EH.T: 2008 EHA Teaching breakfast in Austin Texas

[David Mitch]

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