ECON1010 Introductory Microeconomics: how is it assessed?

Direct answer: The Semester 2, 2026 course profile lists three components: CML quizzes at 25% (best 5 of 6), CLEAR-JE journal entries at 20% (best 2 of 3) and an identity-verified, in-person exam at 55%. The two coursework parts are open assessment, while the exam is secure and its conditions are stricter.

ECON1010 Introductory Microeconomics is a 2-unit undergraduate course run by the Economics School at St Lucia, with a 2-hour lecture and a 1-hour tutorial each week (The University of Queensland, 2026b). Its description says that "A focus is placed on core economic principles that are immediately applicable rather than formal mathematical theorising" (The University of Queensland, 2026a). Check that your enrolment shows UQ's ECON1010 before relying on this guide.

Source: assessment summary in the Semester 2, 2026 course profile, read 2026-10-27.

The University of Queensland profile also lists five learning outcomes, from interpreting economic terminology to communicating economic thinking "in non-technical, plain language" (The University of Queensland, 2026a). Items and weights may differ between offerings, so a weighting you heard from a senior student may not apply to your semester.

Direct answer: CLEAR-JE stands for Contextualised Learning of Economics via Authentic Reflection - Journal Entries. You submit up to three, each worth 10%, and only the best 2 count. Each entry covers two lectures and must be written on the course template.

Each entry has a fixed scope: No.1 covers Lectures 1 and 2, No.2 covers Lectures 3 and 4, and No.3 covers Lectures 5 and 6 (The University of Queensland, 2026a). Students get about two weeks per entry, and there are no extensions or deferrals, so a missed entry scores 0. The profile directs you to the Blackboard task description and to a template that must be downloaded and used.

For ECON1010 Introductory Microeconomics, pick one concrete event from your own week, name the economic concept it illustrates, and explain the mechanism step by step. A price elasticity story works if you can say why buyers did or did not switch, not just that the price moved.

Direct answer: The CLEAR-JE was designed by Carl Sherwood of the University of Queensland to help students who fear mathematics in introductory microeconomics. He describes each entry as 400 to 500 words in five sections, but the Semester 2, 2026 profile for ECON1010 Introductory Microeconomics has fewer entries than his 2022 version.

In a Times Higher Education piece, Sherwood describes the CLEAR-JEs this task is named after as 400 to 500 words long with five written sections: "my chosen context; theoretical concepts; my prior assumptions; what I learned; and reflecting on what I learned" (Sherwood, 2022b). He built the task because "I wanted to help overcome students' perceived fears about mathematics when enrolling in introductory microeconomics" (Sherwood, 2022b). Treat that as the design idea, not as your template. The version he described in 2022 had six entries with the best five worth 50% of the course mark, while the Semester 2, 2026 ECON1010 profile has three entries worth 20%, and the Blackboard template sets your own headings and word limit.

His paper opens by noting that "The fear of mathematics has long posed a barrier to wider participation and access for students to make sense of introductory microeconomics" (Sherwood, 2022a, p. 94). It reports a survey of 122 undergraduate and postgraduate students at an Australian research-intensive university (DOI) and found that "Postgraduate students tended to value using contextualised stories twice as much as undergraduate students" (Sherwood, 2022a, p. 94). The abstract does not name ECON1010, so read it as background on why such tasks exist, not as your marking guide.

Direct answer: There are 6 CML quizzes worth 5% each, and the best 5 count toward the 25%. Each quiz covers two lectures and most stay open for about two weeks. Missing one costs nothing if the other five score full marks.

The Semester 2, 2026 quizzes pair up the lectures in order, and each CLEAR-JE falls due the day after the matching quiz closes.

Source: quiz and CLEAR-JE due dates in the same profile, read 2026-10-27.

According to the profile, "No marks are awarded for incorrect numerical answers, or answers that do not follow all the instructions in the CML Information Sheet" (The University of Queensland, 2026a). Late submissions are blocked and no extension is possible. Treat each of the first three pairs as a double deadline, because the quiz and the reflection for the same lectures land within 24 hours of each other.

Direct answer: Research on memory and on introductory economics classes finds that testing yourself and spreading work across the term both improve results. The six fortnightly CML quizzes in ECON1010 Introductory Microeconomics build in both habits, so using them as practice is better than treating them as a chore.

Frequent low-stakes testing suits this design. Roediger and Karpicke (2006) tested recall after 5 minutes, 2 days and 1 week, and found that "prior testing produced substantially greater retention than studying" on the delayed tests (p. 249). A meta-analysis of 839 assessments in 317 experiments also found that the gap between study sessions and the delay before the final test jointly affect retention (Cepeda et al., 2006).

Spreading the work out may matter as much as the testing itself. In a randomised experiment with 344 undergraduates in two introductory economics classes at the University of Calabria, students allowed to sit an intermediate exam passed more often and earned higher grades than students who sat only the final. The authors found that the gain came entirely from dividing the workload, and that the feedback students received added nothing (De Paola & Scoppa, 2011). ECON1010 builds the same rhythm into the term, with a quiz deadline every two to three weeks.

Direct answer: Two thirds of the coursework in ECON1010 Introductory Microeconomics, 30 of its 45 points, can be banked by 4 September, and all 45 by 22 October. The third CLEAR-JE and the sixth quiz only replace a weaker score. This calendar is our own calculation from the dates in the profile, not a UQ publication.

