My timing for starting this blog is a little odd – this is the time of year when many professors (at least the ones interested in teaching) are swamped with grading and end-of-the-semester chaos, not starting new projects that require any amount of time investment. But I’m not actually teaching this semester, so the usual semester schedule doesn’t apply. I just hope people will want to procrastinate from their grading by reading this! Although my mini-leave is not teaching-related, I’m using this as an opportunity to get a jump-start on my fall classes; hence, this blog, since one of my fall classes is this Economics for Teachers course. I have been considering making it mandatory for my students in that class to read, and comment, on this blog. I hesitate to do so since a) I’m not sure how to grade such an ‘assignment’ and b) I worry that will put a lot of pressure on me to come up with blog entries that are actually worth their time. I’m hoping that by beginning this blog now, and making entries as I go about prepping the class, I will get a better idea whether this is a feasible assignment. Would love to hear from anyone out there who has tried a similar assignment!
By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu
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