Effectiveness Of Textbook And Outside Sources In Teaching Engineering Economics

The paper will discuss changes made in the teaching of Engineering Economics, a required sophomore undergraduate class. The first change was the inclusion of relevant economic and financial news to complement subject matter covered in class. This new material covered approximately 25% of the required contact hours and allowed the course to be used to assess two ABET criteria. The second and more significant change was that while the course outline was left intact, the textbook required in previous years was no longer required. At the end of the semester, the class of over 50 students was surveyed on the consequence of not requiring a textbook. The textbook required in prior years was provided as a reference and the course sequence closely followed that of the textbook without the use of the actual examples and homework assignments from the book. Therefore students interested in having the textbook as a reference were able to do so. The paper will summarize the results of the survey and conclusions will be drawn on the necessity of requiring a textbook for teaching Engineering Economics.