Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

It's that time of year again so for everyone going to Chicago, here are the econ ed sessions I could find (if I missed any, please let me know!). I'll also claim a blogger's right to self-promotion and note that I'll be talking about this very blog in a session on Saturday morning (first in the list below) with a bunch of people much more famous than myself (nope, not intimidating at all...). Hope to see you there! Jan 07, 2012 10:15 am, Hyatt Regency, Regency Panel Discussion: Using Blogs to Teach Undergraduate Economics  (A2) Presiding:  GAIL HOYT (University of Kentucky) Economics for Teachers JENNIFER IMAZEKI (San Diego State University) Grasping Reality with a Sharp Beak: The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist J. Bradford Delong J. BRADFORD DELONG (University of California-Berkeley) Freakonomics STEVEN LEVITT (University of Chicago) Marginal Revolution ALEX TABARROK (George Mason University) Economists Do It with Models JODI BEGGS (Harvard University) ...

I realize that I've been particularly bad about posting the last few months but have high aspirations to get back on a more regular schedule in the New Year. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is enjoying a happy and safe holiday season!

As we all recover from turkey overload, here are some sites to check out when you feel like escaping the end-of-semester madness... PNC's 2011 Christmas Price Index is out! The site has gotten a lot more complex and makes you go through a bunch of screens sequentially to get to the total - that's great if you want to waste some time but I couldn't find any way to just jump to the punchline, which is actually kind of annoying, so for those who are as impatient as I am, the total cost is $24,263.18, up 3.5% from last year. The always-awesome Dirk Mateer has a new website . In Dirk's words: "I created this site to act as a "virtual personal assistant" for all Econ professors and TAs, allowing you to easily find engaging pop culture clips and real world examples that will help bring the material to life for your students in a way they can relate to!" You can also follow Dirk on twitter (@dirkmateer) or Facebook . My colleague, and founding editor o...

In the course of conversations with people about PollEverywhere over the last few months, some additional uses of the service have come up.  One is to use it as a backchannel  during class, since it allows for open-ended responses. That is, you could create a poll that simply asks students to submit any questions or relevant comments that arise for them while the class is meeting. The one catch is the instructor needs a way to monitor those comments throughout class. If you are already using the computer for something else (like your Powerpoint slides), you could either use a second device (smartphone or tablet) to keep an eye on the website or stop every so often to check it. Derek Bruff has a nice post on backchannels in education if you're interested in more about the how and why of backchannels. Another way to use PollEverywhere is as a replacement for clickers in distance-learning. I don't teach online classes so I'm not entirely sure what the options are if you w...

When I teach about public goods, the one clear example of a pure public good (perhaps the only one that no student has ever wanted to argue about) is national defense. Even the most hard-core of Libertarians will accept that there is at least one arena where government is needed, in the provision of a strong military. But what we don't usually talk about in economics classes is how lucky all of us civilians are that there are thousands of men and women who are willing to serve in our military. God knows, I would never want to do it, so I am exceedingly thankful for those that do. On a personal note, my sister married a Navy man a couple years ago. For me, this has been great so far, since he was stationed in San Diego and I have had the opportunity to spend much more time with my sister and my nephew. But my brother-in-law's next assignment is overseas and they will be moving next year. Thankfully, it is not an active war zone but for the next few years, my sister will be rai...

My boyfriend's daughter is applying to colleges so there has been a whole lot of SAT and ACT talk going on lately. She's actually focusing more on the ACT, which I know nothing about since I only took the SAT, so we've talked a little about the differences. In general when interacting with this young lady, I have tried very hard to avoid using the phrase "When I was younger..." (since apparently nothing makes you sound older to a teenager than referring to your own childhood) but when I found out that the SAT no longer has analogy questions, I couldn't stop myself. When did the analogies get dropped?!?* Of course, back in high school, I had no idea why the analogy questions were even on the test (not that I spent a lot of time thinking about it back then either but I do remember thinking that they were sort of weird). But as a teacher, I've found that a well-constructed analogy can often make a world of difference in my students' understanding. I was r...

We discussed supply and demand in my Econ for Teachers class this week. This is usually one of my favorite weeks in this class because we do an in-class double-oral auction , which I don't get to do in principles anymore (since I'm not brave enough to try it with 500 students) - I use Aplia for that class instead and while it's better than not doing it at all, it's just not the same. I love watching the students get into their buyer and seller roles. There is always a few who surprise me, some students that I think of as being relatively quiet but they end up being enthusiastic negotiators. And students always tell me at the end of the semester how memorable the auction is for them. But as I was preparing the materials for class, it dawned on me that no where in the California content standards, or in the national standards, are supply and demand curves mentioned. That is, standard 12.2.2 of the California standards says, "Discuss the effects of changes in supply...

