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• 4 years - 108 posts - Latest - RSS
• Thread: 322 Goods vs 111 No Goods

1. Economist
   2d4c
   

   There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.

   How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articular why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.

   For the record, I get excellent teaching ratings--4.9/5 in a very demanding environment, and I do it without compromising too much on the rigor of the course. I have to compromise a little bit..a lot of my students can't add and subtract. That is not an exaggeration, and I teach in a school that is way better than the U. of Oregon. OK, now I have my credentials out of the way for our resident teaching guru, I want to say the following.

   Talking about absurdly elementary concepts in front of a bunch of hung-over students who are more interested in their next networking (aka drinking) event than your class is way different from giving a talk to a bunch of academics who (1) can add and subtract and (2) are actually interested in the content of your presentation. The former is infinitely more exhausting because it feels like a performance. And it feels like a performance because very few of us are really excited about teaching very basic stuff for the nth time in a row. It was fun when I was an undergrad, but it's not fun now. Mustering enough enthusiasm about this stuff to teach well takes a lot of energy.

   An actual academic talk feels engaging by nature and does not take even close to as much energy

   1 year ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

2. Economist
   a14b
   

   The best instructors are able to inspire their students and demand rigor. I'm willing to bet that they are in the minority of highly rated instructors though. There are a lot of faculty who inspire but just deliver a show to their students. Teaching evaluations filled out by students can't let you disentangle between the two.

   We should all aspire to be the best teacher we can be, but we can game our evaluations pretty easily. And it is a lot easier to game the evaluations than it is to actually deliver first-rate material. So, they create perverse incentives. Let's just all recognize that.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 4 Jab 0 No Jab !

3. Economist
   23f6
   

   Precisely, high five for not being a moron.

   There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.

   How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articular why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.

   For the record, I get excellent teaching ratings--4.9/5 in a very demanding environment, and I do it without compromising too much on the rigor of the course. I have to compromise a little bit..a lot of my students can't add and subtract. That is not an exaggeration, and I teach in a school that is way better than the U. of Oregon. OK, now I have my credentials out of the way for our resident teaching guru, I want to say the following.
   Talking about absurdly elementary concepts in front of a bunch of hung-over students who are more interested in their next networking (aka drinking) event than your class is way different from giving a talk to a bunch of academics who (1) can add and subtract and (2) are actually interested in the content of your presentation. The former is infinitely more exhausting because it feels like a performance. And it feels like a performance because very few of us are really excited about teaching very basic stuff for the nth time in a row. It was fun when I was an undergrad, but it's not fun now. Mustering enough enthusiasm about this stuff to teach well takes a lot of energy.
   An actual academic talk feels engaging by nature and does not take even close to as much energy

   1 year ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

4. Economist
   23f6
   

   And you've lost all credibility...

   There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.

   How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articulate why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 1 No Jab !

5. 3f50
   Rep: 55

   They [standardized exams] are far from perfect for a reason. They don't test the right things like abstract reasoning, understanding the material, etc. It's usually just dumb calculations.

   I agree with you here. STEM researchers have realized many of these issues and they design assessments where the distractors are common student misconceptions, gathered from student surveys. For the most famous one, the Force Concept Inventory, I've heard several say that you can't actually teach to it. Indeed students can pass exams, where they do calculations, and not pass assessments like the FCI. For a Harvard instructor's account of this phenomena, see Mazur, "Farewell, Lecture?." Science 323.5910 (2009): 50-51, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/323/5910/50.full.pdf . For a list of these of some of these so-called "concept inventories," see https://www.physport.org/assessments/ , and for a guide to writing them, see Adams and Wieman, "Development and validation of instruments to measure learning of expert‐like thinking," International Journal of Science Education 33.9 (2011): 1289-1312, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2010.512369 .

   If I might, one point I'm trying to make here is that other disciplines have thought much more deeply about teaching than we have and we could profit from learning about their work. I'd like our discipline to follow the lead of others and not always be so inward looking, as described by Fourcade et al., "The Superiority of Economists," JEP, 2015, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.29.1.89 . Inward looking makes sense for monetary policy but not for teaching.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

6. Economist
   9504
   

   Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I bought Bain’s book because of you. We can do so much better!

