and the Final Exam are based on the learning objectives students are expected to master. For more information on learning objectives, please see the section on "Learning Objectives"  in this syllabus above or in Blackboard. Furthermore, all exam questions will be drawn exclusively from the textbook, Economics Today: The Macro View. The exams over each UNIT will include ten questions over each chapter assigned for each UNIT, so each UNIT Challenge Exam and the corresponding UNIT EXAM will cover four chapters and consist of 40 questions. The questions will appear on the EXAMS in the order in which the chapters were assigned for the UNIT. For example, on the UNIT I EXAM the first ten questions will cover Chapter 1, the next ten will cover Chapter 2, questions 21-30 will cover Chapter 3, and questions 31-40 will cover Chapter 4. Indeed the questions will be numbered in exactly the same way as the learning objectives the questions are associated with are numbered. 

The regular EXAMS for each of the four UNITS will be administered over the Internet through the course's ACC Blackboard site. Each regular UNIT EXAM over a UNIT will be found in the corresponding UNIT Module folder which itself will be located in the Course Content folder a link to which is in the left navigation column of Blackboard.

Each UNIT CHALLENGE EXAM will be found in the Challenge Exam folder which is also in the Course Content folder. These CHALLENGE EXAMS are not required; they are available to students who think they grasp the material in a UNIT well enough to pass a test over it with an 80% or better grade and thereby skip the MyEconLab assignments associated with the UNIT,

There will be ten learning objectives listed for each chapter. Each learning objective will have 10 or more questions connected to it by the testing program used in this course. That program will randomly choose one question from each group of ten for the exam. For example, if a UNIT EXAM is 40 questions long, then there will be 10 ways to select the first question, ten ways to select the second question, and so on to the fortieth question. The number of different exams this program can generate for one midterm/unit exam is 1040. One billion is 1 followed by 9 zeros. 1040 is 1 followed by 40 zeros, or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different exams will be possible for each UNIT EXAM.

These EXAMS will also be timed. You will have 60 minutes to answer 40 questions.

Once again, the UNIT EXAMS will be given on the Blackboard Internet course platform used by ACC, so students will need to sign on to Blackboard in order to take these exams.

If students make an 80% or better on the UNIT Challenge Exams, they may move on to the next UNIT Challenge Exam without working through all the EconLab assignments. If a student makes an 80% or better on the UNIT IV Challenge Exam, he may move on directly to take the Final Exam without working through the MyEconLab assignments in UNIT IV.

Students will have the opportunity to re-take each UNIT EXAM twice (there are no re-tests on Challange Exams). The highest grade will be used in determining grades. Students do not have to re-take these exams if they make over 65% on them. A 65% grade on a UNIT EXAM will allow the student to move on to the next UNIT or the Final Exam if it is the UNIT IV EXAM. If a student does not make a 65% or better on a UNIT EXAM after three attempts, then the student will need to meet with the Professor of the course before he can re-test it again.

NOTE: All UNIT Challenge Exams, UNIT EXAMS, and the FINAL Exam have prerequisites that have to be met before they can be taken.

UNIT I Challenge Exam: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the Mandatory Orientation Quiz with an 80% grade or better grade.

UNIT I EXAM: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the Mandatory Orientation Quiz with an 80% or better grade AND the Chapter 4 MyEconLab Quiz with a 65% or better grade.

UNIT II Challenge Exam: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT I Challenge EXAM with a grade of 80% or better OR the UNIT I EXAM with a 65% or better grade.

UNIT II EXAM: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT I EXAM AND the Chapter 8 MyEconLab Quiz with a 65% or better grade.

UNIT III Challenge Exam: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT II Challenge EXAM with a grade of 80% or better OR the UNIT II EXAM with a 65% or better grade.

UNIT III EXAM: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT II EXAM AND the Chapter 13 MyEconLab Quiz with a 65% or better grade.

UNIT IV Challenge Exam: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT III Challenge EXAM with a grade of 80% or better OR the UNIT III EXAM with a 65% or better grade.

UNIT IV EXAM: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT III EXAM AND the Chapter 31 MyEconLab Quiz with a 65% or better grade.

FINAL EXAM: to take this exam you must have taken and passed the UNIT IV Challenge EXAM with a grade of 80% or better OR the UNIT IV EXAM with a 65% or better grade AND have submitted the DAC--Analysis Project.

TO SEE ALL PREREQUISITES FOR ALL MYECONLAB ASSIGNMENTS AND ALL BLACKBOARD EXAMS, CLICK HERE.

YOU SHOULD MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO TAKE THE UNIT EXAMS NO LATER THAN THE LISTED DATE.

For all deadlines see the full syllabus.

Contact the instructor if you are unable to take any of the exams by the listed date.

Contact the instructor if you have fallen behind schedule so that you can put together a plan to catch up.

Final Exam

The final exam will be comprehensive. There will be 100 questions on it, drawn from the 160 Learning Objective pools used in this course. So each question will be drawn from one or two pools. The questions will be arranged in the order the chapters were assigned. Questions over Chapter 1 will be the first ones encountered and questions over Chapter 31 will be the last ones encountered.

Students will be allowed to use two 8.5x11 inch pieces of paper with notes written on both sides. These crib sheets must be handwritten -- not typed, and it must not be a photocopy. This crib sheet must be shown on the Respondus Monitor camera before the start of the exam. 

More information about the Final Exam will be posted on the Announcements page on this course's Blackboard site about three weeks before the end of the semester. (If you complete the course early, please email me, and I will supply you with that information.)

 A Practice Final is available and it is a copy of the actual Final Exam you will be taking using the Respondus LockDown Browser, but the Practice Final Exam does not require the Respondus LockDown Browser. The Practice Final is the "same" as the Final Exam in the sense that it draws examination questions from the same test pools. It is not an exact copy because it will most likely draw a different question from each pool. Nevertheless, it will give you an excellent sense of what the final exam will be like when you take it using the Respondus LockDown Browser. As such, it should help you understand how much you will need to prepare for the actual final exam. Again, Respondus is not needed to take the Practice Final Exam.

MyEconLab Homework and Quizzes

MyEconLab.com is the online study guide that accompanies the Miller text.  MyEconLab is required, not optional.

MyEconLab has five types of assignments:

1. Study Plan: These are ungraded practice questions. You will be given 3 tries, then the system will tell you the correct answer. When you finish, the system will tell you which sections of the chapter you need to focus your study time on. Each question will have a panel of Learning Aids to the left of the window. These Learning Aids include
   • Help Me Solve This - Guided Solutions take you step-by-step to the correct answer
   • eText takes you to the page of the text where the information covered by the question is presented even if you did not purchase access to the eBook.
   • Graphing - allows you to draw a graph of the question to help find an answer
   • Ask My Instructor - emails the question to me, so I can help you with Homework: These are graded question sets, set up like the Study Plan sets. 
2. Learning Aids are available on Homework assignments, and you will be able to take these assignments over and over again until they get them right. These re-takes are limited by the assignment deadline. Each chapter will have 20 homework questions.
3. Animations and Interactives: These graded sets include the animated graphs from the text and extra video lessons, and extended problem sets designed to help students work through the problems.
4. Quizzes: These are graded assignment sets as much as the Homework sets. Each chapter will have 20 quiz questions. 
   No Learning Aids are available on quizzes while you are working on them, but you will be able to review the graded questions after the deadline with the help of the Learning Aids.
   You will be allowed three attempts on the quizzes just as you are on the online, mid-term exams. However, unlike the online, mid-term exams, the highest grade will be used and you will not be able to re-test these quizzes after their assignment deadlines.
   You have 90 minutes to complete a quiz.

The Results page will give you your scores on each assignment, as well as your overall average. You must go to the RESULTS page in MEL to review your answers to the Homework Assignments and Quizzes. You can only review the Chapter Quizzes after the deadline for the Quiz has passed.

All Chapter Quizzes and Homework assignments have due dates.

You will not be able to do the assignments for credit after their deadlines have passed.

Deadlines for the Homework Assignments and Quizzes on MyEconLab can be found in a separate webpage with a link in the left column on top of this page named DEADLINES (with current semester), and I strongly recommend you print it out and put it somewhere very visible. 

Note: The points you earn on MyEconLab will exactly equal the points I record for students on the "My Grades" page of the course's ACC Blackboard site. There is sometimes a timing lag or other errors creep into the transfer from MEL to BB. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you find any discrepancies.

Instructional Resources

Economics Today: The Macro View plus MyEconLab plus eBook 1-semester Student Access Kit, 20/E:

REQUIRED TEXT:

Economics Today: The Macro View with MyLab Economics, 20th edition, Miller

Some version of the textbook, new, used, or eBook, is required. So is access to the course's MyEconLab site.

You can buy the eBook and MyEconLab together as a package without the hardcopy of the textbook. 

If you like paper copies of your books: you can buy used copies of older editions of this text online very cheaply. In fact, I see little reason why you couldn't use the 17th edition if you can find it. (Hint: Search engines. I have posted the table of contents for the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th editions on the course's ACC Blackboard site.) In all probability, you will not receive an access kit for MEL that has not been used, even if you buy a used 19th edition or earlier. So, if you buy used, you will likely still need to buy access to MyEconLab. But buying an older edition of the book and use the etext with the updated info occasionally is a great way to go for paper-lovers.

Course Description:

The purpose of this course is to familiarize you with the generally accepted principles of macroeconomics. Economic analysis is ultimately based on the actions of individual households and business firms, and macroeconomics deals with its aggregates--i.e., consumers as a whole, producers as a whole, exporters and importers as a whole, the effects of government spending and taxation, and the monetary policy of the central bank. Macroeconomics is concerned with such things as unemployment, inflation, and the business cycle.

Common Course Objectives/Student Outcomes: 

 Common Course Objectives/Student Outcomes.

• Students who complete this course will be able to:
• critically evaluate GDP, unemployment, and inflation data;
• explain the business cycle and its phases;
• manipulate the basic Aggregate Supply, Aggregate Demand model of the macroeconomy;
• and to manipulate the basic Aggregate Supply, Aggregate Demand model of the macroeconomy;
• explain fiscal policy tools and defend and criticize the usage fiscal policy;
• describe how a fractional reserve banking system works;
• explain monetary policy tools and defend and criticize the usage of monetary policy.

Common Course Objectives/Student Outcomes: 

• Students who complete this course will be able to:
• critically evaluate GDP, unemployment, and inflation data;
• explain the business cycle and its phases;
• manipulate the basic Aggregate Supply, Aggregate Demand model of the macroeconomy;
• and to manipulate the basic Aggregate Supply, Aggregate Demand model of the macroeconomy;
• explain fiscal policy tools and defend and criticize the usage fiscal policy;
• describe how a fractional reserve banking system works;
• explain monetary policy tools and defend and criticize the usage of monetary policy.

 Discipline Program Student Learning Outcomes.

• PSLO 1: Socially Optimal and Suboptimal Outcomes- Model and explain under what circumstances markets are capable of creating socially optimal and socially suboptimal outcomes.

• PSLO 2: Economic Policy -Defend and criticize the role of economic policy in a mixed market economy.

• PSLO 3: Economic Data -Critically evaluate economic data.

Global Studies Student Learning Outcomes.

• PSLO 2 Interdependence: Identify the interrelated nature of the actions and impacts of individuals, groups, and institutions at the local, regional, national, and global levels.

• PSLO 3 Globalization: Analyze the interrelated impact of global structures (such as social, cultural, religious, environmental, political, and/or economic) on aspects of nations, regions, communities, and individuals.

General Education Competencies.

• Civic and Cultural Awareness - Analyzing and critiquing competing perspectives in a democratic society; comparing, contrasting, and interpreting differences and commonalities among peoples, ideas, aesthetic traditions, and cultural practices.

• Critical Thinking - Gathering, analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating and applying information.

• Quantitative and Empirical Reasoning - Applying mathematical, logical and scientific principles and methods.

• Written, Oral and Visual Communication - Communicating effectively, adapting to purpose, structure, audience, and medium.

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