Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

At the Westerns, I was part of a session on interactive teaching titled, “Flipping, Clicking and Other Contortions to Make Your Classes More Interactive”. Unfortunately, one of the participants, the one who was specifically going to talk about flipping his class, was struck with flight problems and couldn’t make it. However, he was kind enough to make a video of his presentation that we could show during the session. If anyone is interested, Steven also put the video (broken into two parts) onto YouTube, here and here . I also tried to record the other three presentations using Camtasia but there are problems with the sound (Steven’s video was actually running in the background and although the sound was muted at the time, Camtasia recorded Steven’s voice with the other presentations). So rather than posting the videos, here are (links to) the slides: Brandon Sheridan on Getting started with interactive teaching Mary Flannery on Interactive learning through current events (pdf of ...

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...

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 ...

One problem I've always had with doing peer instruction using the CPS software from eInstruction is that you can either set it so that the answer distribution shows up immediately on the slide after the clicker question is closed, or not, and that applies for the entire session. There is no easy way for the instructor to see what the answer distribution is without also showing that distribution to the class. This means that if the answer distribution is mixed and I want to do peer instruction, students will also have seen the answer distribution and that can create issues with students assuming that whatever answer got the highest number of responses must be correct. At a recent workshop, I mentioned this issue and Mike Salemi suggested that I blank or freeze the projector before the answer distribution shows up; that way, I can see the distribution on the monitor at the podium but the students won't see it. I have no idea why that never occurred to me before but all I could...

This is a follow-up to my previous post about how I use clickers in the 500-seat Micro Principles class. Although I do not have direct evidence of how clickers impact student learning, I have survey responses to several questions about clickers (SDSU’s Instructional Technology Services provides a survey that they ask all clicker-using faculty to administer at the end of each semester). Responses to these questions suggest that students believe clickers help them learn and make them feel more involved: Class clicker usage helps me to remember important course content: 80.6% strongly or somewhat agree; 7.3% strongly or somewhat disagree Class clicker usage helps me focus on course content I should study outside of class: 70.9% strongly or somewhat agree; 9.7% strongly or somewhat disagree Class clicker usage makes me more likely to attend class: 85% strongly or somewhat agree; 5.3% strongly or somewhat disagree Class clicker usage helps me to feel more involved in class: 83.5% strongly ...

I find myself working on several projects this summer that involve writing about my teaching approach in the 500-seat Micro Principles class and I thought that readers here might be interested as well. Over the next several days, I'll be posting about how I use clickers, Aplia and podcasts . I use clickers from eInstruction ; San Diego State decided a few years ago to standardize with one company across campus and I think it was a really good move (more information about clicker use at SDSU, including faculty and student feedback, and links to research on their effectiveness, can be found here ). As more and more faculty have adopted clickers, it has become easier for me to explain them to my students and to justify their cost. I embed clicker questions in the PowerPoint slides using eInstruction’s PowerPoint plug-in so the transition to questions is seamless during lectures. My policy is to make every class worth the same number of points (last semester, it was 3 points; previous ...

One of the first lessons I learned as a teacher was the importance of setting student expectations early, making it clear from day one what students can expect from your class in terms of workload, schedule, learning outcomes, etc., and then being consistent. Students may not be happy about everything but my experience is that they will accept a lot as long as it isn't unexpected. Unfortunately, I didn't do so well with that this semester. For various reasons, I found myself making changes mid-semester and I know that many of the emails I'm dealing with now are because of that inconsistency. There are certain changes I think are justified and I don't think there's anything wrong with making mid-semester adjustments when something I'm doing isn't working for a majority of students (like adding the online quizzes ). But what's bumming me out is that some of the changes I've needed to make are things I should have anticipated. For example, at the beginn...

[This is the email I sent to my students today, with my solution to the attendance problem I wrote about last week . Coincidentally, InsideHigherEd has an article today on clickers that summarizes some of the issues with using them.] Dear students, As I mentioned on Friday, I have been considering how to re-structure the points for the clicker questions. The failure of the clickers this past Wednesday, the number of people who left at that point, and the relative quiet of the ensuing class, made me realize that by attaching points to clicker questions, I may have been doing you all a disservice. I don't want anyone to feel that they "have" to come to class just to get points. Obviously, I would hope that my lectures are sufficiently engaging and useful that you would see the benefit of attendance but I have always believed in treating my students as adults and as we discussed at length at the beginning of the semester, everything in life is a choice, including coming to ...

As a new teacher, one of the first things I learned was the value of shutting up. My own classroom style has always included asking a lot of questions, even fairly obvious ones, to make sure that students are with me. But if you're going to ask questions, you have to get comfortable with letting there be silence and just waiting for an answer. Most students will never answer if they think they don't have to so they sit and wait, either for someone else to answer or for the teacher to give up and move on. So I've gotten fairly used to waiting them out and it usually works. But today I re-discovered how uncomfortable silence can be. I don't know if it's a glitch in the new version of the clicker software or what, but after students have answered a question with their clickers, the computer takes quite a while to process the data and let me return to my regular slides. This happened to a lesser degree last year (and with 300-400 responses, I don't expect the system...

A couple articles about 'clickers' on InsideHigherEd have evoked some strong responses ( here and here ). Among the comments, there seem to be three strands: those that love them, those that hate them, and those that think they are a useful tool but recognize that they are just a tool. Since I'm in the last category, I particularly liked a comment from Peg Wherry: Good teaching is good teaching, regardless of class size or tools available. But some tools let you do different things or even the same things in more productive ways. Certainly, part of the push-back on clickers is because some administrators want to use clickers (and other technology) as an excuse for increasing class sizes. That is, there are some who would like to believe that the reduction in educational quality created by forcing students into huge lectures can be offset by using these tools to foster greater interaction. To a certain extent, I actually agree - I definitely think that if you are going to t...