Search

It is well known that the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) incremental analysis is the most used technique for economic analysis and decision making in the public sector. That is precisely one of the reasons why it is usually taught within engineering economic analysis courses at the undergraduate level. However, often times, freshmen and sophomore students find traditional incremental-analysis algorithms long and tedious, mostly when dealing with four or more alternatives. Moreover, even those who appear to grasp the steps more easily tend to show low levels of retention. Visual pedagogical techniques could facilitate the teaching/learning experience of BCR incremental analysis, while improving the level of retention over time. It has been established that visual approaches can help accomplish both of the aforementioned goals. With this intention in mind, we have derived a novel, simple, and purely-visual algorithm to select the best of many alternatives using the BCR analysis, with the advantage of avoiding the almost-purely-verbal route of traditional incremental analysis. In our approach, BCR values for all alternatives are plotted on a 2-dimensional, 3-axis diagram: two parallel and one perpendicular coordinates. The best alternative is selected by the maximum vertical or perpendicular distance from the points to the incline BCR=1. Results and analysis of experiments carried out to compare students' preference and performance using the traditional verbal approach versus our novel visual algorithm are presented. The proposed algorithm has been preferred by a cohort of engineering economic analysis freshmen students. Further experiments are currently being carried out to assess retention and ratify present results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]