Economics for Teachers: Musings about Teaching Economics

Lower supply means higher prices: Avocados edition

2012-02-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

A story on NPR caught my ear the other night - it was about how San Diego used to be the country's top supplier of avocados but producers here are facing increased costs for water and labor, and increased competition from other countries. What really caught my attention was the very end of the story:

"Ironically, 2011 was the best year ever for San Diego avocado growers. High market prices pushed the monetary value of the crop up, even as the acreage shrank."

This isn't as bad as some examples I've seen but to some, it could sound like the speaker is suggesting that the higher prices are somehow surprising or inconsistent with acreage shrinking. This would be a great example to have students show, using a supply and demand graph, how the higher prices are exactly what we should expect, because of the shrinking supply.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2012-02-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered if academics in other fields date each other at the same rate that economists do - god knows a lot of economists end up with other economists but I'm not sure if it's correlation (i.e., when you spend five+ years in grad school with other economists, who else are you going to date?) or causation (i.e., when you think like an economist, the odds of finding a non-economist who really understands you goes down significantly). During the ten years I dated economists, I would have said it's the latter but since I'm now with an engineer, I'm more inclined to think it's the former... At any rate, I have to say that one downside of dating outside the profession is that my boyfriend really doesn't get the following links. If you follow any other econ blogs or twitter accounts, you probably have already seen these but in case you haven't, enjoy!

Justin Wolfers started the hashtag #FedValentines for 'Fed-themed valentine's wishes' on twitter and shares some of his favorites over on the Freakonomics blog. I think my favorite is "When I look into your eyes, I have no fractional reserve."
Elisabeth Fosslien shares 14 Ways an Economist Says I Love You [by the way, Fosslien is apparently an alum of Pomona College so if there are any fellow Sagehens out there, you should also check out her Pomona in 47 Charts].
On a more serious note, Christopher Coyne discusses the Economics of Valentine's Day in this video - yet another economist telling us that most gifts are inefficient but at least he talks about the signalling effect of Valentine's gifts (rather than just saying we're all irrational).

Friday fluff: For the love of books

2012-02-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, I was a voracious reader. I don't just mean that I read a lot of books but once I started reading a book, I hated to put it down until I had read the last page. When my mom would tell me to set the table for dinner, I'd say, "One more chapter" and then keep reading until she literally took the book out of my hands. I still remember reading Gone with the Wind in one weekend, most of it spent spread out on the living room floor, stopping only when my mom insisted I join the family to eat.

This habit wasn't always so good for my sleeping patterns (there were way too many nights I stayed up til 3 in the morning to finish a book!) but I do have many, many happy memories associated with books from my childhood and I firmly believe that my love of reading is one of the big reasons I always did so well in school. So it sort of broke my heart to read this post by Mark Anderson, a fifth-grade teacher in the Bronx who won a contest for $450 to spend on school supplies. I come from a family of teachers so I am well aware that the vast majority of K-12 teachers spend an insane amount of their own money on things for their classrooms, usually for items that they really shouldn't have to buy themselves but either their schools don't have the money or they have to fill out so many reams of paperwork to get any materials that it just seems easier to buy it themselves. In Mark's case, he ended up using the money for books, including some of my all-time favorites (well, really, does anyone NOT have E.B. White on their list of all-time favorites?). For some reason, it was seeing The Cricket in Times Square on the list that brought tears to my eyes. Although I don't think it's as well known as books like Stuart Little, I remember reading The Cricket in Times Square over and over - there is something about the story that just really touched me - and it makes me really sad to think about all the kids who have never even heard of it.

That post also made me start thinking about all the other books I loved as a kid but haven't thought about in years. Did anyone else love the Encyclopedia Brown books? I'm convinced that my logic/analytic skills developed early because of him. We also had almost the entire Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series (which I still can't believe my mother sold at a garage sale a few years ago!). Betsy-Tacy kept me company throughout grade school; then I believe it was junior high when I met Anne of Green Gables. My sister, our neighbor and I used to act out the poems in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends and charged our parents 25 cents to watch the 'show'. Sigh. Makes me think that maybe I need to take a break from all these 'adult' things I read and get back to something simpler. I hear Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series is really good...

Happy weekend!

Not all costs and benefits are monetary: Going solar edition

2012-02-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

In discussing incentives or cost-benefit analysis, any good Principles textbook will mention that not all costs and benefits are monetary, and a whole lot of the behavioral economics field is built around the fact that people respond to incentives other than money. But we economists (and an awful lot of non-economists) still seem to have a strong tendency to only count those costs and benefits that we can, well, count. Case in point: I recently installed solar panels on my house and as I was researching options, a big focus of everything I read was whether going solar would be 'cost-effective'. But what 'cost-effective' generally seemed to mean was that the monthly payment to cover the panels would be offset by the drop in the monthly electric bill; the prevailing opinion seems to be that if it's not, then you shouldn't bother switching (in fact, one company would not even give me a quote for a system because once I gave them my consumption information, they said, "With your level of usage, it would not be cost effective for you to convert to solar"). Of course I understand that for most people, that's an important comparison but what I find interesting is the reaction I get from people when I say that for me, my monthly payment is going to go UP (at least in the short run). Many people react to that with confusion and something along the lines of, "Then why are you doing it? Are you that much of an environmentalist?"

To a certain extent, the simple answer is, yes, apparently I *am* that much of an environmentalist. The benefit I get from a kilowatt of electricity produced by conventional power plants is reduced by the knowledge that such production is also destroying the planet. Or to put it in economics parlance, my individual demand for clean energy is higher than for dirty energy. So even if my quantity consumed doesn't change at all, I would be willing to pay a little bit more for that quantity when produced with solar rather than with conventional technology.

But the answer is also a little more complicated than that. Because my demand for clean energy is higher, not only am I willing to pay more for the same quantity of clean electricity, but if the price per kilowatt is the same for both clean and dirty technologies (which, on the margin, it is, given the way solar interacts with the electric company's grid), I will buy more of the clean energy. In my case, I have resisted installing central heat and air conditioning in my house almost entirely because I don't want to use that much more electricity (with the corresponding pollution) but with solar, I don't have that concern so once the panels are in, central air is the next item on the list. I thought of this when I read a Digitopoly post drawing a parallel between cheaper solar energy and cheaper computing power - rather than trying to conserve, the falling cost means people can actually consume more.

All of this is to say that a simple comparison of the cost of my current monthly electric bill to the cost of my monthly payment for solar ignores the fact that my benefits with conventional electricity are not the same as my benefits with solar energy. By switching to solar, I not only get to stop contributing to environmental damage but I can actually be a lot more comfortable in my home - and maybe I'll even stop obsessively turning off the lights every time I leave a room...

Fred Korematsu Day

2012-01-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

As a Californian and Japanese-American (fourth-generation in both cases), I'm very proud that my state now officially recognizes today as Fred Korematsu Day. I realize that some may see the proliferation of specially-designated days like this as political correctness run amok, but unfortunately, it's clearly necessary - it's appalling how often I encounter people who know nothing about the Japanese-American internment. It's particularly scary given the current political climate where it seems like many in Washington believe "national security" should trump civil liberties.

