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Teaching Tips & Tricks . BPS Doctoral Consortium 2013 Kira R. Fabrizio Boston University. “Standard” advice. Stack your teaching in one semester. Secure one prep that you can teach for many years. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Use your colleagues as resources.
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Teaching Tips & Tricks BPS Doctoral Consortium 2013 Kira R. Fabrizio Boston University
“Standard” advice Stack your teaching in one semester. Secure one prep that you can teach for many years. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Use your colleagues as resources. If you teach more than 30 students, ask for a TA. Bottom line: minimize time dedicated to teaching (subject to teaching quality constraint) in order to maximize time on research.
“Less conventional” ideas • Teaching is not just about the content • Think about the course as a student experience • Engage the students beyond absorbing the content • Get students emotionally involved in the material • Students take ownership of the course • Opportunity to inspire, change minds and lives • How can we do this? • In-class activities & simulations • Debates • Student “experts” in class • Bring yourself to class • “Make learning visible”
The “truly radical” • Change the way you think about your course material • What is the experience you want to give students? • How will the class challenge their thinking? • What are the big-picture questions you want them to ask and wrestle with? • What do you want them to walk away with after the course? • Reformat your class around these themes, incorporate research, activities, sharing, reflection that engages students more deeply with the big questions. • Adjuncts / professors of practice
A new way to conceptualize a course • The two-layered course: • 1: What engages the students • Incorporate the big picture questions, themes, and puzzles. • Get students to question their assumptions, see the world in a different way, build a genuine interest in the topic. • Bring your passion to class! • 2: The content • The tools, theories, concepts, and technical knowledge that helps to us understand and unpack those questions and puzzles. • Don’t shy away from the heavy lifting! Students appreciate rigor that helps them make sense of a puzzle. • Connecting the themes and puzzles together to a uniting framework that allows students to see all the pieces in a new way.
Example: my course on sustainability The Student Experience Connect with the students’ passion for a better world, the puzzle of how to square profitability and environmental protection. • What responsibility does a firm have for its impact on the environment? Why? How? All firms? • Debates on “fracking”, McDonalds, Cape Wind provide opportunities for engaged learning, analysis, persuasion, ethics. • Simulations, student experts, very selected visitors The Content • Frame discussions, conclusions, tools in economics: externalities, competition, incentives, information asymmetry. • Link varied examples back to coherent theoretical framework.
Does this conflict with conventional thinking? • Isn’t my primary goal to minimize teaching time and get more research done? • Yes! And being a better teacher can make that happen. • The two-layer approach does NOT take more time. Especially if you are starting from scratch. • In fact, you will expend less effort convincing the students that what you are saying is interesting… so they will be more eager to learn! • A good classroom experience will make your life easier and more productive, teaching can be a positive in your career, not something to minimize.
