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Failing Intro Economics

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Re: Failing Intro Economics

#31

Post by pfdietz »

anoonmoose wrote: post #2

AUTHOR: Socrates (469–399 B.C.) QUOTATION: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyranni…

AUTHOR: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

QUOTATION: 97% of quotes on the Internet are complete fabrications.

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#32

Post by yobbo »

anoonmoose wrote: post #2

AUTHOR: Socrates (469–399 B.C.) QUOTATION: The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyranni…

To be fair, the ancient Greece did decline and "fall".

Probably, this what the Romans said towards the end of their run as well.

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#33

Post by mdorazio »

I think there are multiple things going on here that the professor doesn’t seem to grasp:

1) The pandemic response of schools completely disrupted the learning level and style of an entire generation of kids for two years, and we’re now seeing the downstream impact of that.

2) I’m pretty sure that compared to 20 years ago, the more capable students are using AP Econ to test out of the college intro course, so you would expect the average interest and effort level of the remaining students to naturally decline.

3) I’m having trouble parsing this statement: “As a result, the student experience increasingly diverges from that of other courses, in which students feel a higher level of comfort, receive greater affirmation of their opinions, and earn higher grades.” But on the surface it seems to match a trend I noticed in college where students are optimizing for easy grades instead of for actual learning.

4) It really seems like the academic field of macroeconomics stopped matching reality in 2008 and now an entire generation of kids have grown up mistrusting economists and policy makers for good reasons.

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#34

Post by musingsole »

kgwgk wrote: post #17
wildrhythms wrote: post #3

I genuinely believe a lot of professors are out of touch, especially around this point: >Fourth, students seemed reluctant to come to the office seeking help. [...] I suspect there is an increased factor of intimidation associated with being lost in the material and asking a much older male professor for help. Let's ignore the weird second half assumption about 'older males' for now... Young people do not have a conc…

> Young people can be extremely sensitive to how they impose themselves on other people. > Professors need to get with the times and make themselves available through channels that their students are more comfortable with Let’s all do whatever the students believe it is more convenient for them, so they don’t have to impose themselves :-) (For the benefit of young people who may confused about the timeline of technol…

> Let’s all do whatever the student believe

At this point, I'll trust student sentiment over a professor's insistence any day of the week.

Professors throw out the word "office hours" like it's self-explanatory. It's not. And unless you're a certain type of person, you just won't know or learn how a professor's office hours could help you.

It's not immediately apparent to me (or particularly first generation college students) how swinging by a professor's office hours for 10 minutes on an alternating Thursday is going to help me understand 5-dimensional integrals.

If you're students don't make use of your office hours (and need to), it's a failing on the professor, not the students' culture.

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#35

Post by chiefalchemist »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #15
wildrhythms wrote: post #3

I genuinely believe a lot of professors are out of touch, especially around this point: >Fourth, students seemed reluctant to come to the office seeking help. [...] I suspect there is an increased factor of intimidation associated with being lost in the material and asking a much older male professor for help. Let's ignore the weird second half assumption about 'older males' for now... Young people do not have a conc…

> I wonder how many times a student has taken time out of their day to trek across campus to the professor's office only to find the professor away, or head-down busy grading papers, or just about to leave? Typically, professors announce office hours during which they will be available to answer questions, so this is not an issue. From a professor's perspective, online options for tutoring students are vastly inferio…

> Typically, professors announce office hours during which they will be available to answer questions, so this is not an issue.

True. Also true, students have other classes.

To students raised in an async on demand world the concept of static office hours is fairly foreign. Certainly not top of mind.

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#36

Post by rr888 »

wildrhythms wrote: post #3

I genuinely believe a lot of professors are out of touch, especially around this point: >Fourth, students seemed reluctant to come to the office seeking help. [...] I suspect there is an increased factor of intimidation associated with being lost in the material and asking a much older male professor for help. Let's ignore the weird second half assumption about 'older males' for now... Young people do not have a conc…

I never had a professor who had time to geniunely help other than some quick advice or a bit of feedback. If you're really behind it takes hours of work to catch up (on top of studying).

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#37

Post by pfortuny »

wildrhythms wrote: post #3

I genuinely believe a lot of professors are out of touch, especially around this point: >Fourth, students seemed reluctant to come to the office seeking help. [...] I suspect there is an increased factor of intimidation associated with being lost in the material and asking a much older male professor for help. Let's ignore the weird second half assumption about 'older males' for now... Young people do not have a conc…

Your years are of “professional experience”, not of “learning complicated things in a bunch”. It is vastly different.

And, well, it is te students who are missing the opportunity…

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#38

Post by coldtea »

mdorazio wrote: post #33

I think there are multiple things going on here that the professor doesn’t seem to grasp: 1) The pandemic response of schools completely disrupted the learning level and style of an entire generation of kids for two years, and we’re now seeing the downstream impact of that. 2) I’m pretty sure that compared to 20 years ago, the more capable students are using AP Econ to test out of the college intro course, so you wou…

>I’m having trouble parsing this statement: “As a result, the student experience increasingly diverges from that of other courses, in which students feel a higher level of comfort, receive greater affirmation of their opinions, and earn higher grades.” But on the surface it seems to match a trend I noticed in college where students are optimizing for easy grades instead of for actual learning.

It's probably because the market in most jos, including corporate jobs, doesn't need or optimize for actual learners.

Which wouldn't be a problem if there was internal motivation, but the whole culture doesn't respect or optimize for inspiring that either...

>It really seems like the academic field of macroeconomics stopped matching reality in 2008 and now an entire generation of kids have grown up mistrusting economists and policy makers for good reasons.

I think it never matched reality: it's just that things were cushier before 2008 (all the way to the previous serious bubble and accompanying economists spin).

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#39

Post by bee_rider »

johnnymorgan wrote: post #29
capnrefsmmat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how many times a student has taken time out of their day to trek across campus to the professor's office only to find the professor away, or head-down busy grading papers, or just about to leave? Typically, professors announce office hours during which they will be available to answer questions, so this is not an issue. From a professor's perspective, online options for tutoring students are vastly inferio…

The zoom option turned teachers into streamers :) There is some meat in that concept and it's an interesting problem that doesn't have a solid solve yet. I love remote work,learning,etc but for that free flowing of data in a group or one on one setting it lacks positional audio. I can't whisper under my breath to the person beside me or break out with a small team and still have people near us hear the convo and mayb…

It is too bad COVID couldn't have waited, like, 5-10 more years, we might have had VR zoom by then.

Re: Failing Intro Economics

#40

Post by UncleMeat »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #35
capnrefsmmat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how many times a student has taken time out of their day to trek across campus to the professor's office only to find the professor away, or head-down busy grading papers, or just about to leave? Typically, professors announce office hours during which they will be available to answer questions, so this is not an issue. From a professor's perspective, online options for tutoring students are vastly inferio…

> Typically, professors announce office hours during which they will be available to answer questions, so this is not an issue. True. Also true, students have other classes. To students raised in an async on demand world the concept of static office hours is fairly foreign. Certainly not top of mind.

Office hours are a compromise. A professor can provide you with individualized help but in a timeboxed manner. One class is no more than something like 20% of a professor's time, either because they are spending most of their time on research or because they are teaching a huge pile of courses as an adjunct. Having professors sit on slack all day ready to respond to asynchronous questions from students is simply not an option.
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