Economics and Crises: Teaching my first general education course (Part 2)

It is hard to believe, but after this week we will be at the midpoint of the semester.  My general education course, Economics and Crises in Nepal, which covers social science methods, continues to go smoothly.  In the last post I provided an overview of the course outline and intent with a quick note on the topics selected by the students.

This post addresses the first section of the course in which we discuss selecting the research topic and developing a hypothesis.  The final component of this section is a writing assignment that will eventually become the Introduction to the course's final paper.

The first two weeks of the course focus on research statements and hypotheses.  As mentioned in the last post, students are pushed to select a research topic in the first week which is refined in the second.  In the second week of classes, we went from a broad topic noted in the last post, to a clear, focused, and specific research question accompanied by a hypothesis grounded in basic economic theory and a strong rationale for the question.  Students presented their work in Assignment #1.  The rubric for Assignment #1 is here.

Class discussions of clear, focused, and specific research questions and corresponding hypotheses and rationales are summarized in my PowerPoint slides found here:

Lecture 3
Lecture 4

I implement several in-class worksheets to encourage deliberate thinking about Assignment #1 (found in the PPTs) and familiarize students with the grading rubric by having them peer review the drafts of two other students' Assignment #1.  Additionally, I share a few introductions from papers I authored so that students can see examples of a final product.

The largest challenge is communicating economics principles in a course without an economics prerequisite.  Since methods is the focus of the course, I cannot spend an inordinate amount of time on the principles.  I am keeping it simple by introducing the principles they will apply in their research papers: scarcity, opportunity cost, making decisions at the margin, and response to incentives.  Next, I introduce students to the economic way of thinking about policy by reading selected chapters from Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.  Students are given discussion questions to guide their reading and we have a lively class discussion lasting about 30 minutes on the reading.  Finally, to avoid the common reaction of recommending throwing government (our) money at any problem, throughout the semester we are reading chapters from Chris Coyne's Doing Bad by Doing Good.  This book highlights the importance of thinking beyond the first stage of aid (and the dangers of not doing so), considering the seen and the unseen, and addressing policy making from an economic perspective.  Class discussions accompany these assigned chapters. 

Take aways:
1) I will likely adopt a modified approach of this course in my econometrics course, particularly the deliberate discussion and development of the research question and hypothesis.  After one assignment, my INQ 260 students are proving to be better than the typical senior in my econometrics course with respect to the issues covered in Assignment #1 despite being on average less experienced writers and economists.  I have incorrectly been relying on prior courses to cover the details of good writing and research.

2) The chemistry of the class is great.  Students ask questions, work with each other, focus on in-class assignments, and by all appearances seem to enjoy the topic, each other, and the course.

In the next post I will cover the next section of the course: The Literature Review

Happy writing,   

Economics and Crises: Teaching my first general education course (Part 1)

This semester I am teaching a course in the Roanoke College Intellectual Inquiry curriculum (the name of our general education program.)  My course is titled INQ 260EC Economics and Crises. All students must take two of the INQ 260 courses, as required by the general education curriculum. These courses focus on teaching social science methodology and require significant writing. My course was approved by the Faculty last spring and I am teaching it for the first time this semester.

Given this is my first time teaching a course outside of the Economics Program I am a bit anxious, but I thought that I would create a series of blog posts about its progress for my pedagogy pals and for my future reference.

This post will focus on the content and purpose of the course with some specific comments about the first week (last week.)

The INQ 260 courses focus on a question and teach social science methodology from the perspective of the faculty member.  I proposed my course (and it was accepted) as one that investigates how economists study crises. These crises include poverty, war, natural disaster and may vary from semester to semester depending on current events.  Each semester, I pick a country and a data set to focus daily lectures and lessons and from which students will frame their semester research project.

This semester I am using Nepal with a focus on the devastation created by the April 25, 2015 earthquake.  Nepal is ripe with other crises for students to study as well, including poverty, violence against women, and child health issues. 

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) began the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program in 1984 which conducts surveys in developing countries that focus on women and children's issues like fertility, family planning, and health.  Currently there are five DHS data sets available for Nepal, including the 2015-2016 survey which was completed after the earthquake. The DHS data sets are commonly used in the development and health economics literature, and the data sets pertaining to Nepal will be the primary data resources for my course.  As a complement to the DHS data, the program offers STATcompiler which is how my students, with no required statistics background, will create visual analytics for their research project.

This semester, we will cover the steps of the research process including:
1) Creating a research question and hypothesis
2) Conducting a literature review
3) Using and analyzing data to address the research question
4) Interpreting the results
5) Using the results to frame policy

The end result is an original research paper for each student based upon the question they devise in the first few weeks.

Want to know more about the course details? You can see my syllabus here and lecture slides from Lecture 1 and Lecture 2. 

So far students have selected broad research topics which we will narrow this week. Students began selecting their broad topic after Lectures 1 and 2 (provided above) and with the help of the summary of key findings from the 2015 DHS-Nepal.  I am pleased with the range of issues students have selected:

A few additional notes on the first week:
1) Of the 25 students, 22 are women! Given I teach economics, this ratio is usually the reverse.
2) The students come from many different majors, although a few are economics majors and are using the course as an elective in our major.
3) Encouragingly, I had 100% attendance both days of class last week.
4) Following #3, everyone did their reading and were ready for discussion (yes, only one week in, but still, YAY!)
5) Again per #3, students selected broad topics for the semester project on Thursday and each student worked diligently to make their choice.

Each week or so I will provide updates for those interested in pedagogy.  The updates will also help me formulate a pedagogy manuscript after the semester is over.  I would love to hear your feedback.

Thanks,

Economic Rockstar Interview

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a podcast with Frank Conway of Economic Rockstar. We chatted for well over an hour about economic pedagogy, research interests, and running.

The interview was released recently and you can listen to it here.

Enjoy,

NETA 2014 Presentation - Using Twitter in the classroom

Earlier in the year my paper "Tweeting you way to improved #writing, #reflection, and #community" was published in the Journal of Economic Education. The paper discussed how I used Twitter to improve writing in my principles of macroeconomics course. Since then, several other economists have joined in the literature regarding using social media in the economics classroom. Data analysis regarding the effectiveness of the pedagogy remains sparse.

In an attempt to fill that void, Dr. Michael Enz and I collected data across three economics classes (two intermediate micro and one principles of macro) in an attempt to measure the effectiveness of the methods detailed in my work in my 2014 JEE article.

We are presenting some of the results from that data collection today at the National Economics Teaching Association's 10th Annual Economics Teaching Conference in San Diego.

The PowerPoint for the presentation is below.


Happy tweeting,

By demand: Printable Prezi from TMI

The same presentation that I posted earlier today is now available in a printable pdf version. A warning: it is 125 pages (yes, that is how many "slides" we went through last night).

2012 TMI Health Economics Presentation

Enjoy,