Skip to main content

Friday Finds

I'll take a short break from my TBL series to share a couple of resources that you may find helpful if, like me, you're tweaking your fall classes and looking for some new material...
  • Economics memes: I think anyone who is on Facebook, or receives email for that matter, has seen some version of various internet memes, which wikipedia defines as any idea that is propagated through the internet: "The idea may take the form of a hyperlink, video, picture, website, hashtag, or just a word or phrase... The meme may spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email, news sources or other web-based services." The Economics memes site provides a collection of econ-related memes, as well as some information about how to use memes in your class. [Note: the Most Interesting Man in the World picture is actually from the Cengage Facebook page, and Jodi Beggs has a bunch of other variations on the Most Interesting Man meme].
  • Div.E.Q.: Diversifying Economic Quality: A Wiki for Instructors and Departments provides some great teaching resources. As stated on the site:
    • "The purpose of this wiki is to promote best teaching practices in economics, particularly practices that encourage women, students of color, and members of other underrepresented groups to continue their study of economics. Here, economics faculty can both disseminate and discover prescriptions for improving our teaching and the inclusiveness of our discipline."
  • The Peer Instruction Network has lots of information if you want to add some peer instruction elements to your courses. The blog has some good posts if you're new to peer instruction, including this post that answers the basic question, "What is peer instruction?". 
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

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

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...
Post a Comment
Read more