Brief History Lesson
For those who don't know what I'm talking about, between 1941 and 1945, after the bombing of Pearl harbor, the United States government forcibly removed over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from their homes on the Pacific coast and placed the majority in 10 "camps" in the western interior of the country (I put "camps" in quotes because although they were euphemistically referred to as internment camps, I really think "prison" is the the proper word for an institution surrounded by barbed wire where you are shot if you try to leave). Over two-thirds of the prisoners were American citizens, including my grandparents. Although the Japanese community was rounded up in the name of 'national security', not a single person of Japanese ancestry was ever convicted of spying or treason, and ironically, Japanese American men were later allowed to join the army (to fight in Europe) and their unit, the 100th Battalian/442nd Regimental Combat Team, became one of the most decorated units in history. Fred Korematsu was a Californian who refused to obey the order to report to the assembly centers; similarly, in Washington and Oregon, Gordon Hirabayashi and Minoru Yasui defied the curfew imposed on Japanese individuals. All three cases went to the Supreme Court, where they lost at the time, but those convictions were finally overturned in the 1980s.

If you are not familiar with this chapter of U.S. history, the National Asian American Telecommunications Association has a great site, Exploring the Japanese American Internment through Film and the Internet, and there's also a cool Digital History site. Personally, I learned a lot about the internment when I was younger by reading the personal stories of internees, such as Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family, and Nisei Daughter.

Fluctuating enrollments

2012-01-24T16:00:00.000-08:00

For the last three semesters, I've taught one or two sections of the Data Analysis course with 75 students in each section (yes, this is an upper-division course and yes, I think it's insane). I teach the class with team-based learning (which I realized I haven't written about much - will put that on the To Do list), so there is still a lot of class discussion; from my perspective, the main problem with having 150 students is how long it takes me to grade the exams and papers (yes, I give essay exams and assign two papers, though one of the papers is supposed to be only about four pages). When I originally decided to teach the class with TBL, it was partly because of the material, which lends itself quite well to the TBL format of having students work on complex application exercises. But it was also partly because I knew the classes would be so large and working in teams seemed like a good way to still have lots of student interaction and class discussion.

However, this semester, my enrollments plummeted: I think I will have 36 students in one section and 24 in the other. I'll talk about why enrollments are so low in another post but these numbers have me wondering how this semester will differ from the past. On the one hand, it doesn't really make a lot of sense for me to spend much time re-vamping the class to take advantage of the smaller size, since I believe enrollments will be back up in the 70 range next semester. On the other hand, a part of me feels like I should be able to 'teach better' with such small classes and I feel a bit guilty if I don't even try. On the other, other hand, I still feel like TBL is the best way to teach this material so why 'fix' what ain't broke? Maybe I should just be grateful that I won't be spending as many hours grading and leave it at that; after all, my other class is the writing class so it's not like I won't have plenty of grading to keep me busy, and it would be nice to be able to give that class more attention without killing myself.

This is going to be an interesting semester...

Having students reflect on their writing

2012-01-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

Classes started here on Wednesday so I've been working hard the last couple weeks to re-vamp my syllabi while also trying to get at least a little bit of research work done. I'll be teaching the writing class again and instead of using SWoRD, I'm planning to have students do their peer reviews using Turnitin's PeerMark system. I used PeerMark in the fall with my Econ for Teachers class and while it doesn't have SWoRD's fancy algorithm for converting reviewing scores into grades, there are a lot of things about the interface that I like. I can still require that they give both numeric scores and qualitative comments, and I can grade those reviews plus the integration with Blackboard also means I have full control over when assignments become available, can set exact due dates and times, and can even set 'adaptive release' criteria (so, for example, I can require students to view a tutorial on giving good feedback before they can access their first set of papers to review). Reviewers can also highlight things in the papers directly, and attach notes to those specific points in the paper (rather than having to say things like, "The second sentence of the third paragraph on page two is confusing").

One sort of new thing I'm trying this time around is having students write 'reflective memos' after they turn in their final draft. I say 'sort of new' because in the past, I have had students do an in-class evaluation after each assignment, where I've asked them "What has one thing you learned from the reviews you received from your classmates that you can use in the future either to improve your own writing or to be a more helpful reviewer for others?" and "What has one thing you learned from being a reviewer that you can use in the future either to improve your own writing or to be a more helpful reviewer for others?". Depending on the assignment, I'd also ask them what the most challenging aspect of the assignment was. This semester, rather than having students do these evaluations in class, I'm going to have them write a 'reflective memo' which will be due a couple days after the final draft. The instructions for the memo ask them to answer similar questions but will give them more time to think about and write out their answers. The second half of the memo will also ask them to evaluate the reviews they received (similar to the back evaluations in SWoRD) and I will use that input to grade the reviewers (though I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that yet).

I got the idea for the reflective memo from a post by Traci Gardner, who wrote a lesson plan about using draft letters (and a Faculty Focus post discussed a similar idea, interactive cover letters, a few months ago). Those examples have students turning in the letters at the same time as the paper. I thought about that but I worry that students would not give the reflection the time it deserves. Call me cynical but I am imagining a lot of students finishing their papers about five minutes before the deadline. While it might be that they would finish earlier so they would also have time to write the reflection (certainly I know that some students would), it isn't clear to me that it matters a lot whether the reflection letter is done before or after they turn in the assignment. I suppose some students could have a "now that I've turned it in, I don't want to think about it anymore" attitude, but we'll see.

Do you have your students read economics blogs?

2012-01-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

Now that you've seen what I said in Chicago, let me talk a little about the rest of the panel... First, I have to say that I was fairly anxious about it beforehand, largely because my blog is very different from the other blogs represented and I had no idea what the other panelists were going to say. I knew I was going to speak first and figured that either would be a very good thing or a very bad thing; I think it turned out to be good (I felt a bit bad for Jodi Beggs, who went last and had the tough job of trying not to repeat too much of what the other panelists said but I thought she did a very nice job with that). Of the other panelists, Jodi was probably the most concretely useful as she talked a bit about nuts and bolts things like using RSS readers to keep up with multiple blogs, as well as the pros and cons of using blogs in teaching economics.

That balance ended up being particularly nice because Steve Levitt and Alex Tabarrok presented two very different sides of using blogs. I thought it was a bit odd that the first thing Levitt said was, "I had never thought about using blogs to teach economics until I was asked to be a part of this panel" - on the one hand, I suppose that might be the position many audience members were in (i.e., they were at the session in part to find out more) but on the other hand, it immediately raised the question (at least in my head): then why was he there (other than to draw people in with the big name)? Another thing that seemed a bit odd was when he said that he thought requiring students to read economics blogs is "misguided" because so much of what gets published on blogs is not "right". That is, bloggers often write off the top of their head and so at least some of what they write ends up being incorrect. That could be confusing for students and it would be better to have them read more developed ideas, such as peer-reviewed work.

While I understand his point, I really don't agree at all. Fortunately, Alex addressed this a bit when it was his turn, pointing out that the open nature of blogs means that mistakes don't last long, and the back and forth among economics bloggers is modeling exactly the kind of economic thinking that we want our students to see. Jodi further added that it is important to structure assignments well - you don't want to just tell your students 'go read some blogs' without any discussion of what they are reading. Jodi also talked a little about reading (and having students read) a variety of blogs, by writers with different viewpoints and backgrounds.

