ECON 510 Thoughts: Spring 2022 Edition

We’re reached the end of the Spring 2022 semester. As always, I’ve completed the end-of-semester ritual I wrote about here. I’m done with the first four items, so it’s time to engage in reflection on what went well and what went poorly. Although I’ve done this for a long time, I posted my Fall 2022 semester reflections online. I’ve decided to do it again.

Major changes

There were three major changes I made this semester.

  • The final had a heavy emphasis on graphs and calculations. The earlier assessments had a greater emphasis on intuition, basic ideas, and current events. I view this as a positive development - it shifted the focus of the students away from memorizing graphs to thinking about the material. Then at the end of the semester they were able to use the graphs to help them think through the intuition. (Or so I hope.)
  • I covered economic growth earlier in the semester. I use Blanchard’s textbook, and economic growth doesn’t appear until chapter 10. The problem with teaching growth at the end of the semester is that you might run out of time. My experience is that it’s harder to cut back on growth material than it is to cut back on other topics. I moved my discussion of international macro and inflation after growth. This was a positive, as I was able to spend all the time I needed on growth, and it didn’t hurt my presentation of the other topics.
  • I moved all of the homework to Canvas. I gave them a bunch of short quizzes that did not challenge the students to think that much. The goal with the homework this semester was to help them review the important points of the lecture. This was definitely a positive. There was a dramatic reduction in the number of students that struggled to answer what I thought were basic questions straight out of the lecture.

Thinking about my last review

Here are my thoughts on my last review, in light of another semester of experience.

  • Switching to Obsidian - and paying for Obsidian Sync - was still a good move.
  • I already addressed the success of smaller, more frequent homework.
  • I spent more time covering economic growth.
  • I only briefly mentioned the financial crisis. Few students in my class were older than eight at the time of the crisis, so they just can’t relate. I don’t regret dropping that discussion.
  • I dropped content and examples regularly. This pruning improved the class.
  • I spent more time talking about lifetime utility. Clearly more work to do here.
  • I provided more notes outside the book, but there’s more work to do here.
  • I posted some additional content. I’m no longer as enthusiastic about this. Most students are worried about the main course content.
  • I ended up ditching in-person office hours entirely this semester. I think I only had one student use the in-person hours. Students in 2022 have a strong preference for online office hours.
  • Excalidraw is good for graphs. Even better is the Wacom One tablet. It’s just so much less of a burden to draw graphs with a pen than with a computer. I don’t see Excalidraw being a big part of my workflow going forward.

Last updated 2022/05/16