Thoughts on Intermediate Macro

Here are my initial thoughts as I review my Intermediate Macroeconomics course this semester. I wrote about my end of semester ritual here. I decided to make my reflections public this time, albeit to a very small audience. The fact that someone else could read this, even if the probability is very low, will make me think more carefully before writing.

• Switching to Obsidian was a great move. It’s nice to have everything synced on all my computers. I never have to think about where to find something. It’s easy to start work on, say, Homework 4, to get some ideas out of my head, then add more material a day later, and then polish it for posting the day after that. Obsidian (and paying for Obsidian Sync) relieved a lot of mental overhead. There’s no question that I’ll be sticking with Obsidian going forward.
• Smaller, more frequent homework is better than a small number of comprehensive homeworks. Exam performance was influenced in a positive way by posting a few straightforward applications of the lecture material on Canvas and having them do it before the next class. True, they should be reviewing the material between lectures on their own. I’m here to tell you they won’t unless you motivate them to do so. It helps in a major way.
• I should spend more time covering economic growth. I cover the short-run and monetary policy first. This year, I got caught up with all the discussion of pandemic-related policy that I didn’t have enough time to go through the Solow growth model with sufficient detail.
• It’s time to move on from teaching about the financial crisis. This generation of college students is defined by the pandemic. They have no way to relate to the events of 10-15 years earlier.
• I need to get better about dropping content. Just because I covered it before doesn’t mean I should cover it this time or in the future. Along the same lines, just because something is important doesn’t mean it should be covered in an undergrad macro course. See my comments above on the financial crisis.
• I didn’t do a good job teaching students to think in terms of lifetime utility. That’s one of the most important things to do in an intermediate macro course, and I didn’t spend enough focused lecture time making it clear to them.
• Blanchard’s book is still the best for my purposes. I do need to provide more lecture notes and practice problems when I deviate from the book’s coverage.
• I need to make more videos providing additional content for students that want to go deeper. Just because I cut it out of the in-person lecture doesn’t mean I have to completely cut it out of the class. Plus, if I’m sick in a future semester, I can use those videos as a replacement for the lecture. Mostly though I can put together some videos that students can use for exam review. They will only cover a small subset of all the material, so students won’t try to use the videos as a substitute for attending the lecture.
• I did both Zoom and in-person office hours. Zoom was way more popular. I’m going to keep doing that. I may eliminate in-person office hours altogether given the ratio of Zoom to in-person usage. I was worried that graphs would be an issue, but it mattered maybe once the whole semester.
• Excalidraw plus Obsidian is a great way to make digital economics graphs. I’m all in on that the next time I teach intermediate macro.

Last updated 2021/12/17