About The Econ Sandbox
The Econ Sandbox allows students and instructors to explore economic concepts through hands on visualization and practice. By combining economic facotrs, graphs, stories, and math, The Econ Sandbox allows students to see connections that are difficult to see in a standard textbook. Additionally, The Econ Snadbox provides guided practice from introductory to andvanced concepts, helping student practice their intuition and math skills continuously as they progress though their economics journey.
Why I Built This Platform
Economics courses expect students to be able to seemlessly move from verbal models, to graphical models, to mathematicla models. Many of my students along the way have excelled at the models individually, but struggle to see the connections between them. I built this platform as a way to help make those connections easier for students to see, and to provide them with additional practice and feedback. By allowing students to view economic models in a variety of ways, while also making their own changes, I hope that economics will become a more accessible subject to all.
Explore Pages
Change the model yourself. Adjust economic factors and assumptions and see how the visualization responds. Then switch between the economic story and the math to understand why the model changed.
Practice Pages
Try problems on your own first. If an answer is incorrect, the practice activities provide additional guidance and can break the problem into smaller steps rather than immediately showing the solution.
Behind the Project
Micaela Wood Ph.D.
Creator
I'm an economics professor who built The Econ Sandbox after repeatedly seeing students struggle to connect economic intuition, graphs, and mathematics. I wanted students to have a place where they could experiment with a model instead of only reading about it.
The site is also designed to give students another way to practice difficult concepts. When a student gets stuck, the goal is not to immediately provide the answer, but to help the student work through the problem step by step.
Get in Touch
Have a suggestion, find something that doesn't work, or have an idea for a topic that would be useful? I'd like to hear from you.