Skip to main content

Course Design Institute

In addition to the Economics for Teachers class, my fall schedule includes a Micro Principles course for 500 students. I taught that course for the first time last fall and knew I wanted to make changes but rather than the usual between-semester tweaks, I have essentially ended up redesigning the entire course, inspired by (and contributing to) my adventure in Web 2.0. So it was serendipitous that I was able to attend SDSU’s Course Design Institute today. A few highlights:
  • Andrew Milne defining teaching as “The purposeful structuring of experiences from which students cannot escape without learning.” I just love that.
  • Finding out about SWoRD, a new tool for peer review of writing. I definitely want to find out more about that, especially since I’ll be teaching a writing class next spring in which I was planning to have the students do lots of peer review anyway.
  • Tom Carey talking about ‘threshold concepts’: ideas that, once students really get them, open the way to an entirely different way of thinking. He actually used the example of opportunity cost in economics, which I would agree with 100%. The trick with threshold concepts is that it isn’t enough for students to superficially understand the definition (lots of students can identify or regurgitate what opportunity cost means) but they have to really get it. I need to think a lot more about what other threshold concepts in economics might be – I’m thinking marginal analysis, separating positive from normative, and the role of government when there are externalities might all qualify.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

What are the costs?

I came across an interesting discussion about a 19-year-old intern who was fired from The Gazette in Colorado Springs for plagiarism. There appears to be some controversy over the fact that the editor publicly named the girl in a letter to readers (explaining and apologizing for the plagiarism), with some people saying that doing so was unduly harsh because this incident will now follow her for the rest of her career. I was intrigued by this discussion for two reasons - one, it seems pretty clear to me that this was not a case of ignorance (as I have often encountered with my own students who have no idea how to paraphrase or cite correctly) and two, putting aside the offense itself, I have often struggled with how to handle situations where there are long-term repercussions for a student, repercussions that lead the overall costs to be far higher than might seem warranted for the specific situation. As an example of the latter issue, I have occasionally taught seniors who need to p
5 comments
Read more

What was your high school economics experience like?

As I mentioned in my last post , I am asking my Econ for Teachers students to reflect on their reading by responding to discussion prompts. It occurred to me that it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to share my thoughts on those issues here and see if anyone wants to chime in. For this week, the students were asked to read the California and national content standards , an article by Mark Schug and others about why social science teachers dread teaching economics and how to overcome the dread, an article by William Walstad on the importance of economics for understanding the world around us and making better personal decisions (with some evidence on the dismal state of economic literacy in this country), and another article by Walstad on the status of economic education in high schools (full citations below). The reflection prompt asks the students to then answer the following questions: What was your high school econ experience like? What do you remember most from that class? How do
2 comments
Read more

When is an exam "too hard"?

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
3 comments
Read more