Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

Speaking of having students set some criteria , I've also been thinking about having students set some of the class rules (that I would typically set down for them). I was originally thinking about this in the context of my writing class, having students decide things like what the penalty would be for late assignments (and what constitutes 'late'), etc. But then I heard about the Cornell instructor who got upset when a student yawned super-loud in one of his classes. While I can see why people think he over-reacted, I am completely sympathetic - whenever this has happened to me, I have been sorely tempted to stop class and make a sarcastic comment to the yawner. I mean, it's just so freakin' rude ! [Note: I'm not talking about just simple yawning here (though personally, I was taught that if you're going to yawn while someone is talking, you at least cover your mouth and try not to be obvious about it). Visually obvious I can live with; it's the on...

For some reason, I woke up this morning thinking about next semester (yeah, I've got issues...). Since this is my first semester teaching the data class, or using TBL, of course I have a list of stuff that I want to change next time around. What I was thinking about this morning was how to create the groups. This fall, I created the teams by asking students for some basic information and then I just tried to make sure each team had a good mix of students (i.e., mix of good and not-so-good grades, gender, econ versus business interests, etc.). For the most part, it's worked out well but I'm wondering if there's a better way. In my Econ for Teachers class , they have group projects (but not semester-long teams) and I did an exercise where I asked students to brainstorm what characteristics they would want in their group members. Their responses boiled down to four main factors: subject knowledge (this is a course of mostly social science majors with a handful of econ ma...

A bunch of econ blogs have been talking about an interactive graphic puzzle on the New York Times website where you can 'fix the budget' by choosing which programs to cut and which taxes to raise. The options include some of the most recent policy proposals (and some that are totally outside the realm of political possibility). One thing that is cool about the list, particularly for those less familiar with these policies, is that you can easily see the relative contribution of each policy to the deficit. I just wanted to make sure econ teachers are aware of two other budget simulations, both of which are updated regularly so are likely more useful for teachers than the NYT site (though at the moment, neither is quite as timely as the NYT policy options). My favorite is Budget Hero from American Public Media, partly because the graphics are fun :-) but also because it starts out by asking you to specifically decide on general policy priorities before you get into spending a...

I've been using clickers for several semesters now and I can't imagine teaching without them. But one drawback has always been that I can only ask multiple-choice questions. When I teach 500 students, I don't see any other option (at least for things where students' answers will count toward their grade in some way). But this semester, I have had a few application exercises in the data class where I wanted groups to come up with short responses to open-ended questions. I have thirteen teams in one section and ten in the other so grading their responses is not a big deal but I had to figure out how to collect them. One of the tenets of TBL applications is that teams should report simultaneously - easy enough with responses to multiple-choice questions (either with clickers or cards) but more difficult with longer responses. I ended up using Poll Everywhere , a very cool site that allows anyone to create a multiple-choice or open-ended poll and people can respond via ...

I have 135 students across two sections of my Data Analysis class, and 40 students in my other class, Economics for Teachers. This weekend, I graded a set of short (2-4 page) papers from the Econ for Teachers class and it took me about five hours, total, spread over a couple days - I have a basic rubric and I do not make very extensive comments because I feel like I simply don't have time, plus the papers were fairly straightforward and the writing was generally fine. Tomorrow, I will get a bunch of 3-4 page papers from my data students and I expect those to be much more difficult to grade, both because the content is more complex and the students generally don't know how to write like economists. So I'm sitting here doing the math and anticipating it will take me somewhere on the order of twenty hours (that's hopefully). And because of the other stuff I need to get done (mostly class prep), and the fact that I just can't grade for more than a few hours at a time, r...