A few opportunities that folks should know about... - Before the ASSA meetings in Chicago, on Thursday, January 5, there will be a workshop at Roosevelt University in Chicago on Advanced Pedagogy and Course Design : Cutting Edge Teaching Techniques and Strategies for Pluralistic Economists, run by Geoffrey Schneider, Bucknell University. The overview: "Most heterodox economists today end up working at teaching-oriented institutions. Thus, our success in the academy depends significantly on our ability to teach successfully. This workshop is structured for heterodox graduate students and younger faculty to give them a comprehensive background in advanced pedagogical techniques and strategies that will help them succeed in the classroom. Drawing on the latest pedagogical research, the workshop will cover constructing and meeting learning objectives, syllabus design, models for pluralistic teaching, active and collaborative learning techniques, and teaching controversial topics....

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...

This fall, my Economics for Teachers class is meeting once a week, in the evening. It wasn't my first choice for scheduling but as I re-vamped the class over the summer, I began to think that maybe this will actually be a good format. When I originally created the class, one thought I kicked around was that I would "teach" a lesson and then we would de-brief that lesson as a group (i.e., discuss why I chose to present the material in that way, what worked and what didn't, what might be stumbling blocks for students learning the material for the first time, etc.). In practice, I haven't done as much of that debriefing as I would like, for various reasons. One of those reasons was the timing of 75-minute class meetings - 75 minutes is really too short to teach a lesson AND do a thorough debriefing (plus all the administrative odds and ends that seem to take a few minutes at the beginning and end of each class) so either the debriefing would have to be cut short or I...

A recent New York Times article points out that many children's books teach economic concepts (hat tip to Alex Tabarrok ). If that article piques your interest, the Council for Economic Education has a whole book that provides examples of children's stories that can be used to teach economics, including questions for students and follow-up activities. There's also a 2007 article by Yana V. Rodgers, Shelby Hawthorne and Ronald C. Wheeler, "Teaching Economics Through Children's Literature in the Primary Grades," in The Reading Teacher 61(1), p.46-55. That article lists the 'top five' books for a number of specific concepts; the full list of several hundred titles can be found at http://econkids.rutgers.edu/ , which is an entire website devoted to using children's literature to teach economics (also mentioned in a follow-up NYT post on Economix ). I should point out that although the obvious audience for these sorts of lessons is younger children, I...

As I mentioned at the end of my last post , SWoRD does provide an infrastructure that makes it easier to have students do peer review - students can submit papers electronically, the system can randomly assign multiple anonymous reviewers, I can create specific comment prompts so reviewers must give both numeric and open-ended comments, and students can back evaluate the reviews to indicate how helpful they were (or weren't). Given that I am a firm believer in the value of the peer review process overall, I would perhaps continue to use SWoRD if there were no other options that could serve the same function. But if I'm not going to use the grades generated by SWoRD (or if I need to do a lot of work to make those grades work for me), then I do have other options. Each would require some tweaking to do exactly what I want to do but from what I can tell, they all provide some advantages over SWoRD as well. Please note that I have not yet actually used any of the three tools I ment...

I really should have gotten back to this sooner but for those who are wondering how things went with SWoRD , the peer review writing site I used with my writing class in the spring, my overall reaction is that while it might be useful for some people, I probably won't use it the next time around. For those who missed my earlier posts, I discussed the basics of SWoRD , whether SWoRD can replace instructor grading , and some first reactions to SWoRD's reviewing process (after the first assignment) back in March. I made some tweaks as the semester progressed but overall, I have to say the experience was still pretty rough. To briefly recap, SWoRD is an online peer review system where 1) students upload their papers, 2) the system randomly assigns other students to anonymously review those papers, 3) peer reviewers give both open-ended comments and numeric ratings in response to instructor-generated prompts, 4) authors 'back evaluate' their reviews, which means they give...

It's a frustrating time to be an economist, though I can't decide if it's worse to be a micro- or macro-economist these days - I have to assume that many macro folks are tearing their hair out over the stupid things Washington is doing and the even stupidier things the media is often saying but at least when someone asks a macro person what they think of all this stuff going on, they supposedly are in a much better position to talk about it than most micro people (I'm not saying that stops me from talking anyway; I'm just sayin' that as a micro person, I don't spend my life studying these things and really, my understanding of things is only slightly better than what we teach in Econ 101). I've almost entirely stopped reading anything about the economy from regular news outlets because I kept seeing things that made me wonder if I had some basic economic concepts totally wrong, only to realize that my understanding is fine but reporters apparently didn...

This morning's Dilbert was perfectly timed as I was in the middle of trying to figure out the grade weights for my fall Econ for Teachers class and as usual, having a huge mental debate over how much weight to give 'participation'. A couple of Teaching Professor posts this summer hit on the same issue so it's already been at the back of my brain. In my data analysis course, participation is rolled into the team grades and that takes care of it; I've found that students have a strong tendency to 'punish' their peers for low participation by giving them low peer evaluation scores. But with the Econ for Teachers class, I do a lot of formative-type assessments that I'm not going to "grade" for content (e.g., student reactions to readings where I ask them to relate the reading to something in their own experience), so I have to decide how much credit to give students simply for completion. I want students to take those assignments seriously and th...

