Teaching
Peter Smith is a University Director of Education for the University of Southampton and Associate Dean (Education and Student Experience) within the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences. He has taught Development Economics at the undergraduate level for several years now using data from the UK Data Service.
Dr Smith has used the World Bank’s World Development Indicators and the International Monetary Fund’s International Financial Statistics for his second- year undergraduate module on which students are required to undertake a group project. It is also used as a way of encouraging students entering their third year to use data in their supervised dissertations.
Dr Smith regards the use of this data as essential in providing an up-to-date empirical background to the theories under discussion and for use in his lecture and class sessions. In preparation for use in class Dr Smith will create graphs that display trends in the data into his PowerPoint presentations and recently has been using video files for use by students before lecture, freeing up their contact time for discussion and interaction.
Students do not work hands on with the data very much until they move into their third year dissertation topics but have reacted well to the use of real data in the class. Dr Smith believes it is because it allows them to understand and see the economic theories at work, giving them the opportunity to appreciate economics as a real-life process.
Dr Smith is now moving to a University role and will no longer be teaching, however, he has no doubt that his colleague taking up the teaching of this course will continue his use of data on the course.
See Also: