Our latest article on program assessment is out in the latest issue of Journal of Economic Education 42 (2).

Assessment of the Undergraduate Economics Major: A National Survey (co-authored with Drs. Nelson and Stratton) "reveals that nearly two-thirds of the departments have a formal assessment plan. There is substantial agreement on the most important student-learning outcomes, which are consistent with the Hansen proficiencies. The most common approaches that departments employ to measure learning outcomes are course-embedded assessments and senior exit surveys. Capstone courses and senior projects as program assessment methods are most common in departments that are not in business schools and are without doctoral programs. Finally, more than half of the departments have adjusted their curriculum based on the results of their own assessment plans."

I think one of the most important lines in the abstract above is : "There is substantial agreement on the most important student-learning outcomes ... consistent with the Hansen proficiencies."

WIPTE 2010 Version

The 2010 Workshop on the Impact of Pen-Based Technology on Education (WIPTE) will be held on October 25th and 26th, 2010 at Virginia Tech. The organizing committee invites submissions of full papers, posters and short presentation abstracts by June 15th. The committee also invites entries to the 2010 WIPTE Video Contest with a deadline of September 15th. The video contest carries a $3,000 first prize.

Submissions in each category should describe experiences using Tablet PCs or other pen-based technology in K-12, higher education, or other teaching and learning environments. Full paper submissions will be peer-reviewed, other submissions will be reviewed by the organizing committee. Accepted submissions will appear in a Monograph to be published by Purdue University Press and authors will present their work at WIPTE 2010. For detailed calls and additional information see www.wipte.org

Online conference registration will be available at www.wipte.org by June 1st, 2010. The early bird registration fee is $100. After September 30th, 2010 the registration fee is $150. The registration includes a reception, a dinner, a copy of the conference proceedings, and the opportunity to win a variety of raffle prizes. Last year’s prizes included Tablet PCs and smart phones.

Best,

Zvi Ritz
WIPTE Organizing Committee Member

WIPTE October 12-13, 2009

"WIPTE 2009 early registration fee of $50.00 is available through September 14th. After September 14th the registration fee is $100.00. ... WIPTE 2009 will be held on October 12-13, 2009 (at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg VA) ... WIPTE is open to anyone with an interest in instructional technology. A wide variety of disciplines are embracing Tablet PC's and similar pen-based devices as tools for the radical enhancement of teaching and learning. " (Read more at the WIPTE page)

Here is a flyer for the wall... WIPTE stands for Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education.

Cash for Clunkers or just a Clunker?

In a previous post I cited Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, as a brilliant read. This book is a must for all who want to learn economics. The lesson is given in pages 15 through 22. The essence of the lesson is shown by the broken window fallacy. In that fallacy, some mistake the job creation for the glazier as growth and not as the destruction of the opportunities that now can not be done. For example, if someone had not broken the window, the glazier could have been putting in a window for someone else resulting in a net growth of 1 window. Replacement of the destroyed window results in a net growth of zero.

So I read with interest an AP story tonight titled Government to Suspend Cash for Clunkers. The reason is they might run out of the 1 billion dollars in rebates. What they should see is the cash for clunkers is a case of the broken window fallacy. In order to get your $3,500 or $4,500 rebate you have to bring in an old car and buy a new car. So far so good, the government is incentivizing you to buy newer fuel efficient cars, I get it. But instead of the clunker moving into the used car market as it would in a private market transaction, the government is requiring dealers to destroy the trade in automobile. The government is breaking one car to get you to buy another. While there may be some benefit for growth here, it is far less than it might have been.

Once again, the government interfers in a market and everyone focuses on what is seen (people buying new cars) and not what is unseen. When the used car market is deprived of supply, the prices of used cars goes up and the sales of used cars goes down. So the same policy that seems to enhance consumer spending and create growth has this indirect component that causes the desired effects to have far less appeal.

With economic freedom comes liberty and in this care both are harmed. Cash for Clunkers is a clunker.

Dueling Nobels -- My Money is on Gary Becker

A few years ago, Bill Becker from Indiana Univ. gave a presidential address to the Midwest Economics Association challenging us to teach the controversies and to teach from the work of the Nobel Economic Laureates. His point as I remember it and not necessarily as he intended it was from the controversies come new truths. It is so hard to find the signal in all of the noise.

Paul Krugman, a nobel prize winner, has led from the interventionist side favoring stimulus on top of stimulus. Apparently, Krugman does not feel like markets can or should correct, nor are massive growth in government and deficit moving in the wrong direction. Barro has commented rather negatively as has many others. Nevertheless, the political economic world is currently moving in concert with Krugman's musing with future consequences uncertain.

As I get ready for the secone day here at the Midwest Economics Association meetings in Cleveland, I hear on the TV "Nobel Economist says do nothing" ... It turns out this is Gary Becker, 1992 Nobel Prize Winner, and a personal hero.

Mary Anastiasa O'Grady writes in online.wsj.com that Now is no Time to Give Up on Markets: "What can we do that would be beneficial? [One thing] is lower corporate taxes and businesses taxes and maybe taxes in general. Particularly, you want to lower the tax on capital so you raise the after-tax return to investing and get more investing going on."

"Gary Becker ... is in New York to speak to a special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society on the global meltdown. He has agreed to sit down to chat with me (O'Grady) on the subject of his lecture. Slumped in a soft chair in a noisy hotel coffee lounge, the 78-year-old University of Chicago professor is relaxed and remarkably humble for a guy who has achieved so much."

I was brought up on Becker. as a Ph. D. student at Ohio State. I could not read enough of his work. I am thrilled to see the words slumped and humble in that opening to O'Grady's interview, because it impresses me with the genuinuness of this remarkable man. A humble economist that speaks the truth of his convictions instead of the pompousness so comoon from those on the political stage.

Dont give up on Markets

Capitalism is under attack in our country and more important with that attack is the attack on our freedom and liberty. Becker reminds us to hold to our believes and to not fall into the just-do-something mentality. Growing government and restricting markets is not the way to create wealth and growth.

Thanks Professor Becker...

Have we organized our education to kill creativity? - or How might web 2.0 help?

Reading through various blogs that I frequent I stumbled again on TED.com which is a great teaching resource. In particular a video by Sir Ken Robinson is quite challenging on how we teach and organize our learning.



For more information on this great resource go to the TED webpage.

And thanks to Steve Greenlaw for leading me to this resource via his presentation on Engaging the Next Generation to be given to faculty at Manchester College in Indiana. He makes some excellent points about Web 2.0 methods that can really help in the classroom.

Future Senarios for Economics: Kling or Caplan?

Will the demand for economics courses rise (ala Caplan) or has economics suffered a fatal crash leading to a new economics of control (ala Kling)? Are we in for a trend of justifications for economic policy prescriptions of greater and greater governmental controls? Will academic economists change the way they teach? Has anything changed our profession in a fundamental way? If so is it the poverty of our politics or the poverty of our economics?

The Proper role of Math in Economics according to Alfred Marshall

Thanks to Don Coffin for this lead... Alfred Marshall on Math in Economics. An excellent read.

This is on Sean Flynn's web site: Learn-Economics.com which is the companion to his Economics for Dummies book. Check out the last three chapters in particular. Never thought I would buy a ...for dummies book, but I may head out and get this one.

Recession? Blog chatter vs. Prediction Markets

Aaron Scfiff has a great data problem on his blog at 26econ.com. Does talking about a recession in blogs correlate with the probablility of a recession given in a prediction market? (see his blog for the caveats in the data).

The relationship is pretty intruguing. But I wonder whether he has captured the entire story. What about that elusive third factor that drives both? What about the amount of time 'recession' occurs in the old media, how many times by politicians. There appear to be two reversals around 9/14/07 and 10/26/07 -- are these correlated with major events or stories? I had just blogged about a great data problem for student econometricians and I think this one is even better. Again this one could be loosed on students for a PBL exercise and I just may.

Aaron goes on to posit a relationship and I wonder if the relationship has trend or drift. Facinating stuff. Thanks Aaron.

What's going on with the PPI? A problem for stimulating student learning.

What does this attached graphic tell you... intriguing anomaly or danger sign?

This graphic shows a huge run-up in the PPI and an increasing volatility. What is the underlying cause of this increasing volatility? Does this portray the normal functions of markets? Is it unstable? Perhaps the source is oil. Maybe it is rare metals. One possible source is in the agriculture sector:

"Continued speculation and skyrocketing commodity prices also threaten the business of agriculture. We've got all the makings for the destruction of the marketplace here." Rich Sauder, manager of the Tremont Cooperative Grain Company, says this as reported in
Commodity prices in 'Star Trek' land (January 15, 2008) by Steve Tarter
of the Journal Star (PEORIA).

I thing the graph holds a terrific problem for economic students. This will exercise their inductive powers and how they might solve the problem. This could be a nice authentic problem for some team based learning from the lowest level of classes to graduate students in time-series econometrics.

The data are from economagic.com. This great resource offers free access for economics instructors. (click here for the graph shown above)

EconoBlogging Course at Ohio U

Donald Lacombe, an associate professor at Ohio University is offering a course he calls EconoBlogging. He has posted about discussions in class on the economics of bad behavior, growth, ethanol, the FDA and trade-offs. He appears to be using the blog as a reflection and summary of each days class.


Using a blog in class is potentially a great use of technology and there are other examples of this. Steve Greenlaw has actively used his blog (and later a wiki) to support his class. (see here and here) Greg Mankiw uses his blog to keep in touch with his current and former students. (The fact that it is ranked 3rd among all economics blogs is just a bonus for all of us). I have reflected on a problem based learning experience in my econometrics class in this blog.


Steve Greenlaw gave a presentation at Cambridge University last year called Augmenting Teaching and Learning With Social Software which is available as an online paper and a blog to support the presentation. Seeing what is possible with Web2.0 software for teaching economics is fun to watch and I encourage others to try.


I wonder how students take to blogs and how important they really are to the teaching and learning process for them. It is clearly important to many professors. As with many uses of technology the measurement of learning is very difficult. My mantra is always not to use technology unless you enhance student learning or you make professors or students time more efficient. I think the key is really whether students engage more with social software (blogs included) and thereby provide for deeper learning.


Last week I attended a lecture by Don Tapscott on his book Wikinomics. He focuses on the corporation in the wiki world, but he made a comment that he could have been talking about higher education. My mind started racing towards whether his four drivers (1) Web2.0, (2) The Net Generation. (3) The (online) Social Revolution and (4) The Economic Revolution couldn't be applied towards higher education and in particular to the teaching of economics. My head is still swimming on this so perhaps I will post some thoughts soon.

Teaching Economics with You Tube

You tube can be a great teaching tool. It is amazing what you can find. I have a google alert set to "economists assessment' which has caught some interesting things. One of the more interesting is about inflation in China from a decidedly non economic blog.





At the AEA poster session, Dirk Mateer, Penn State University, showcased his you tube site "Teaching Economics With You Tube." At the conference, just days ago, he had 20 subscribers, as of today he has 34 and 1,900 views. I highly support this site and hope that many others add to it or provide links to their video content as well.

"Teaching with You Tube: An Economist's Guide to Free Web-Based Content"
AEA/CEE Poster Session, Janyary 5, 2008 (G. Dirk Mateer)

"Social Networking: does it bring positive change to education?"

The third debate sponsored by the economist is open. (click here for the link). I think the evaluation of Web 2.0 in education is on all of our interests, so I hope many will take advantage of this debate.

From their webpage: Last October, readers of The Economist selected three education-related propositions for debate:

1. The first proposition, "The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education", was rigorously debated and OPPOSED.
2. The second, "Governments and universities everywhere should compete to attract qualified students, regardless of nationality or residence", was overwhelmingly ACCEPTED.
3. Now we address the final proposition: "Social Networking: does it bring positive change to education?"

Your comments shape the debate and your votes decide the winner

Assessing the Economics Program

At the AEA meetings my colleagues and I presented a paper on assessing the economics program (Assessing A Proficiency Based Economics Program: Weathering The Perfect Storm While Thriving In A New Environment). It has had some nice recognition by Scott Jaschik at InsideHigherEd.com (Jan 7, 2008) and David Glenn at the The Chronicle of Higher Education (News Blog Jan. 5, 2008).

This paper has three goals: (1) to describe the general guidelines for programmatic assessment, (2) to describe our experience in requiring our majors to meet the Hansen Proficiencies and (3) to report results of a national survey of economics program assessment.

Sixty five percent of 208 economics department chairs report that they have a formal assessment plan for their economic program. Our survey results suggest strong confirmation for the actual stated Hansen proficiencies in the discipline, but not necessarily a strong awareness of the work of Hansen.

Help us with our digital ink survey

Dan Talley and I are preparing a digital ink survey of department chairs and faculty in economics nationwide. We are going to try to determine the extent of use of digital ink and how this may effect our pedagogy. If you are a digital ink user (or would like to be) can you reply directly to Dan and I with the questions that interest you, both research questions and the survey questions that should be asked to ascertain the effect of digital ink on our teaching. Click on this sentence to reply to us directly.

If you know of other surveys of use and pedagogy in other disciplines let us know as well. Thanks.

ASSA meetings coming up

Finally this semester is over and the national meetings in New Orleans are just two weeks away. I will be presenting two papers, one on Assessment of the Economics Program and one on PBL in econometics. The first paper reports on a national survey of department chairs... pretty cool results. If you read this and see me there ...say hi.