Levitt also mentioned that in the course of writing his textbook, he went back through the archives of the Freakonomics blog, expecting to find lots of posts he could use to highlight various concepts. But what he found is that there weren't that many posts that were useful for talking about cost curves or any of the other abstract models that are so common in intermediate micro texts. One might think this would lead to some questioning about the relevance of those models but instead, he seemed to see that as another reason not to have students read blogs; i.e., if blogs aren't really connected to what students are learning in class, students don't need to be reading them. It didn't seem to occur to him that the problem might be with what students are learning in class... (Peter Dorman, who offers a less flattering view of the panel, notes the oddity of this as well)

Since I don't teach a lot of the typical models in my classes, I haven't had much of a problem finding blog posts that are related to what we discuss in class. But the way I typically have students read economics blogs is also highly directed - I have students read specific posts that I have found, that bear some relevance to specific concepts. That means I sometimes use posts that are not incredibly recent but although I send students to one specific post in a blog's archives, I've noticed that at least some students (usually those with an inherent interest in economics in the first place) will start looking around that blog and reading on their own. It is not uncommon for students to come in a few days or weeks later and ask me about something that they just read on the Freakonomics or Marginal Revolution blog, blogs they started reading regularly after the original assignment.

Do you have students read economics blogs for your classes? Feel free to explain how you do it in the comments...

Having students blog

2012-01-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

[The Chronicle article about the AEA session made it sound like I talked a lot about having students blog but it was really only the last few minutes of my presentation. I wasn't originally even going to talk about that at all (what I posted the other day was all I originally planned to say) but Brad Delong had to cancel so I added more stuff. So here's what I had to say about students blogging...]

I did want to take a few minutes to talk about an entirely different aspect of using blogs in the classroom and that is having students blog. I actually started blogging originally because I was considering having students blog for one of my classes and I figured the best way to learn how this blogging thing works was to do it myself. My perspective is that blogging can be a relatively easy way to get students to do more writing, which is something that has become increasing rare at my university since our classes keep getting bigger. Blogging typically isn’t something that you’re going grade the same way you would grade normal papers – the idea is simply to get students engaging with the material so you might ask them to write about their reaction to readings or to class discussion. Since it won’t be graded for content or style, some faculty may think, well, then what’s the point, but one way to think about it is that student blogging can be a type of formative assessment; that is, it’s low-stakes but it gives you feedback on where your students are at. So by reading what your students write, even if it’s not graded, you can get an idea of what they are thinking (or if they are thinking). And because blog posts are inherently public, many students do still take it more seriously than you might expect for a low-stakes assignment, because they know that someone other than the professor may actually read it – and that can be reinforced if you have students read each other’s blogs and comment on them.

I only had students blog one semester, and it wasn’t really a typical economics class (it was a course for teachers), so I’m not the most super-qualified person to talk about this but if anyone is interested, I did want to at least offer up a few resources. One is a book by Will Richardson, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Richardson gives lots of great advice about getting started with blogs. I'd also suggest checking out edublogs.org, which is a blog platform - so you can have your students create blogs on their site - but more importantly, it's a community of teachers who are having their students blog. So there's lots of information about how to do it from people who are actually doing it themselves.

*** I will add here that since my university just moved to Blackboard 9, which can host blogs and wikis, I am considering giving student blogging another shot, maybe next year. Stay tuned!

Why I blog about teaching (and you should too!)

2012-01-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

[What follows is an edited version of the first two-thirds of my presentation for the AEA panel on "Using Blogs to Teach Undergraduate Economics" (the last third was about having students write blogs, which I'll be posting soon)]

For those of you who are wondering who the heck I am, let me start by explaining that my blog is somewhat different from the other blogs up here in that I don't think of it as first and foremost an economics blog, I think of it as a teaching blog. That is, I generally write more about teaching issues, not economics issues, though the classes I happen to teach are economics classes.

From my perspective, there are two types of blogs that are relevant to my teaching: economics blogs and academic blogs. When I say economics blogs, I mean blogs written by economists where the primary focus is discussion of economic concepts and/or commentary on economic issues, such as the other blogs represented on this panel today. As an economics instructor, I use economics blogs both to keep myself up to date on what’s going on in the world, and as a source of material for classes. I often use examples from economics blogs to illustrate concepts in class, or have my students read economics blogs and then discuss or write about what they read.

There’s also a small sub-set of economics blogs that are specifically focused on teaching economics – I would put Jodi’s blog in this category, as well as a handful of others. These blogs specifically highlight current events or examples from media and other sources and discuss how they can used to teach different economic concepts.

By ‘academic blogs’, I mean blogs that focus on life in the academy – for example, ProfHacker on the Chronicle of Higher Ed website, the Teaching Professor, or any of the many blogs on the InsideHigherEd site. These generally revolve around teaching issues that are common to all disciplines, like assessment, class management, student complaints, etc. There are probably a disproportionately large number of academic blogs focused on technology (probably not a big surprise, given the medium), but there are also a lot that are simply academics writing about what they do in the course of their jobs as academics. The focus isn’t really on teaching subject content, like with the teaching-oriented economics blogs, but on broader issues of pedagogy and issues that arise for all of us who are teachers and academics in general. As economics instructors, these blogs provide access to a community of educators where we can find out how others deal with teaching issues that we all deal with.

As consumers of blogs, I think reading and commenting on both these types of blogs can help us be better teachers but I particularly wanted to talk about academic blogs because I think those are less well-known to most economists and yet from a teaching perspective, I think they can be invaluable. And that’s because most economists don’t typically spend a lot of time talking to each other about teaching. Most of us don’t get any training in how to teach and we just have to figure it out on our own. So academic blogs provide a way to at least connect with other teachers, and given that there are a lot of issues that are universal to all teachers, I think that we have a lot to learn from academic bloggers, regardless of what discipline the blogger is in.

At the same time, I often find I am most helped by discussions with other teachers of economics because there are some pedagogical issues that present different challenges in our field. So when I started blogging, I decided that my blog would be a teaching blog in the vein of other academic blogs. I tend to write about general teaching issues – for example, I’ll write about my experience using different technologies like clickers or managing a class of 500 students. I also have a lot of posts that are specific to teaching economics, though I try to focus more on pedagogy than just giving examples of concepts, so I’ll write about the experiments I run to teach supply and demand or the specific assignments I use in my classes.

As far as I know, mine is one of only two blogs by an economist with this particular focus on teaching and academia – Steve Greenlaw also has a similar type blog, though he’s been writing even less than I have lately. So I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage anyone who is thinking about getting into blogging, and who is seriously interested in improving their teaching, to consider starting a similar type of teaching blog. And that's because while I certainly think that reading and commenting on academic blogs is a great way to connect with other educators, I also feel that being a producer of this type of blog has been just as valuable, if not more valuable, for my teaching.

That’s basically because this type of blogging is one way of engaging in reflective practice, a concept that goes back to the philosopher and educator John Dewey but more recently, was popularized by Donald Schoen who defined reflective practice as “the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning.” Reflective practice has subsequently became relatively common in some teacher training programs for K-12 but I think reflective practice can be particularly useful for teaching in higher education where we don’t get formal training and instead are mostly left to learn from our own experiences.

There’s no one ‘right’ way to engage in reflective practice but I found this model, by education professor Graham Gibbs, and thought this was a good synopsis of what I often do on my blog. My posts are often me just ‘thinking aloud’ about what I’m doing with my classes. I tend to use the writing process to think through what has worked or hasn’t worked, and why, and then consider what needs to be changed.

To a certain extent, reflective practice is already a big part of the "scholarship of teaching and learning” but for those who aren’t interested in doing formal scholarship related to teaching, blogging is a great way to informally reflect on what’s going on in your classroom and in many ways, blogs are actually much better for this than traditional journals, so let me give you a couple reasons why…

Unlike traditional journals (even teaching journals like the Journal of Economic Education), blogs allow you to document your teaching in ‘real time’ so you can capture your thoughts when the experience is still fresh in your mind. Also unlike traditional journals, it is perfectly acceptable, if not expected, for bloggers to write in the first person and discuss personal experiences. That’s obviously something we typically do NOT do when we’re writing formal papers but it’s a big part of blogging. Both of these aspects of blogs, as well as simply the nature of blogs in general, can encourage dialogue and interaction with others. And you can get feedback from your peers in a timeframe when that feedback can actually be used to immediately affect your teaching.

I’ll also add that I like that the technology of blogs allows easy organization and searching. In the past, although I would often make notes about things I wanted to do with my classes, those notes would generally get lost in the sea of papers I have in my office. But with the blog, I can ‘tag’ or categorize individual posts so when I want to go back and see what I’ve written about a particular issue, I can easily pull up everything on that subject.

On the downside, I will point out that of course, there are also some costs. The most obvious cost is simply time – when I get busy with other things, blogging is usually one of the first things I put on the back burner so there are stretches of time when I’ve only posted once or twice a month. And I do think it takes a certain personality type to do this type of blogging – I haven’t quite decided if it requires a super-sized ego or no ego but either way, for this sort of reflective blogging to be useful, you have to willing to ‘out yourself out there’ to a certain extent. You have to willing to be upfront about what doesn’t work, as well as what does. That also makes it a bit iffy for junior faculty – I think (or certainly hope) that enlightened senior faculty will appreciate that being willing to publicly discuss problems you might be having with your teaching is actually a sign of a good teacher but if there are people in your department who are not so enlightened, academic blogging might be something you want to wait to do until after getting tenure.

For me, overall, blogging has been a really fun and useful experience. Even when I haven’t had time to be super-consistent about posting, I find that I think about my teaching more because I’ll think about what I’d like to write when I do have more time. I find myself making notes and saving links to things and just generally being more aware of teaching issues because I’m always looking for ideas for blog posts. But even if you never blog yourself, I think simply reading teaching-related blogs and participating in the conversation can help pull us out of the isolated bubble that many of us teach in.

Welcome new readers!

2012-01-09T07:39:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to extend a quick hello to anyone who has found their way here because of the session about blogging at the ASSA meetings, or the Chronicle article about that session! The "New to the blog? Start here" page will give you an overview of the blog and point you to some posts you might be interested in. You can also subscribe to receive future posts via RSS, Facebook or Twitter using the links on the right-hand side of the page, or via email by entering your address in the box. Thanks for reading!

Education sessions at the ASSA

2011-12-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

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)

Jan 06, 2012 8:00 am, Hyatt Regency, Toronto
American Economic Association
K-12 Economic and Financial Literacy Education (A2)
Presiding: WILLIAM BOSSHARDT (Florida Atlantic University)
A Research Design for Measuring Student Engagement: An Evaluation of the International Economic Summit
JODY HOFF (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco)
JANE LOPUS (California State University-East Bay)
Impact of a High School Personal Finance Course on Student Attitudes
ANDREW T. HILL (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
BONNIE MESZAROS (University of Delaware)
ERIN YETTER (University of Delaware)
Evaluation of Cumulative Impacts of the Student Enterprise Program on Academic Achievement
JENNIFER PITZER (University of Cincinnati)
Disparities in Advanced Course-Taking: The Case of AP Economics
JOHN SWINTON (Georgia College State University)
CHRISTOPHER CLARK (Georgia College State University)
BENJAMIN SCAFIDI (Georgia College State University)

Discussants:WILLIAM BOSSHARDT (Florida Atlantic University)
GEORGE VREDEVELD (University of Cincinnati)
JAMES O'NEILL (University of Delaware)
PAUL GRIMES (Pittsburg State University)

Jan 06, 2012 10:15 am, Hyatt Regency, Regency A
American Economic Association
The Effects of Financial Education and Financial Literacy (A2)
Presiding: B. DOUGLAS BERNHEIM (Stanford University)
How Financial Literacy Affects Household Wealth Accumulation
JERE BEHRMAN (University of Pennsylvania)
OLIVIA MITCHELL (University of Pennsylvania)
CINDY SOO (University of Pennsylvania)
DAVID BRAVO (Universidad de Chile)
Financial Education and Timely Decision Support: Lessons from Junior Achievement
BRUCE CARLIN (University of California-Los Angeles)
DAVID ROBINSON (Duke University)
Financial Knowledge and Financial Literacy at the Household Level
ALAN GUSTMAN (Dartmouth College)
THOMAS STEINMEIER (Texas Tech University)
NAHID TABATABAI (Dartmouth College)
Economic Implications of Financial Education in the Workplace
ROBERT CLARK (North Carolina State University-Raleigh)
MELINDA MORRILL (North Carolina State University-Raleigh)
STEVEN ALLEN (North Carolina State University-Raleigh)

Discussants:JUSTINE HASTINGS (Brown University)
WILLIAM WALSTAD (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
URVI NEELAKANTAN (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)
ANNAMARIA LUSARDI (George Washington University)

Jan 06, 2012 12:30 pm, Hyatt Regency, Atlanta
National Association of Economic Educators
High School through College: Economic Education and Observed Outcomes (A2)
Presiding: JOHN SWINTON (Georgia College)
High School Grade Inflation and College Outcomes
CHRISTOPHER CLARK (Georgia College)
BENJAMIN SCAFIDI (Georgia College)
JOHN R. SWINTON (Georgia College)
Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning
DAVID N. FIGLIO (Northwestern University and NBER)
MARK RUSH (University of Florida)
LU YIN (University of Florida)
Economic Education and Consumer Experience During the Financial Crisis
PAUL W. GRIMES (Pittsburg State University)
KEVIN E. ROGERS (Mississippi State University)
WILLIAM D. BOSSHARDT (Florida Atlantic University)
Exploring the Gender Gap in High School Math and Economics: Does the Gap Widen as Students Matriculate from Geometry and Algebra to Economics?
BRENT A. EVANS (Mississippi State University)

Discussants:ROGER B. BUTTERS (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
KIMMARIE MCGOLDRICK (University of Richmond)
BRIAN W. SLOBODA (University of Phoenix)
SHELBY FROST (Georgia State University)

Jan 06, 2012 2:30 pm, Hyatt Regency, Columbus KL
American Economic Association
Research on College and University Economic Education (A2)
Presiding: SAM ALLGOOD (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Why Don't Women Pursue a Major in Economics?
TISHA L.N. EMERSON (Baylor University)
KIMMARIE MCGOLDRICK (University of Richmond)
KEVIN J. MUMFORD (Purdue University)
Does Adding Intermediate Algebra as a Prerequisite for Economics Principles Courses Improve Student Success?
STEVEN BALASSI (Saint Mary's College of California)
RICHARD H. COURTNEY (Saint Mary's College of California)
WILLIAM LEE (Saint Mary's College of California)
Revisiting How Departments of Economics Evaluate Teaching
WILLIAM E. BECKER (Indiana University and University of South Australia)
WILLIAM BOSSHARDT (Florida Atlantic University)
MICHAEL WATTS (Purdue University)
"Dude, Who's Your CL Leader?" Characteristics of Effective Collaborative Learning Leaders
KIM P. HUYNH (Indiana University)
JAMES K. SELF (Indiana University)

Discussants:WENDY STOCK (Montana State University)
GEORG SCHAUR (University of Tennessee)
MICHAEL SALEMI (University of North Carolina)
JOHN SWINTON (Georgia College State University)

Jan 07, 2012 8:00 am, Hyatt Regency, Columbus IJ
American Economic Association
What Economics Should We Teach Before Students Enter College: The Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics and the AP? (A2) (Panel Discussion)
Panel Moderator: DAVID COLANDER (Middlebury College)
JAMES GWARTNEY (Floriday State University)
RICHARD MACDONALD (St. Cloud State University)
STEPHEN MARGLIN (Harvard University)
DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY (University of Illinois-Chicago)
JOHN SIEGFRIED (Vanderbilt University)
HELEN ROBERTS (University of Illinois-Chicago)

Jan 07, 2012 10:15 am, Hyatt Regency, Atlanta
National Association of Economic Educators
Financial Education for Undergraduates: Just in Time? Too Late? (A2) (Panel Discussion)
Panel Moderator: BRENDA CUDE (University of Georgia)
BRENDA J. CUDE (University of Georgia)
THOMAS L. HARNISCH (American Association of State Colleges and Universities)
ANNAMARIA LUSARDI (George Washington University)
CLIFF ROBB (University of Alabama)
WILLIAM B. WALSTAD (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Jan 07, 2012 2:30 pm, Hyatt Regency, Columbus AB
American Economic Association
Annual Poster Session on Active Learning Strategies (A2)
Presiding: WILLIAM BOSSHARDT (Florida Atlantic University)
Just in Time Teaching in Intermediate Microeconomics
DAVID ROSS (Bryn Mawr College)
The Economics of The Office
DIRK MATEER (Pennsylvania State University)
DANIEL KUESTER (Kansas State University)
Auctions
SHIZUKA NISHIKAWA (St. Mary's College of Maryland)
The Use of Popular Music to Teach Introductory Economics in a Live and Online Environment
ROD RAEHSLER (Clarion University)
Improving Community College Economics Instruction: What Can We Learn from Other Disciplines?
MARK MAIER (Glendale Community College)
Classroom Market Simulation using a Computer Network
DOUGLAS DOWNING (Seattle Pacific University)
Two Dollar Challenge: Beginning to Learn How the Other Half Lives
SHAWN HUMPHREY (University of Mary Washington)
JAREN SEID (Front Range Community College)
Teaching Dynamic Aggregate Supply-Aggregate Demand Model in an Intermediate Macroeconomics Class Using Interactive Spreadsheets
SARAH GHOSH (University of Scranton)
SATYAJIT GHOSH (University of Scranton)
Starting Point: Pedagogical Resources for Teaching and Learning Economics
JOE CALHOUN (Florida State University)
Issues in Economic Freedom: How a Topics Course Can Popularize the Dismal Science
HOWARD COCHRAN (Belmont University)
MARIETA VELIKOVA (Belmont University)
Don't Touch My Medicare
ELIZABETH PETERSON (Eastern Washington University)
CHARLOTTA EVANS (University of Utah)
Using Peer Assessment to Improve Literative Reviews in Economics
JULIE SMITH (Lafayette College)
Promoting Active Learning through Online Undergraduate Economics Journals
STEPHANIE DAVIS-KAHL (Illinois Wesleyan University)
ROBERT LEEKLEY (Illinois Wesleyan University)
MICHAEL SEEBORG (Illinois Wesleyan University)
How Does Economic Instruction Vary in Community Colleges across Four Regions?
JOHN MIN (Northern Virginia Community College)
AMBER CASOLARI (Riverside City College)
The Realm of Imperfection: Monopoly, Oligopoly and Monopolistic Competition
MARILYN COTTRELL (Brock University, Canada)
Is Your CFO Smarter Than a Sophomore? Applying Economics to University Managerial Decisions
MONICA HARTMANN (University of St. Thomas)
TeachingWithData.org: Online Resources for Bringing Data into the Classroom
LYNETTE HOELTER (University of Michigan)
GEORGE ALTER (University of Michigan)
WILLIAM FREY (University of Michigan)
JOHN DEWITT (University of Michigan)
SUZANNE HODGE (University of Michigan)
Using Macroeconomic Indicators in Managerial Decision-Making
BRIAN SLOBODA (University of Phoenix)
A Web-Based Interactive Macro-Econ Learning System
JINZHUO ZHAO (Hampden-Sydney College)
Socratic Discussion
AREERAT KICHKHA (West Kentucky Community and Technical College)
Using Collective Action Experiments to Teach the Economics of Social Issues
JAMES BRUEHLER (Eastern Illinois University)
LINDA GHENT (Eastern Illinois University)
ALAN GRANT (Baker University)
Community Based Design Approach to Computer Aided Teaching and Learning Applications
CARSTEN LANGE (California State Polytechnic University)
Utilizing Economic Modules for Undergraduate Teaching though Internship Program
MAUREEN DUNNE (Framingham State University)
MARTHA MEANEY (Framingham State University)
FAHLINO SJUIB (Framingham State University)
Big Think: A Model for Critical Inquiry in Economics Courses
ROBERT GARNETT (Texas Christian University)
KIMMARIE MCGOLDRICK (University of Richmond)

Jan 07, 2012 2:30 pm, Hyatt Regency, Atlanta
National Association of Economic Educators
Every Little Bit Counts: Factors that Influence Student Learning in Economics (A1)
Presiding: CHRISTOPHER CLARK (Georgia College)
The Effects of Community Social Capital on School Performance: A Spatial Approach
KAUSTAV MISRA (Saginaw Valley State University)
PAUL W. GRIMES (Pittsburg State University)
KEVIN E. ROGERS (Mississippi State University)
Making Extra Credit Count: Program Design, Drivers of Participation, and Impact on Student Performance
JODI N. BEGGS (Harvard University)
Does a Mandate Matter? The Impact of State Level Mandates on Economic Literacy
ROGER B. BUTTERS (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
CARLOS J. ASARTA (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
Economics Effects of Absenteeism on Exam Performance: Empirical Evidence and Implications
TIN-CHUN LIN (Indiana University-Northwest)

Discussants:JOHN R. SWINTON (Georgia College)
PAUL W. GRIMES (Pittsburg State University)
DOUG WALKER (College of Charleston)
BRENT A. EVANS (Mississippi State University)

Happy holidays!

2011-12-24T18:05:00.000-08:00

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!

Ways to avoid grading...

2011-11-29T18:51:00.000-08:00

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 of the Review of Economics of the Household, Shoshana Grossbard, posts lots of interesting links on her Facebook page, Economics of Love.
Tutor2u has put together a list of Economics teachers on Twitter (lots outside the U.S.)
And if you must think about coursework, ProfHacker had a very useful round-up of posts about evaluations.

Two more PollEverywhere suggestions

2011-11-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

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 wanted to ask clicker-type questions during a synchronous class meeting but PollEverywhere would be a way for students to submit responses from anywhere, in real time, and for everyone to see the responses immediately. You could also use it for asynchronous classes but there are probably better options (e.g., most course management systems have a way to administer polls or quizzes).

I haven't used done either of these personally so I can't speak to how well it would work but thought others might be interested...

Thank you to all Veterans, and their families

2011-11-11T16:38:00.000-08:00

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 raising a toddler in a foreign country, thousands of miles from friends and family, and by herself for months at a time while her husband is at sea. Thinking about it, and worrying about her, has driven home for me the immense sacrifices made not only by our solders but by their families. So to all who are serving, and who have served, in our armed forces, and to your families, my humble thanks...

Analogies are to teaching as...

2011-10-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

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 reminded of this the other day by Dr. Goose who uses what struck me as an awesome analogy related to the standard conservative argument for cutting taxes:

"Writing in the Wall Street Journal on the "Three Policies That Gave Us the [Steve] Jobs Economy," Amity Shlaes cites the slashing of the capital gains rate from a confiscatory 49% to 25% in 1978. Building on this evidence, she reaches the silly conclusion that "taxes on capital should always be lowered, and dramatically." One might just as easily conclude that, because a diet improved one's physique, that mealtime portions should always be dramatically lowered, too."

On the other hand, a poorly-constructed analogy can create even more confusion than you started with. Case in point: I had read about Herman Cain's 'apples and oranges' comments during the Republican debate the other night and like a lot of people, I thought he was making no sense (if you didn't hear about it, you can read the transcript and see the clip here). But somewhere in the third time I watched/read Cain's exchange with Romney, I finally realized that Cain's point is that his plan is intended to replace the federal tax structure (that's the oranges) and regardless of what one thinks we should do about that federal structure, no one is talking about any changes to state tax structures (that's the apples). The problem is that because his plan includes a sales tax, which everyone associates with state tax structures, it's not unreasonable for people to wonder how his plan would interact with the state taxes. So Cain's oranges and apples analogy was referring to who collects the tax (which is different: federal or state) but everyone else was talking about the type of tax (which is the same: sales) so his analogy seemed to make no sense.

One of the principles in How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching is about how students' prior knowledge can help (or hinder) their learning. Analogies in teaching are all about connecting new ideas to other ideas that students already understand. Do you have favorite analogies you use when teaching?

* If anyone reading this doesn't know what I'm talking about when I refer to the SAT analogy questions, well, go ask your parents...

Supply and demand without the curves?

2011-10-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

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 and/or demand on the relative scarcity, price, and quantity of particular products" and standard 12.2.5 says "Understand the process by which competition among buyers and sellers determines a market price." National standards 7 and 8 say "(Students will understand) Markets exist when buyers and sellers interact. This interaction determines market prices and thereby allocates scarce goods and services" and "Prices send signals and provide incentives to buyers and sellers. When supply or demand changes, market prices adjust, affecting incentives." On the one hand, it certainly is possible to just talk intuitively about market prices and quantities adjusting to changes in supply and demand, without using a graph of the curves; but on the other hand, it seems like the intuition is so much easier when paired with the visual of the graph. But maybe it just seems that way to me because that's how I've always done it?

Partly, I'm thinking about how difficult it seems to be for students to go from the experiment data (giving the number of buyers with different buyer values and sellers with different seller costs) to graphing the curves. It feels a bit like just a graphing problem because when I go datapoint by datapoint (for example, asking, "At a price of $5, how many sellers will be willing to sell?"), they have no trouble answering and they intuitively understand the relationship between price, buyer value or seller cost, and willingness to buy or sell. But when left to finish drawing the curve, they often get lost again, as if they just can't connect the intuition they understand to the grid in front of them.

So I'm wondering how weird it would be to try to discuss supply and demand and equilibrium price and quantity without the curves. I just don't know if it would 'work'. I'm particularly thinking about student confusion about what I think of as the 'never-ending story' problem: something happens that causes demand/supply to change (shift) and that leads to a change in price, which students then think causes demand/supply to change as they confuse shifting the curve with moving along the curve. Of course, if they actually follow that argument through, that shift should cause price to change again, which causes demand/supply to change again, etc. Since that process could just continue forever (and yet we know it doesn't in reality), there must be a flaw in that argument, and I think the curves can help clarify that flaw. I can't really figure out how I would explain what's wrong with that argument without using the curves. Yet, I think there are a lot of high school economics courses that do not introduce supply and demand curves. Do they just not do supply and demand at all (that would be my own high school experience)? Or are they talking about supply and demand without the curves somehow? If anyone has taught it that way, I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Professional Development PSA

2011-09-12T20:05:00.000-07:00

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."
- The 2012 AEA Continuing Education Program includes sessions on Advanced Interactive Teaching Methods in Economics, with Patrick Conway, University of North Carolina; Tisha Emerson, Baylor University; KimMarie McGoldrick, University of Richmond; Michael Salemi, University of North Carolina; and William Walstad, University of Nebraska. The program runs from 1:00pm on Sunday, January 8 to 5:00pm on Monday, January 9, right after the ASSA meetings in Chicago.
- The second Annual AEA Conference on Teaching Economics and Research in Economic Education will be May 30-June 1, 2012 in Boston. Proposals are due by December 1, 2011; full info here. Last year's conference was awesome - even if you don't submit anything to present, I highly recommend attending!

What was your high school economics experience like?

2011-09-07T09:49:00.000-07:00

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 does that relate to the readings (does it relate)? If you did not take economics in high school, why not (e.g., was it an elective that you chose not to take (why not?) or was it simply not offered? what state did you attend high school in)? Do you recall any economic content specifically incorporated into other classes (such as government or history)? Also note here any questions or thoughts that came up as you read through the content standards and articles.

For me, the only things I really remember about my high school economics class is learning about the different types of businesses (e.g., that corporations are "like people") and playing a stock market game, which seems to be a common experience, judging from my students' responses. I believe the requirement that all California students must take a semester of economics was adopted right before I started high school (please, no one needs to do the math); at least, I don't remember it being an elective. I really liked my teacher, who had also been my freshman history teacher; Mr. Goudy even wrote one of my college recommendation letters. I have the impression that he knew what he was doing but I just wasn't that interested in economics at the time, maybe because the emphasis seemed to be on business. I did have a strong interest in public policy (I was planning to major in International Relations) and I wonder if that economics class would have made more of an impression on me if there had been more discussion of social policy. I don't think there was a lot of math because I liked math - one of the things that drew me to economics in college was the math so I have to think my high school class wasn't quantitative at all.

When I first saw the California content standards for 12th grade economics, my first thought was, "I don't think I saw much of this in high school." My second thought was, "There is no way this is being taught in most high schools - if it were, my Principles class would be way different." That's a big part of what led me to create this Econ for Teachers class, by the way. I was also really surprised to see that economics is mentioned so explicitly in the standards for some of the early grades. For example, in Grade 1, one of the standards says, "Students understand basic economic concepts and the role of individual choice in a free-market economy," with standards about money and the work that goes into making and marketing goods and services. I'm sure we learned about money but no one mentioned the word 'economics' until many years later. Economics is mixed into the standards for later grades as well but more in the form of economic history (e.g., students learn about the economies of ancient civilizations or economic events like the Industrial Revolution) and there doesn't seem to be any connection to economics as a discipline. So I suppose it's not surprising that many students get to 12th grade and don't even realize that they already know a lot about economics.

Although California requires students take a one-semester course in government AND a one-semester course in economics, it appears that many high schools combine them into one semester, or give students the option of taking one or the other (that may reflect confusion over the state requirements, which are written sort of oddly). But I suppose half a semester is still better than in a lot of states where economics is not required at all. I assume that means that there are lots of schools that do not even offer it but that also makes me wonder: in the schools that do offer an economics course, are the teachers better? I'd be curious to hear what the high school economics experience is like in other states. Wherever you went to high school, feel free to share your experience in the comments...