Calculation: points capped by the best-5-of-6 and best-2-of-3 rules, with full marks assumed.

Three readings follow. First, the journal entries are front-loaded: the 20 points that count are reachable by 4 September, 15 days after the first quiz closes, so the third entry is insurance. Second, the longest quiet stretch is the 20 days between 18 September and 8 October, a natural window for exam revision. Third, CML 6 closes on Monday 9 November, two days after the exam period opens, so do not rely on that quiz.

Skipping is asymmetric. Missing one quiz or one entry costs nothing if the rest score full marks, but missing two quizzes costs 5 points and missing two entries costs 10.

Direct answer: The final exam is worth 55%, lasts 120 minutes plus 10 minutes of planning time, and is closed book and paper based. It can assess any material from Lectures 1 to 12, with worked problem questions and possibly short written answers.

The 2026 exam period runs from 7 to 21 November, and the exam is invigilated in person with identity verification (The University of Queensland, 2026a). Only a Casio FX82 series calculator or a UQ approved and labelled calculator is allowed. All five learning outcomes are tested, including plain-language communication. The profile says the problem questions need "fully worked written solutions" and that short-answer questions need written explanations, so a bare number earns little.

The eight lecture topics give you a revision map: thinking like an economist, demand and supply, elasticity, perfectly competitive supply, the quest for profits, imperfect competition (including monopoly and strategy), externalities with public goods, and the economics of information.

Source: course grading table in the profile, read 2026-10-27.

Direct answer: The exam rewards the habit of writing out each step of a calculation, because the profile asks for fully worked written solutions and a correct final number alone earns little. The survey evidence below shows how often a confident, unexplained answer is wrong.

Reasoning matters more here than recall. Ferraro and Taylor (2005) gave 199 respondents at the 2005 Allied Social Sciences Association meetings a textbook question: you hold a free Eric Clapton ticket, Bob Dylan plays the same night, his ticket costs $40 and you would pay up to $50 to see him, so what is the opportunity cost of seeing Clapton? Only 21.6% chose the correct $10, the $50 benefit minus the $40 cost of the next-best option, and the authors concluded that "the answers given to us by well trained economists appear to be randomly distributed across possible answers" (Ferraro & Taylor, 2005). In a second survey of 358 students in the first week of an introductory microeconomics course, 17.2% of those with no earlier economics got it right, against 7.4% of those who had studied economics before (Ferraro & Taylor, 2005). Writing the subtraction out line by line, as the profile's "fully worked written solutions" ask, is the habit that separates the $10 from the $40.

The profile adds that "Higher grades result from an ability to firmly grasp the core concepts and demonstrate their interconnectedness" (The University of Queensland, 2026a). Since the exam carries more than half the grade, build the same worked-solution habit during the semester, not in the last week. The university assignment guide shows how to turn a question into a plan.

Direct answer: The 55% exam and the 25% and 20% coursework split are the same in Semester 1 and Semester 2, 2026. Semester 2, 2025 was built differently: 12 coursework items worth 10% each, all hurdles, and no exam in its assessment summary. Always read the profile for your own offering.

The Semester 1, 2026 profile, whose term ran from 23 February to 20 June, lists the same three parts: CML quizzes at 25%, CLEAR-JE at 20% and a 55% exam in the period 6/06/2026 to 20/06/2026 (The University of Queensland, 2026c).

Semester 2, 2025 had a different shape. Its summary lists six CML quizzes and six CLEAR-JEs, each worth 10% with the best 5 of 6 counting in each series, so by our own calculation all of the mark came from coursework (The University of Queensland, 2025). Every item was marked as a hurdle, CML 1 to 5 each had an optional second attempt, and CML 6 and CLEAR-JE No.6 ran from 24/10/2025 to 30/10/2025 and 28/10/2025 to 10/11/2025. That profile also warns that "If a zero mark is given to a CLEAR-JE due to high similarity index/plagiarism, that CLEAR-JE assignment of zero marks will be counted and students cannot do an additional CLEAR-JE assignment to compensate for this" (The University of Queensland, 2025).

The AI rules moved as well. In 2025 the CML text said students did not need to reference AI or machine translation, while the CLEAR-JE text already warned that failing to reference generative AI may be misconduct (The University of Queensland, 2025). The Semester 1, 2026 profile asks for acknowledgment in both, using a table at the end of the writing template for CLEAR-JE (The University of Queensland, 2026c).

Direct answer: For the quizzes and CLEAR-JE entries, the profile labels both open assessment and allows notes, course materials and other tools, including AI. The exam is secure, so only approved materials are permitted, and prohibited materials may be treated as academic misconduct.

The open-assessment statement adds that "The focus is not on memorising information, but on understanding, applying judgement, and demonstrating your own thinking" (The University of Queensland, 2026a). That wording matters for the reflection, because a journal entry is about your own context, and the profile points students to UQ's AI Student Hub for the rules on responsible use.

Open does not mean outsourced. The same profile ends its learning outcomes with communication in plain language, and the opportunity-cost survey above shows how easily a confident answer can be wrong. If you cannot explain a mechanism without a tool in front of you, the in-person exam will find that out. If you want a comparison with a sibling course, the ECON1011 guide covers a very different assessment mix.