Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

For those who will be braving the Chicago winter to attend the ASSA meetings, I hope to see you at one of the teaching-related sessions! And don't forget the AEA's Committee on Economics Education's reception on Friday evening! AEA Committee on Economic Education Poster Session Friday, Jan. 6, 2017; 8:00 AM– 10:00 AM Hyatt Regency Chicago, Toronto Hosted By: AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Chair: Steve Cobb, University of North Texas MACRO Monopoly: Applying a Game-Based Economic Development Lesson Kim Holder , University of West Georgia Using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to Teach Economics Concepts Matthew Pham , Landmark College Jim Koskoris , Landmark College In Search of Best Classroom Practices Hari S. Luitel , Algoma University Oxford-Style Inspired Academic Competitive Debates With a Twist on Hot Topics of International Economics and Finance Sylwia E. Starnawska , State University of New York-Empire State College Industrial Design at the Se...

As Director of the CTL, I have organized a series of events this year around the theme 'Teaching the Whole Student'. Each of the events focuses on a different aspect of student identity and how those identities may impact their experience in our classrooms. So far, we've had one on international students, LGBTQ+ students, and students in emotional distress; next up is military-affiliated students and in the spring, we're addressing first-gen students, bilingual students, microaggressions and sexual assault. Although I consider myself a pretty enlightened person, each of the events so far has taught me a lot and made me think a little harder about how different my own experience is/has been from many of my students. One thought that I keep coming back to is how many things about my everyday life that I take for granted, particularly things that I am able to say, do or feel (or not feel) that other people cannot. In other words, I keep thinking about my privilege. Tha...

As those who actually speak Japanese have told me, it really should be "Eee-mah-zeh-key" (equal emphasis) but it's definitely NOT 'Eye-ma-zeek-key', 'Ih-mask-ee' or (don't ask me why) 'Ihm-ski'. I'm not entirely sure why it's hard for people - in my mind, my name is actually pronounced pretty much how it looks but I think the proximity of a 'z' and 'k' throws people off. Interestingly, Spanish speakers tend to be the best at pronouncing it correctly because Japanese pronunciation of vowels is similar to Spanish. But my entire life, on the first day of a class with a new teacher (and sometimes even those I'd had before), they would start calling roll, and I would brace myself as they got closer to the I's. Many times, I could tell when they got to my name on the roster because after a Joe Holmes or Jane Howard, there would be that slight pause, at which point I'd usually just jump in and call out my name for...

Just got back from CTREE – many thanks to everyone who helped make it such a success! I had some great conversations, heard some super-interesting papers, and generally got re-invigorated, not just about teaching but about economics . Some random thoughts, just to get them out of my brain: In the first plenary, Susan Laury mentioned an ‘experiment’ she learned from Dirk Mateer to show gains from trade. She brings a bunch of random items to class and distributes them to a group of students and asks them to rate their happiness with the item. They then have the option to trade; once trading is complete, they again rate their happiness. Generally, total happiness should increase, showing the gains from trade alone. I just wanted to add that I do a similar activity that I got from Gail Hoyt but in that version, you make ‘tickets’ for a range of events (like concerts or sports events) and give those to the students, and I ask them to state their willingness to pay for the ticket the...

When I started this blog eight (OMG, has it really been EIGHT?!?) years ago, I didn't really have a plan - I just wanted to try out this blogging thing because I was thinking about having my students do it and figured that doing it myself would be the best way to learn how it all works. Over the years, I've largely used the blog to chronicle what I was doing in the classroom, mostly as a way of just reflecting and thinking about what was happening (I've always been a big journaler), but also with the thought that maybe by doing my thinking 'out loud', it might be helpful to someone, somewhere. Along the way, I feel like I've gotten to know many more economists who care about teaching and have felt part of a community that supports and reflects my own academic values, and I really can't express how awesome that has been! But now I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads. My position as Director of SDSU's Center for Teaching and Learning has led me i...

A recent commentary in the Chronicle suggests that " To Solve the Skills Gap in Hiring, Create Expectations in the Classroom ". The author notes that employers today report larger gaps in 'soft skills' like time management, work ethic, motivation and professionalism, than in technical skills; yet, the policies adopted by many college instructors do not do much to help students develop those necessary skills. The author refers to her own policies about expecting students to arrive to class and turn in work on time, not offering extra credit, etc. I think most instructors try to find an appropriate balance between holding students accountable for acting like adults, and understanding that sometimes, life happens. For what it's worth, I thought folks might be interested in how I handle this, at least in my upper-division writing course. In that course, I use a form of specification grading - it's not full-blown specs grading but students' grades are based ...

The SDSU Center for Teaching and Learning finally has a new website and I have to say hallelujah! It seems like a small thing but as someone who spends a lot of time on the Web, the old site was sooooo painful to deal with. But we've now moved to Wordpress so there's a blogging feature, which means I can tag stuff and people can actually find it, and there are cool plug-ins to deal with stuff like the events calendar and faculty profiles. Yeehaw! One of the challenges of moving to the new site is that I've been killing myself to get content on the site so there's actually something there worth looking at. Before we went live, I added a bunch of back-dated posts for old events, but I also am trying to create content that is actually useful for instructors who want to know more about some specific topic . Given the wealth of information that already exists, I'm mostly curating links from other places but also trying to highlight 'best practices' and provid...