   There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.

   How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articulate why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

7. Economist
   9b82
   

   Economists don't use survey data, they don't trust what people say.

   But they defend student evaluations.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 1 No Jab !

8. Economist
   efe9
   

   Tenured professors do nothing over a week, but untenured things should be blamed based on their cam footages.

   1 year ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

9. Economist
   fe67
   

   Student evaluations should simply be scrapped for the sake of retaining quality content. Modules become thinner by the year because of this. Then you wonder about the declining quality of students every year.

   9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

10. Economist
    77e0
    

    There are so many ways to screw up your teaching evaluation score by actually doing the right thing. A simple solution - report the joint distribution of evaluation score, course attendance, and grade in the course (or semester/cumulative GPA) by student. Someone who got 0's from the bottom 10% of the class (or those who never attended) but 5's from the rest shouldn't be viewed the same as someone who got 0's from the top of the class but 5's from the rest.

    If anonymity is an issue, at least report correlations and stuff like that.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

11. Economist
    97df
    

    Student evaluations should simply be scrapped for the sake of retaining quality content. Modules become thinner by the year because of this. Then you wonder about the declining quality of students every year.

    Our department moderates teaching evaluations in light of perceived course difficulty (reported by students) and class GPA. Professors get greater latitude when the latter two indicate the course is challenging.

    This seems such an obvious route for a department to take. Do most not follow this?

    9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

12. Economist
    eb34
    

    On the other hand, vice Dean of students receive more complaints because they paid pricey tuition fees but the instructor could not teach ...

    9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

13. Economist
    b0f9
    

    How on earth are you guys able to get below 3 out of 5? Do you keep forgetting to shower or something?

    9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

14. Economist
    eb34
    

    How on earth are you guys able to get below 3 out of 5? Do you keep forgetting to shower or something?

    I guess that they assume that undergrad students are as smart as PhD students. If this is true, the undergrads will not need to school.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

15. Economist
    0539
    

    In my management department, it is quite common for instructors/professors to list their teaching evals on CVs when they get like 4.8/5 or 4.9/5. But we all know the high evals come from grad inflation and teaching really easy classes. Some of those "superstar teacher" colleagues that make students play zenga to teach multinational team management, etc.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

16. Economist
    03f6
    

    Maybe you people aren't the great teachers you think you are. Most economics classes end out giving good teacher evaluations. Maybe you can ask yourself what's different about your teaching that you're singled out as worse than others.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 4 Jab 0 No Jab !

17. Economist
    09a8
    

    How on earth are you guys able to get below 3 out of 5? Do you keep forgetting to shower or something?

    I guess that they assume that undergrad students are as smart as PhD students. If this is true, the undergrads will not need to school.

    You can easily get 3/5. All you have to do is treat undergraduate students the same way that you treat responsible adults. They hate that.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 2 Jab 0 No Jab !

18. Economist
    ebb6
    

    In my experience, you need to
    -minimize uncertainty, meet their expectations
    -signal that you know them individually (in large classes, at least know the ones that attend regularly)
    -make them work regularly, don’t let your course be the easiest course (the content doesn’t have to be too hard but just keep them busy)
    - be fair. Provide all course material (including past exams). Some students may have access to it, some may not. Don’t be lazy and change your assignments and exams as much as possible every year. For exams and problem sets, provide answers. (Otherwise don’t expect them to learn from mistakes)
    - be kind. Show interest. If you don’t care about them, they will smell it easily.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

19. Economist
    7f5d
    

    these threads always started by sh1tty teachers who only try to minimize time spent

    9 months ago # QUOTE 1 Jab 0 No Jab !

20. Economist
    1a6b
    

    Its a customer satisfaction issue. They pay you and you're their b1iiitch.

    Yeah then we pay them in grades and they are our bjiiitches.

    9 months ago # QUOTE 0 Jab 0 No Jab !

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