The idea driving this book was simple: to share content that has been successful in teaching macroeconomics. The goal was to enable a professor to quickly and easily incorporate these materials into a course. This epilogue is designed to lower any barriers even further, offering a handy overview of all files and specific Excel skills, along with suggestions for utilizing the workbooks and screencasts. As mentioned previously, please visit the Course Materials section of http://www.depauw.edu/learn/macroexcel for a course syllabus and full set of daily handouts for an undergraduate macro course.

Figure 6.1 shows how the workbooks are organized into five independent topics. This can be used as a guide to curricular planning by matching each topic to a syllabus or table of contents from a favorite textbook. Visit http://www.depauw.edu/learn/macroexcel/screencasts for a listing of each screencast in each workbook.

Figure 6.2 provides a different perspective, listing the workbooks that use an advanced, specific Excel skill. These workbooks are quite general and can be used in a wide range of courses beyond macroeconomics. You can sprinkle a single workbook and screencast into any course to add the variation in delivery that reenergizes the classroom and boosts student learning.

These materials are modular, and you can choose to use, for example, only the FRED add-in workbooks or only a single workbook, but they provide an even higher level of flexibility beyond the ability to pick and choose specific pieces. These workbooks are not like a printed book in that you can take ownership and modify them as you wish. This is an incredibly powerful aspect of teaching with these Excel files. The take-home message is to be proactive and treat the workbooks as adaptable. Nothing is set in stone.

Successful teaching depends on experimentation, change, and mixing modes of delivery. Unfortunately, having given a number of presentations and workshops over the years (visit http://www.depauw.edu/learn/econexcel), I recognize that many professors are not risk takers or trailblazers. The inertia, once a syllabus or textbook has been chosen, is quite high.