Iconomix works on the principle of active problem-based learning, with more than half of the teaching units being activity-oriented. This process allows students to not only learn facts but also – and above all – the skills needed to apply them. Iconomix places particular emphasis on quality and innovation. Each unit is evaluated in the course of its design and ongoing development.
Iconomix is designed as a supplementary educational programme to complement existing teaching materials.
In terms of methodology and didactics, Iconomix concentrates on the following (see here for the key focus areas):
Active learning offers a better quality of learning and greater motivation compared to conventional textbooks.
Nowadays, digital forms of learning are a matter of course and an integral part of a web-based education programme.
Finally, compact formats have the advantage that they can be integrated relatively flexibly into existing teaching sequences and offer many possible applications.
Note
In the interests of providing a variety of learning experiences, the predominantly inductive concept of active learning is deliberately not applied across the board. Some units follow a traditional deductive approach, consisting of acquiring knowledge on the basis of an advanced text, for example, and reproducing and reflecting on it with exercises and transfer tasks.
For the same reason, Iconomix does not rely exclusively on digital learning media, but also offers analogue formats, in particular educational games.
The fundamental didactic approach behind Iconomix is based on problem-based learning. All the problem-based units are structured in accordance with a three-phase model:
The Iconomix educational programme is continuously being updated and further developed. This process is an important part of quality control. It helps to include new findings from practical application as well as, for example, the latest developments in the economic school of thought.
Moreover, two or three new units are added every year, one of which is related to the annual focus topic.
Now and again, some units are discontinued. This happens when a unit’s format or topic is no longer contemporary or relevant. The unit on the coronavirus crisis is one such example.
How can you measure the impact of an educational programme such as Iconomix comprising everything from individual tasks to educational games and entire teaching units? It’s difficult to demonstrate its impact and effectiveness. For this reason, instead of performing a comprehensive evaluation of Iconomix as a whole, we concentrate on the quality of its individual teaching units. Each teaching unit is subject to evaluation, either as it is being drawn up or in the course of its ongoing development.
A whole series of tests and feedback loops are required before a new unit format reaches the necessary level of maturity. In the case of the video topic blocks, the ‘Video Board’ group played a particularly important role as a sounding board. It consisted of half a dozen teachers with a lot of experience in using videos in their own lessons. Click through the pictures from a workshop held in December 2019:
