Rasika Amarasiri, our data base and tech guru (who also designed this piece of festival lighting awesomeness), has recently sent me links to these 2 examples of visualizations of complex economic issues
These short animated videos are great example of how even complex issues can be visualized in way that enhances understanding and retention
The ‘Crisis of Credit Visualized’ provides a simple explanation of the GFC www.crisisofcredit.com/
While this isn’t a the type of resource that we would be knocking out on a regular basis (it’s done in Flash), it is worth dissecting the way the creator, Jonathan Jarvis, uses images to support the message rather than text.
US Debt Crisis explains the current US Debt problem.
Each video explains in 10 minutes what an average dull lecture would take an hour to do. Obviously, there is a lot of underlying detail we also need to cover. You could make watching the video homework or even show it at the start of the lecture. All students would then be ‘on the same page’. The rest of the 50 minutes could be guided discussion of the problem which would bring out the underlying issues in a much more meaningful way (especially if the alternative is 30 slides of text summarizing a chapter).
Both videos use static images and very simple animation to explain the basic ideas. You could do something very similar just using PowerPoint.