Peer Review

Tools for Teaching with FRED

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Dec 15, 2024 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

FRED is the St. Louis Fed's data service, and Tools for Teaching with FRED includes tutorials, instructional guides, lesson plans and other FRED-related activities. FRED lets users download, graph and track thousands of U.S. and international time series from more than one hundred sources. Create, save, update, and share your own custom graphs using current and historical economic data.

Type of Material:

Tutorial

Recommended Uses:

This website can be used for in-class work assisting students in using the data and graphing capabilities.
The website can be used to support faculty lectures about different aspects of economics.
This is the FRED website that offers such a variety and expansive lesson plans and activities that it is difficult to identify specific learning outcomes.
There are many lessons and activities for educators to use the FRED website when teaching.
For students, the website offers step-by-step instructions for users on how to find and graph economic data. This guide also shows how to customize, save, and share a FRED graph.

Technical Requirements:

Chrome, Bing

Identify Major Learning Goals:

The student will:

learn how to download, graph and track thousands of U.S. and international time series from more than one hundred sources.
Create, save, update, and share custom graphs using current and historical economic data.

Target Student Population:

Middle School,
High School,
College General Ed
Lower level finance classes

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Macro and micro economics, general financial market knowledge

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

All links work
The instructions are clear and detailed.
The information flow is organized and fluid.
Information is timely and relevant.
The concepts taught include but are not limited to;
- how to find the real GDP,
- how to shorten the date range, graph values, conversion of data to a bar graph,
- how to transform frequency from quarterly to annual,
- how to change units, recession bars,
- how to download a high-quality image, and
- how to save, share, and permalink a graph.

Concerns:

None

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

This learning material utilizes exceptional tools to facilitate an understanding of financial market trends.
Modeling of trends is made understandable and engaging.
This is an excellent resource to use in describing a subject that is usually of great interest to finance students and business students in general.
Provides multiple relevant sources of additional information.
The website can be very supportive if students put in the time to learn how to use the mass amount of data available at this site.
It can easily support the learning outcomes of how to use and where to find the appropriate data.

Concerns:

None

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The website is very easy to navigate if students put in the time to play with it for various searches in the database.
The data and software are very robust.
The information is easy to navigate, well organized, detailed, engaging and relevant.
All links work and all documents are navigable.

Concerns:

None

Other Issues and Comments:

The function of the Federal Reserve System and the information gathered is used to reinforce an understanding of the monetary and financial markets using a comprehensive set of activities and resources.
The information could be utilized as a large project assignment in Money and Banking or Economics.
The different activities would facilitate an instructor using select portions as part of a lecture, homework assignment, in class activity or discussion, etc.

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