Shared Resources

Model Visualization Exercises for Introductory Micro

Example of exercise

Much research has shown that novices and experts across the STEM disciplines differ markedly in how they approach and solve problems. Many STEM education scholars find that giving students scaffolded exercises in which they work with a visualization tool can be highly effective in teaching novices to think more like experts.

Through our Model Visualization Project we have used EconGraphs.org to develop several of these exercises for use in introductory microeconomics courses. All of them have been fielded with hundreds of real students.

Each of the exercises below are Canvas New Quizzes in QTI format. To import them into your Canvas installation, download the file and follow these instructions:

  1. Your browser may automatically “unzip” the file into a folder. If so, you’ll need to to zip it back up first. On a Mac, go to the Finder, right-click on the name of the folder, and choose “Compress …”.
  2. Log into the Canvas course where you want to import the New Quiz.
  3. Click “Settings” in the course navigation menu.
  4. Click “Import Course Content”.
  5. Under “Content Type”, select “QTI Zip File”.
  6. Click “Choose File” and select the QTI zip file you downloaded.
  7. Check the “Import existing quizzes as New Quizzes” box
  8. Click “Import”.

Feel free to edit the exercises to match the content and/or notation that you use in your class.

If you end up using any of these in your own classes, please do let us know how it goes!

Change in Demand
Students use interactive consumer demand graphs to predict demand and then write down demand functions that represent the same information. They also work with a demand aggregation visualization.
Demand Schedule
Students build a demand curve based on a demand schedule. They practice distinguishing between “quantity demanded” and “demand.”
Market Structure: Monopoly
Students work with several visualizations that show consumer demand, total revenue, marginal revenue, marginal cost, and a monopolist’s profit.
Negative and Positive Externalities
Students use an interactive supply and demand figure to see how externalities and taxes affect equilibrium outcomes and welfare.
Production Functions
Students use a production schedule and interactive graphs of a production function to compute the marginal product of an input.
Profit Maximization
Students use an interactive graph of a firm’s cost and revenue curves to identify profit-maximizing choices.
Total Cost, Average Cost and Marginal Cost Curves
Students work with interactive graphs of a firm’s production function and costs to learn how the different cost curves are related.
Trade-Offs with One Entity
Students model a firm that can produce two goods using a single input. They answer questions by manipulating graphs of the firm’s production functions and its production possibilities frontier (PPF).