Schug, Mark C., Jane S. Lopus, John S. Morton, Robert Reinke, Donald R, Wentworth, Richard D. Western. 2003. “Is Economics Your Worst Nightmare,” Social Education, 67(2), 73-78
Walstad, William. 1998. “Why it's important to understand economics,” The Region, 12(4), 22-26.
Walstad, William. 2001. “Economic education in U.S. high schools,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15 (3), 195-210.

Scheduling issues

2011-09-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

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'd have to try to carry it over to the next class, which tends to be a real momentum-killer. If the discussion did get carried over, then I'd have to figure out how to fill the remainder of that class meeting with something useful. With one 160-minute meeting each week, I've cut down on the number of topics but we should have a lot more time to really discuss the content and the pedagogy in more depth. I'm planning to give the class lots of breaks but the timing of those will be dictated by how the discussion is going. And I can 'fill in' the odd batches of time with some economics of education topics that are relevant to the course but more flexible in when/how long we discuss them.

I've also realized that a benefit of the class meeting once a week is I don't feel bad about assigning a lot of reading, since students will obviously have plenty of time to complete the reading before the next class. Most weeks they will be asked to reflect on that reading by responding to a specific discussion prompt. I had thought my campus would be upgrading over the summer to Blackboard 9.1, which has blogging features that I thought would be good for the reflections, but since the upgrade was pushed back, they are just posting them in a Discussion Board. I don't think it's not ideal for generating discussion (ironically) but didn't get my act together soon enough to work out having them create their own blogs through an outside site.

Now that the semester is under way, I'm more concerned about the fact that the class is in the evening than once a week. It's been a long time since I taught an evening course and I'm worried about keeping my energy up at a point in the day when I'm used to winding down (not to mention that I'll be getting home around the time I'm using heading to bed). I assume the students will be fine but I'm curious to see if there's any noticeable difference in their energy. If anyone has advice about how to stay energized for an evening course like this, please share!

Back-to-school ideas

2011-08-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

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 can also imagine using children's books as the basis for an assignment for older students (for example, give them a list of the books and have them identify the key economic concepts associated with each, thus reinforcing the idea that economics is everywhere).
Tutor2u describes a first-day "golf" game to see if students are familiar with current events, using an included powerpoint file (note: the file provided with that post focuses on the U.K. and European Union but questions could easily be adapted for American students). The general set-up for the game would work well for any team contest: each question has four answer choices and students can choose to submit only one response (an 'eagle' if they get it correct), or two possible answers (a birdie if one of the two is correct), or three answers (for par). If none of their answers are correct, they get bogeys. Looks like a neat approach!
If you aren't on the tch-econ mail-list (why aren't you?), you missed Bill Goffe's message about a set of videos by Dr. Stephen Chu (a cognitive psychologist) on how to study effectively. Chu uses cognitive science, what we know about how people learn, to explain not only what students should do but why. These would be great to show and discuss with college freshmen, though I also think they'd be useful to students at any level. The next time a student asks you how to do well in your class, I'd suggest pointing them to these videos.

Other peer reviewing tools

2011-08-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

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 mention below; what follows are my impressions based largely on what I've seen while playing around with them, and what I've heard from other people.

*** Note: If you don't care so much about having students do peer review (like if you are having students do writing assignments where the emphasis is more on the content and not so much the writing itself), Bill Goffe pointed out a site called SAGrader, also mentioned in a recent Chronicle article, that can automate grading of essays. It doesn't look like they have any economics assignments in their library so you'd have to work with them to create the assignments and rubrics but it looks like it could be pretty great for those teaching large classes.

Option 1: Turnitin's PeerMark
If your campus uses Turnitin, this seems like the best option for peer review of writing assignments. Most faculty are probably already familiar with (or have heard of) Turnitin's plagiarism detection tools, now called OriginalityCheck. The PeerMark tool is integrated with OriginalityCheck, and another tool called GradeMark (I'm not sure if a campus can subscribe to one of these tools and not the others, or if they are always integrated; we have all three at my school, integrated through Blackboard). Even if you aren't interested in peer reviewing, the GradeMark tool is kind of neat too - you can set up grading rubrics and it's pretty easy to insert your comments. With PeerMark, the students submit their files online and the system can either assign reviewers randomly or you can assign them manually, or students can even select which papers they review (or you can use a mix of all three). You can decide how many reviews each student must do and can make the papers and reviews anonymous (or not); there is also an option to allow (or not) students who did not submit a paper to still review. You can set up both open-ended comment prompts and scale response questions (i.e., discrete categories, like a 1 to 5 scale) for the reviewers. The interface also allows comments to be inserted at specific points in the paper, similar to comments in Microsoft Word if you're familiar with those (so, for example, you can just insert "This sentence needs a comma" right at the sentence instead of "The second sentence of the third paragraph on the first page needs a comma"). The instructor sets the dates and times when papers are due, when they become available to reviewers and when reviews become available to authors.

PeerMark has a way to just give students full credit for reviews that meet certain criteria (i.e., all review questions are answered and you can set minimum length requirements for open-ended questions), or you can grade them manually. You could also have students 'back evaluate' the reviews separately (I'd probably use a survey in Blackboard) and use those to grade reviews, or be part of the grade. It would also technically be possible to use the reviewers' scores on scale questions as part of a writing grade for the authors (that is, similar to what SWoRD does, though you'd have to do the calculations yourself) but from what I can tell, you'd have to do some cutting and pasting to get the scores out and into a spreadsheet.
Pros: Like SWoRD, PeerMark automates a lot of the process (assigning reviewers, etc.) so students can get/give feedback from multiple peers but in contrast to SWoRD, the system has a lot of flexibility in terms of setting options and students can easily insert comments and mark up the papers directly.
Cons: Only available if your campus already uses Turnitin.

Option 2: Google Docs
Profhacker has a post about using Google Docs Forms to run a peer-review writing workshop. Although that post is talking about an in-class workshop, I think everything would apply to out-of-class reviewing as well. The basic gist is students submit their papers via Google Docs, then use a Google Doc Form to complete their reviews. Forms allow for open-ended comment prompts as well as questions with discrete choice responses and Form responses are recorded in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Things wouldn't be quite as automated as with PeerMark - the instructor would have to match up papers with reviewers and you'd have to manually keep track of whether students met deadlines but on the other hand, the review comments will already be collected for you so if you want to use the scores for grading in some way, that should be easier.
Pros: Google Docs is free to both the instructor and students, and review comments and scores are recorded in a spreadsheet so you can manipulate them relatively easily. If you want to use the reviewer comments and scores to create grades, you could create your own algorithm but have a lot more flexibility with things like deadlines than with SWoRD.
Cons: The process is not as automated as other options; for example, if you want student papers to be anonymous, you'll have to figure out a way to do that outside the system (maybe have students create pseudonyms they use all semester?).

