EH.T: 2008 EHA Teaching breakfast in Austin Texas

Notes on the 2008 EHA Teaching breakfast David Mitch University of Maryland Baltimore County The Teaching Breakfast at the 2008 Economic History Association meeting was convened at 6:45a.m. on Saturday, September 8. Despite the early hour, 18 plus economic historians not only showed up but engaged in a quite lively discussion on issues related to teaching economic history. Peter Lindert of UC Davis served as discussion leader. Peter distributed a topic outline headed "Making Undergrads Love Economic History: A Slam Dunk we can Miss." However, before Peter could get to his outline, discussion turned to writing assignments in economic history. He raised the question of whether writing assignments were even feasible in larger classes in economic history. Carol Heim (U.MAss. Amherst and Dan Bogart UC Irvine) both indicated that they made writing assignments an integral part of their economic history courses despite teaching large classes in state universities. There was discussion of how to assess learning outcomes for purposes of dealing with accreditation agencies. Mike Haupert, Carol Heim, Mike Haines, and Dan Bogart among others discussed how they critiqued student papers and provided feedback to improve subsequent paper drafts. Peter Lindert turned to teaching "gimmicks." He mentioned his experience with an Auctioning off A's exercise in his early days of teaching at UW Madison. He told students in a deadpan manner that in order to avoid grade inflation only a limited number of students could get A's and he would assign A's to those students who offered the highest price. He then collected student bids on pieces of paper, giving no indication that this was not for real. He reported that a number of students left class thinking that the auction was genuine and proceeded to file complaints with the UW administration and Peter's department chair. The chair was receptive to Peter's explanation that it was only a class exercise. He then discussed various lecture techniques with the general theme of "Redundancy is good." He discussed the cons and pros of using power point and the old fashioned blackboard (dangers of losing eye contact). Discussion then turned to the rewards to teaching. Peter offered the hypothesis that the costs of bad teaching and the rewards for better teaching occurred primarily at the extremes; in between the effort/reward curve was pretty flat. He suggested that one's main objective in teaching should be to avoid being the worst. He concluded by making a pitch for the senior undergraduate thesis in economic history arguing that faculty needed to be given incentives to supervise such theses. His handout included exhibit C which listed titles of a large number of senior honors theses completed in Economics at UC Davis. On all the points Peter covered there was extensive discussion from the floor. That evening at the EHA awards banquet it was announced that Peter Lindert was the winner of the 2008 Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History. Among those in attendance and contributing to the discussion were: Juliette Levy Angela Redish Carol Heim Jeffrey Williamson Mike Haupert Mike Haines Hugh Rockoff Dan Bogart Price Fishback Tim Leunig Joyce Burnette Chiaki Moriguchi Gray Kimbrough Jari Eloranta David Mitch Stefano Battilossi Gail Triner Jack Shaw >