Didactics, evaluation and innovation

Iconomix works on the principle of active problem-based learning, with two-thirds 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.

Didactic approach

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:

  1. Engage with the material
    • Introduction centred on a problem (game, simulation, case study, etc.)
    • Create a common experiential basis
    • Make active use of existing knowledge
       
  2. Discuss and reflect
    • Verbalise and reflect on experience gained
    • Learn from experts and fellow students
    • Acquire new knowledge
       
  3. Practise and apply
    • Practise to reinforce skills
    • Work on advanced questions to adapt skills


Exceptions

In the interest of providing a variety of learning experiences, the predominantly inductive concept of active learning is deliberately not applied across the board. Some of the units take a traditional deductive approach. This entails assimilating knowledge obtained from a specialist text, for example, and reflecting on this knowledge and putting it into practice through exercises and transfer tasks.

 

Updates and ongoing development

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.

Evaluation and innovation

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.

Portrait von Manuel Wälti
«Thanks to our cooperation with committed teachers, we receive valuable feedback and insights from the classroom.»
Manuel Wälti, Head of Iconomix

Three recent innovations

Learning platform (2024)

Learning platform (2024)

The new ‘Financial literacy’ learning platform enables teachers to provide students with content packages and to track learning progress. In addition, Iconomix offers interactive presentations suitable for use in class, similar to those on Kahoot.

Available in German only.

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Video book (2023)

Video book (2023)

The ‘Swiss economic history’ unit is a video book combining text, images and sound. It allows students to travel back in time and immerse themselves in economic history.

Available in German only.

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Topic block on data (2021)

Topic block on data (2021)

The ‘CO2 emissions’ unit is designed to teach data literacy as a key skill for the future, and to enable the creation of digital learning media such as visualisations of time series.

Available in German only.

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A new product is born

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: