I am more than halfway through my seventh time teaching something called Econometrics or Quantitative Research Methods or Applied Statistics or whatever you’d like to call it. I’ve taught it now at a few different levels, each requiring more or less work, more or less writing, more or less math, more or less me being totally overwhelmed by grading.
This semester, I am not having students blog. Instead, we’re taking more in class time to discuss readings. The other big change I made is that instead of having students turn in their preliminary regression results last week, I had them make five-minute presentations to the class. It was an experiment and it was one of those experiments that made me feel like a teaching God. I can’t recommend it enough (based on my sample of 18 students, but only 1 cluster (class)). Presentations are great because you can grade them as you go, but additionally, they allowed each student in the course to learn from the others’ missteps. I had students fill out peer evaluations (anonymously) so they get additional feedback than just mine and they have to really understand what they’re doing in order to present it to the class.
I think they enjoyed it, too!
ERIN K. FLETCHER 