Option 3: Calibrated Peer Review
This is the option I am least familiar with but the general idea is that before reviewing their peers' work, students must first evaluate some sample essays and they get feedback on how good a job they do with those evaluations. From what I can tell, the calibration exercises require students to respond to discrete-choice questions (e.g., 'Does the essay have a clear thesis statement? yes or no'). The feedback they get is then a score of how many questions they answered 'correctly' (i.e., with the same answer as the professor), along with any additional comments the instructor wants to add about specific questions. Once students pass the calibration exercises, they review three of their peers' papers (I'm not sure if you can set it to be more or less than three) and they must review their own paper as well. I don't think it's possible to have students respond to open-ended review questions; it looks like all the review prompts require a discrete response. The system does generate writing and reviewing scores that could be used toward grades. To get the writing scores, the reviewers' responses to the reviewing questions are weighted based on how students did on the calibrations (higher calibration score, more weight given to that student's actual reviews). The system also generates a reviewing score for students by comparing their responses to the weighted average of the other reviewers of the same paper, plus it generates a self-assessment score that compares a student's self-evaluation to the other reviewers. Because I haven't used CPR myself, I don't know if the scoring has any of the same issues as SWoRD but my assumption is that the calibration stage means there is more consistency across reviewers so scores should be more consistent as well.
Pros: CPR gives students lots of guidance for being good reviewers (which ultimately, should mean more useful feedback for the writers). I should say that feeling ill-equipped to give useful reviews was one of my students biggest complaints so this aspect of CPR is really appealing. The way the writing and reviewing scores are generated seems more transparent than in SWoRD.
Cons: No open-ended comments from reviewers; major prep cost to set up the calibration examples (though
presumably a one-time fixed cost).

Personally, I will probably use PeerMark in the spring when I teach the writing class again, but I may try to replicate some aspects of CPR by giving students more examples of 'good' and 'bad' papers and reviews.

SWoRD follow-up

2011-08-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

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 a numeric rating of how helpful the open-ended comments were, and 5) the system uses the numeric ratings from the reviewers to generate a writing score for the authors and uses the back evaluation ratings from the authors to generate a reviewing score for the reviewers. That last step, having the writing and reviewing scores generated entirely from the students themselves, is the main benefit of SWoRD, relative to other online peer review options like Calibrated Peer Review or Turnitin's PeerMark. My opinion is that the system has some problems that make those grades somewhat suspect. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there really is any satisfactory way to automate that process.

"Bad" reviewers may not be penalized
For starters, my original understanding of how the SWoRD grading system works was incorrect. I relied on some research papers that are posted on the SWoRD site (papers published a few years ago) and the system has since been changed but that is not explained anywhere on the site. The earlier papers said that the writing grades were weighted in such a way that if the score from one reviewer was substantially different from the scores from other reviewers, that score would be given less weight. However, that is not actually the case, which I discovered when one of my better students kept bugging me about his grade on one particular assignment. When I looked at the scores, there was one reviewer who gave 1's and 2's (out of 7) to all the papers he reviewed. Since that reviewer also did not provide very helpful comments, my guess is that he was either confused about the scoring or just lazy and not taking it seriously. Based on my original understanding, I thought the fact that his scores were so much lower than the other reviewers should have lowered that student's 'accuracy' reviewing grade and his scores should have been given a lot less weight for the students he reviewed. Neither of those things happened (his reviewing grade was actually somewhat higher than the class average and his scores definitely reduced the writing score for those papers). When I asked the SWoRD team about this, the response was that the "accuracy" part of the reviewing grade is based on rank orderings, not a comparison to the other ratings; that is, as long as the reviewer is giving higher ratings to 'better' papers and lower ratings to 'worse' papers, the system considers the ratings to be 'accurate'. The message from the SWoRD team said that they had "decided it wasn't valid to penalize someone for using a different range of the scale because often they were actually the most valid rater, with other students rating too high overall. If the instructor decides [a student] was unreasonably harsh, the thing to do is give [that student] a lower reviewing grade." On the one hand, I understand why they made that change, since I definitely noticed that my better students tended to give somewhat lower scores, on average (along with better comments justifying their scores), than their classmates. On the other hand, if I have to go through and scrutinize all the scores to see if students are scoring appropriately, that seems to defeat the whole purpose in having the scoring algorithm in the first place.

Incomplete information for back evaluations
Based on my reading of the research papers, in the earlier versions of the system, students could not submit back evaluations until after they turned in their second draft but they did see both the comments and the numeric scores from the reviewers (requiring them to turn in the second draft before doing the back evaluations was a way to make sure students actually had to process the comments before evaluating them). In the current version, students do not get to see the numeric reviewing scores until after they have submitted their back evaluations. Again, I can understand why this change was made; I can certainly imagine that some students would 'retaliate' for low reviewing scores by giving low back evaluation scores. But on the other hand, I saw many instances where reviewers gave scores that were not consistent with, or explained by, their open-ended comments (for example, a vague comment that 'everything looks fine' followed by a score of 3 or 4 out of 7). In my opinion, those reviewers should be given lower reviewing scores but the only way to accomplish this would be if the instructor goes in and manually reviews all the scores and comments, again defeating the purpose of having the scoring automated.

Reviewing itself is useful (but I'm still learning)
Given the problems with the scoring, I was expecting more negative comments from the students at the end of the semester but evaluations of the system were actually relatively positive, though less than half thought I should continue to use it in the future. Many of the critical comments were about the reviewing process itself (e.g., wanting more guidance for how to do good reviews, feeling like classmates didn't take it seriously enough or didn't give useful feedback, saying they should only review three papers instead of four or five, etc.), rather than the SWoRD system. The SWoRD-specific comments had to do with things like the deadlines being 9pm which was hard for students to remember (this isn't something the instructor can change), or the files being converted to PDFs so it was hard to refer to specific points in the papers (versus hard copies or Word docs that could be marked up). But students did seem to see the value in the reviewing, with several students commenting that doing the reviews helped them see where their own papers needed improvement.

So to sum up, I do think that the SWoRD system can still be useful for some instructors; if nothing else, it provides an infrastructure for students to submit papers, have reviewers randomly and anonymously assigned, and give/get feedback from multiple readers. You don't have to use the scores that the system generates. I particularly think SWoRD could be good for shorter assignments, where the evaluation criteria are relatively objective (and thus reviews might be more consistent). But if you aren't going to use the grades generated by the system, I think there may be other, better tools that could be used to facilitate peer reviewing; I'll talk about some of those options in my next post...

Getting off-course

2011-08-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

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't learn anything in Econ 101. So I've largely kept up with things this summer through blogs written by economists, though sadly, the news isn't any less depressing when analyzed accurately...

But regardless of my somewhat basic grasp on macro policy, one thing that has crossed my mind a few times this summer is that I hope economists are talking with their classes about what's happening, even if it isn't directly related to the course material. It seems to me that the issues the country has been grappling with - how important is debt reduction, why hasn't the unemployment picture been improving and what needs to be done about that, etc. - are things that our majors should be aware of, even if they don't happen to be enrolled in a macro class. Perhaps even more important, they should be thinking critically about what is going on and what the media is saying about it. For example, does it make any sense to them that the stock market plunge was 'a result' of a the S&P downgrade, as many news analysts have been saying? Does it make any sense to them that huge cuts in government spending will somehow reduce unemployment, as some politicians have been claiming?

When I was teaching Principles, it wasn't a big deal to bring in current events, even if they were macro issues and the class was micro (since usually, macro issues can still be discussed in terms of core principles like incentives or supply and demand). But when teaching more narrowly-focused upper-division classes where the course subject may have nothing to do with the events that are happening, it seems harder to justify taking class time to talk about things that are not directly course-related. Still, it seems to me that we should, at least given the historic magnitude of what's going on right now. I'm not sure how I'll fit it in to my data analysis course in the fall but probably when the 'super-committee' comes out with its recommendation later this year, I will try to spend at least a part of a class talking it. What about you? Do you ever take class time to discuss 'off-topic' current events?