Comment on Lessons from learner-center syllabus and thinking about critical pedagogy by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Hi Siddharth,

Thanks for your comment. There are several problems that prevent to change the format of the class:

1) Econ 2005 is a core introductory course that covers main concepts and theories of microeconomics and as a result the nature of the course is in a way that we need to test students through hw/exams to become sure that students understand most of theories and concepts. Having a final project will give a chance for each student or group of students to focus only on narrow issues with use of several theories they have learned through the course so even if I can do that, the weight of the project could not be above 10-15% of the whole grade and as a result I think the challenge is still there.

2) As a graduate student, I don’t have freedom to change the format of the course. The course format is determined by Econ department and there are several sections of econ2005 in every semester. I have some freedom to change the weight of tests/hw or add a small project but I don’t have freedom to put for instance 40% of the whole grade for a final project.

3) Most of my students are either freshmen or sophomores and for them it is also very hard to do a project for a course such as principle of microeconomics.

4) In addition, I myself found doing project for elective course so useful and helpful for learning but not for core/theoretical course and I think having evaluation based on hw/exams work better for a course like econ2005. The challenge in my mind is to find a way to stimulate learning environment with current format.

Comment on Lessons from learner-center syllabus and thinking about critical pedagogy by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Thanks Willie for your comment.

I think I should consider your suggestion and ask my students to bring their own examples into class. Thanks for your idea!

About doing artistic assignment I am not quite sure that what do you mean. my course is microecnomics and it is full of theories related to decision making process of firms and household. There is not a lot of data or something like this and I am not sure what specific artistic assignment I can give to my students.

Comment on Lessons from learner-center syllabus and thinking about critical pedagogy by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Thanks Yasaman for your comment and I really appreciate that. Your suggestions are great and applicable in general. My problem is I don’t have enough freedom to make project assignments for students. The other thing is unlike the experiences I had in Iran, here students do not like to participate in class activity too much. For instance, I design a game in class to give some intuition to students to learn better supply and demand and market procedure. I need several volunteers to come ahead and play the game because for a large class it is unfeasible to ask all of people to play game, so I need some volunteers and then most of students are reluctant to come and play the game. It is weird for me because if it were in Iran, I guess there would be lots of volunteers, but here only few people came and I begged other students to come!!!

For me, stimulating students to be active in class and not sitting and listening is very challenging. Although I put some incentives and extra credits for class participation and I always appreciate those who ask question, answer questions and participate in class discussion, but overall I think I am not successful enough and those policies do not work effectively.

Comment on Teacher evaluation: how much it shows the truth? by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Thanks Sheryl. I will start doing that after my second midterm. The course after that is much for abut applied issues in microeconomics and I think in this situation it is easier for student to bring examples from real world. However, my point in this post was about the evaluation in general and that was only an example. As you said, the problem is how we can design an evaluation agenda that evaluate a teacher’s work closer to reality.

Comment on Teacher evaluation: how much it shows the truth? by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Thanks Karen.

At current situation, only student and I can evaluate my job. We have a supervisor in our department who helps us in teaching issues in general but he was never be in my class to see the way I teach and give me the feedback. In fact he came to my class first time I taught in summer 2014 and his feedback was really helpful at that time but this semester he did not come and will not come too. So my point is how in general we can design an evaluation system that gives us comments closer to reality.

Comment on Teacher evaluation: how much it shows the truth? by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Thanks Brittany,

As I said to Karen, during summer when I taught for the first time, the advanced instructor of our department who are the supervisor of Grad students in teaching came to my class and after that we had a meeting and he gave me his feedback but this semester this is not the case since he’s also taught two large classes and I think he does not have enough time to come to other students’ classes. But in general I think having feedback from a supervisor specially for grad students who teach undergrad course is really helpful.

Comment on Teacher evaluation: how much it shows the truth? by Atiyeh Vahidmanesh

Thanks Carrie

and this is exactly my point that evaluations specially those multiple choice ones could not give us good feedback/information about the reality. As you said sometimes a student may just fill out all questions in good-excellent range to get rid of evaluation asap. sometimes a frustrated student may fill out all in bad-worst choices and as a result maybe it is not close the reality.