In order to provide evidence of quality and to improve its educational offer over time, Iconomix uses formative evaluation. This evaluation method is derived from its mission, purpose and target group.
The mission of Iconomix is to support economic and social studies education in Switzerland with an experience-oriented approach. The aim is to promote economic and financial literacy as a basic life skill.
To this end, Iconomix provides teaching units in four languages (DE/FR/IT/EN), which are available to teachers on a web platform. Specifically, Iconomix targets the more than 4,200 teachers in Switzerland who teach economics and social studies at the upper secondary level (vocational schools, upper secondary specialized schools and baccalaureate schools).
Iconomix is therefore not aimed directly at the learners, but at their teachers as multipliers and gatekeepers. The advantage of this indirect approach is that, unlike the student body, the teachers remain quite stable over time. A disadvantage may be that Iconomix has no control over how the offer is used.
However, we do not see this as a shortcoming since teaching is the core business of teachers, which they are trained and specialized for. Iconomix does not wish to interfere here but to support teachers in doing their best work (empowerment). Iconomix also sees itself as a complementary teaching and learning tool that teachers can use alongside existing teaching materials.
In addition, an Iconomix unit is hardly ever used by a teacher without adjustments in the classroom. Rather, a teacher has to make an initially unknown teaching unit her own - a demanding and sometimes time-consuming process ("fitting"). Ideally, this results in an individualized teaching unit that the teacher can use repeatedly over time.
Since slightly more than 90% of all young adults in Switzerland complete upper secondary education, the population of learners more or less reflects the heterogeneity of the population at large. In other words, there are big differences between learners in terms of their cognitive abilities, prior knowledge and background. Moreover, Iconomix is present in three language regions of Switzerland, and these regions differ not only in terms of language but also in terms of culture. This heterogeneity is reflected in the great diversity of the teaching units of Iconomix in terms of topics, didactic approaches and levels of difficulty.
A serious impact analysis of the entire, diverse offer of Iconomix on the heterogeneous target group of teachers and learners at the Swiss upper secondary level would almost only be possible within the framework of a large-scale National Fund study. This may one day be an option. For the moment, however, we concentrate on the evaluation of the individual teaching units:
Each Iconomix teaching unit is evaluated either in the course of its development or in the course of its revision. However, we refrain from an actual determination of the "effectiveness" of the teaching units. The reason is that the teaching units are individually adapted by the teachers to fit their own needs or those of the class. It is hence only of limited practical value if we invest a lot of time and effort in proving the effectiveness of an ideally used teaching unit. For this reason, we do not use randomized controlled trials.
Instead, we focus on formative evaluation as an integral part of the quality assurance process when designing new teaching units. The aim is to obtain feedback on a new teaching unit already during its development in order to support its introduction and further development.
Depending on the case, different methods are used:
Iconomix currently works primarily with the following partners:
