As I sat in the Course Design Institute the other day, it occurred to me that much of the language being used by the speakers would be completely foreign to many of my colleagues in economics. I’m not even talking about the vocabulary of educational technology (though that would likely be even more foreign) – I’m referring to the language of pedagogy. For example, I’m pretty sure that if I asked around my department, very few of my colleagues would know what Bloom’s taxonomy is. The recent focus on assessment at my University means that many faculty are now able to articulate specific learning outcomes for their classes but my impression is that coming up with these learning outcomes is seen as something we are required to do to satisfy the University, not as something that could actually stimulate deep thinking about our classes and help improve our teaching. This is not to say that my colleagues are not dedicated teachers; most have an earnest desire to teach well. But economists are simply not trained to think about pedagogy in a formal way so ‘teaching well’ too often means just having organized lectures and student evaluations that are not terrible. ‘Chalk and talk’ is still the norm and although we like to talk about getting our students to “think like economists,” most economics professors still focus more on content delivery (i.e., as long as students can regurgitate content, they must be learning), than on ‘constructionism’.
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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