In 2014-2015, we will be test teaching the materials for a new Introduction to Economics course in five universities (including University College London) in four continents.
We will close three gaps that have widened in those three decades. Most obvious to academics is a gap between what economists now know and what we teach undergraduates. To the public, there is a gap between the questions they ask, including the questions that bring our students into the classroom, and the often unrelated content of the standard curriculum. There is also a gap between conventional text-and-lecture methods used in university economics teaching and low-cost interactive learning technology. Finally, there is the gap between the marginal cost of making great curricular materials available and the price charged by publishers for the now dominant texts.