BSP2701 Global Economy

Module: BSP2701 Global Economy (2 MCs)

Semester taken: AY 2019/20 Semester 1

Lecturer: Dr Xu Le

Tutor: Mr Mark Gan

Textbook: Essentials of Economics, 11th ed., Schiller R. and Gebhardt K., 2019. McGraw-Hill

What it is about

This module covers basic macroeconomic content with topics such as the circular flow of income, the analysis of fiscal and monetary policies, economic growth and the international economy. A follow-up to BSP1703, this module should also be a breeze to students that have taken H2 Economics with some additional content.

Assessment components

• Assignments & Presentation: 30%

• Online Quiz 1: 20%

• Online Quiz 2: 20 %

• Final Test: 30 %

Comments

I was lucky to have taken this module under the same lecturer as I had for BSP1703, so I was quite used to her style of teaching. However, this is probably the only time that this module is offered in the first half of the semester as the lecturer is pregnant and she was due soon. This essentially meant that the content of the module, which was suited to be taught over 7 weeks, had to be compressed into 6 weeks instead.

Lectures are 2 hours per week and mostly covers the content in the lecture notes with limited real-world examples being used to explain the concepts. There were also Kahoot quizzes at the end of each lecture to immediately revise your concepts, which can serve as a good indicator of how much you understand the content taught for that particular lecture.

Tutorials

The tutorials are 1 hour per week and is mainly on the assigned groups’ presentation of answers for the week’s assignment. Everyone in the group would have to present their answers and there will be questions asked by the tutor afterwards, which will then count towards the final grade of the presentation. There are a total of 3 assignments and each group has to submit their answers for 2 of them, with 1 being presented to the rest of the class.

My group had quite a bit of drama where 2 girls completed the same part of the question due to a miscommunication and neither wanted to budge, resulting in us having to put into a vote on whose work do we keep for the final presentation. Not too sure what came out of it but everyone pretty much got awkward afterwards.

Quizzes and Finals

There were 2 online quizzes to be completed using Examplify at home. Each quiz had 25 MCQs and we had 1 week to do them (but you had to finish all the questions in 1 hour). Finals was in the same format, except that it was now 50 MCQs and 2 hours to complete.

Everything taught in the module was tested, and keeping to the same format as the lower level version of the module, the questions tend to be more math-heavy. Since finals was closed book (which was conducted in Week 7), we had to memorise most if not all the formulas that were taught.

Other information

Assignment workload: 2 group assignments, with 1 that needs to be presented

Project workload: There were no projects.

Readings: None

Recommended if: A compulsory module for Business majors, but otherwise only useful if you want to learn a bit of macroeconomics but not fight with the Economics majors.

Rating: 3.0/5. Could have been interesting but felt kinda rushed and dead compared to BSP1703.

Expected grade: A- (was not too optimistic about my presentation)

Actual grade: A-