This is going to be an interesting class to teach. It is the most lively undergraduate course I have taught in at least three years. They (or some of them) are very talkative, and they (or some of them) are very interested in challenging me.
Whether I do a good job or a bad job this semester will thus depend on whether I can shape their challenges and their talking into a form that will advance the narrative flow I intend the lectures to follow, or whether they will chase down blind alleys.
Posted by DeLong at August 31, 2003 11:45 AM | TrackBack
Query: Is it possible your students are excited and interested in challenging you because you blog?
I wonder if other professors who blog are facing a similar phenomenon...
Posted by: mitchell freedman on August 31, 2003 01:34 PMThe key to teaching is to help students help themselves identify and aviod blind alleys. It amazes me some of the connections students try to make, and its often difficult understanding how they got there, to keep them from doing it again.
Posted by: Taggert J Brooks on August 31, 2003 02:05 PMI think it is easy to understand that students get wrong "information" about economics all the time. I was in 100B when Prof. DeLong got back from D.C. and challenged him (in my mind, not in the large lecture hall, though). The sources I had were about as credible as all the "conservative" commentators are.
Yesterday NPR interviewed Alan Colmes and Al Franken, and I believe it was Colmes who said the conservatives reduce everything to a bumpersticker slogan. And because we know about the evils of Liberalism (right?), what, other than knowing that the market will take care of it, do we really have to learn? (You can make a similar argument for those who know about the evils of the market.)
But this is 101B, and these students are probably much better students than I was. They'll get it.
Posted by: Wolf on September 1, 2003 07:37 AMHow much of the class material will you be posting? You mentioned earlier that you admired MIT OpenCourseWare-- do you intend to follow that example to any extent?
Posted by: verbal on September 1, 2003 10:21 AMWhen I was an undergraduate, I disliked quiet classes with no student comments, but what I disliked more, MUCH more, was when one obnoxious kid would always speak. Always. Every day, long-winded, annoying. It would drive me crazy and the other students too - they would sigh and look around like, "can you believe this guy?"...
There was usually one in every class, and the profs didn't handle it enough for my tastes. I thought they should cut them off a little faster. I thought just saying, "let's let someone else comment" once or twice would do it.
Posted by: andrew on September 1, 2003 08:27 PM