Thank you to everyone who presented, discussed, chaired and attended! This was the first time I have been the chair of a conference organizing committee and while it was a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun and I'm pretty proud of the program we put together. A few highlights for me: I was psyched to see multiple papers where the authors were looking at the impact of something happening in one course by focusing on outcomes at a later point in time, like performance in the follow-on intermediate course. One of my biggest problems with a lot of the SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) literature is that in most effectiveness studies, the outcomes are within-course measures, like scores on a final exam or final course grades. While it's certainly reassuring that outcomes like these are not negatively affected by pedagogical changes like active learning, I have always felt that the more important questions involve what happens after students leave our classroom. Do th...
Observations and ramblings of an economist with a passion for teaching...