Category Archives: All

Can you get something for nothing?

There is no question that higher education in 2020 is facing serious problems.  The proximate cause is the current Pandemic recession, which will lead to significant cutbacks in state support for public colleges & universities, and also serious decreases in … Continue reading

Posted in Economics, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Anything we do as teachers that inhibits student learning is a failure!

I believe my primary responsibility as a teacher/faculty member is to facilitate my students learning.  If anything I do inhibits student learning, that’s a failure on me.  Student learning depends in large part on the course learning environment.  Too many … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning | 2 Comments

Is teaching more than content delivery?

Good teaching should be. As I prep for classes this year, I feel meta—I feel like I may be seeing or understanding things more clearly than before. Student and instructor enthusiasm is high at the beginning of the term.  As … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning | 1 Comment

Qualitative Analysis of Econ201online

Last semester (as readers of this blog know), I taught my first fully online course, Principles of Macroeconomics.  I also taught a second section in my traditional face-to-face mode.  As part of the assessment of my online course, I asked … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning, The Experiment | 4 Comments

Online Teaching & Learning: It’s harder than it looks

It has been said that no plan survives first contact and that has certainly been my experience teaching online this semester.  I thought I was well prepared to teach this course, as well prepared as anyone can be who has … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning, The Experiment | 2 Comments

Video Clips for the Online Course

The online course seemed to do worse again on the second midterm, especially on the analytical parts. I decided that I really needed to video record my class lectures on analytical topics.  I tracked down the equipment and recorded nearly … Continue reading

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Addendum

After I wrote the last post, I found I keep thinking about some of the concerns I raised there. The advantage of presenting analytic material in class (in my interactive lecture sort of way) is that I get a read … Continue reading

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Week 4 Report on my online course

Last week I was distracted by other things, so it was ironic that we began the first seriously analytical topic in my course: the theory of supply & demand.  This was one of the two topics I knew in advance … Continue reading

Posted in The Experiment, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Week 3 Report on my online course

This was a transition week as wrapped up Topic 1 and moved on to Topic 2.  The last step for Topic 1 was that I divided the class into groups of three students, and each group had the responsibility of … Continue reading

Posted in The Experiment | 3 Comments

Second Week Report on my online course

This week was harder than week one.  I’m still spending as much as twice the time in prepping and teaching my face-to-face section in my online section.  I’m hoping this will diminish once we get up to speed. One lesson … Continue reading

Posted in The Experiment, Uncategorized | 4 Comments