If you've read my last few posts about PollEverywhere with skepticism (or skipped them entirely) because you just can't imagine ever letting students use their cell phones in class, my question for you is WHY NOT? Or more specifically, is your aversion to cell phones driven by concerns about helping good students or reining in bad students? By 'good' and 'bad', I'm not talking about those who get good and bad grades; I'm talking about those who care about learning, who want to be there, and those who don't. I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I tend to focus on the latter group, and how often I tend to forget about the former group, and how backward that is... "Students will cheat" For example, I know that for some teachers, the biggest problem with a service like PollEverywhere is concerns that students will use their phones to cheat. At a meeting to discuss options for a new clicker vendor for our campus, a few facult...

[This post wraps up my reflections on my pilot of PollEverywhere this past spring. If you missed my last two posts, I discussed how I used PollEverywhere in my data analysis course, and student reaction to it.] So here are my general thoughts on PollEverywhere, particularly relative to standard clickers: Advantages Convenience for students . They all have cell phones so they never 'forget' their device the way they do with clickers. Easy to ask open-ended questions . Even on clicker systems that have this feature, it is generally easier with cell phones/laptops. Relatively low-cost . If you have fewer than 30 students, the service would be totally free; if you need to track more responses, there is a cost for a PE account that someone (you, your institution, or the students) will have to bear. For students who do not have unlimited texting, there may be costs related to sending/receiving messages; the total cost will depend on how many questions you ask (in a previou...

In my last post , I described how I used PollEverywhere in my data analysis course this spring. In this post, I'll discuss student reaction to PollEverywhere; in my next post, I'll wrap up with my own impressions and thoughts/suggestions for others who are considering using it in their classes. At the end of the semester, I surveyed my students about a number of aspects of using PollEverywhere. SDSU's Instructional Technology Services asks all clicker-using faculty to administer the same survey every semester and I adapted most of those questions for PE. Many of those questions aren't really about the specific technology but are about using any kind of response system (e.g., "Clickers/PollEverywhere usage helps me to remember course content"). I discussed student responses to clickers a couple years ago and reactions haven't changed much (if anything, the percentages of students agreeing with most of the statements has increased); reactions to PE on tho...

Months ago, I mentioned that I was part of an ITS pilot of PollEverywhere this past spring. Quick reminder: PollEverywhere is a web-based service where anyone can create a multiple-choice or open-ended question and people can respond via text, Twitter or website. I first used PollEverywhere in the fall when I wanted a way for my teams to submit open-ended responses. The free version only allows up to 30 responses per poll which was fine for 13 team responses but wouldn't work for individual responses (since I have 75 students in each of my sections) so I used clickers for any individual responses. In the spring, the University bought a PE account subscription so there could be unlimited responses. It also meant that students could register and their responses were recorded so I could use PollEverywhere as a replacement for clickers. In this post, I'll explain the mechanics of how I used PollEverywhere and some of the associated pluses and minuses. In my next couple posts, I...

For anyone attending the Westerns next week, it looks like there are only a few econ ed sessions; here's what I could find. Also note that CSWEP is sponsoring a panel on Thursday morning (8:15-10am) called 'Striking a Balance: Getting Tenure and Having a Life' - grad students and junior faculty are particularly encouraged to attend! Friday, July 1, 8:15-10:00am TEACHING ECONOMICS I Chair: Robert L. Sexton, Pepperdine University Papers: Satyajit Ghosh, University of Scranton, and Sarah Ghosh, University of Scranton Beyond ‘Chalk and Talk’: Teaching Macroeconomic Policy with Spreadsheet Simulation Denise L. Stanley, California State University, Fullerton, and Morteza Rahmatian, California State University, Fullerton Can Technology Make Large Classrooms Neutral for Learning? The Case of an Upper-Division CBE Core Class David M. Switzer, St. Cloud State University, and Kenneth Rebeck, St. Cloud State University Using Online Tools to Improve the Quantity and Quality of...

I've always been a semi-early adopter of technology. I'm not a fanatic about it; I'm just sort of fascinated by the internet, by the ability we now have to reach people we never could in the past, and I like playing around with stuff. Back in college, I would 'chat' with friends via the VAX (I think that's what it was called), and in grad school I learned some html so I could create a personal webpage with lots of random stuff on it. I was actually excited when our campus started using Blackboard because it was easier to post my class stuff there than on the webpages I created on my own. And as the number of tech and web-based communication tools has exploded, I've explored a bunch of them, as I've written about here a lot. But even though I think technology is a wonderful thing, when it comes to teaching, I don't think I use technology just for technology's sake. Rather, I'd say that when I'm faced with a problem, I tend to look to te...