Hi everyone,
I'm just getting started with TBL and am trying to use it with a course I
have not taught before - I sort of figured that since I was designing the
course from scratch anyway, I might as well make the switch but I'm running
into a few issues. The course is on the use of data in economics (for econ
majors) and the idea is to give them lots of hands-on practice with finding
and manipulating data (in Excel) as they think about the data issues that
economists encounter when answering empirical questions. A lower-division
stats class is a prerequisite and my understanding is that this course
should be about seeing how those basic statistical tools are actually used
in the empirical research process (for example, which methods and data are
appropriate for answering certain types of questions). That is, this really
isn't a stats class, it's a data application class. It seems like a great
candidate for TBL given that it is so application-focused, and really about
getting students to think through the empirical process rather than just
blindly apply tools to a dataset that's been pre-formatted and handed to
them.
However, I have been warned that students will need LOTS of review of the
statistical concepts. I mostly want to make sure students are familiar with
the general concepts, not necessarily the theory (e.g., I won't be asking
them to calculate confidence intervals by hand or anything like that, but
they do need to know what a confidence interval IS when they see one), but
even that will require some review. If this were a traditional course, I
would probably spend the first few weeks of the semester just on review of
the basic concepts but I am not sure how to go about this with TBL for a
couple of reasons. One, I wasn't planning to assign a specific stats
textbook - they need one as a reference but the rest of the course won't
really be taught out of a stats text and they presumably already have one
from the previous course (though who knows if they kept it or sold it back).
And two, it seems like an awful lot of material to put on one RAP, given
that it's basically reviewing an entire semester course, even if just
general concepts and not the formulas.
I thought about breaking up the material into three or four RAPs, spanning
three or four classes, assuming I would need to clarify at least some of the
material for the students immediately after each RAP. But everything I've
read has said not to do that many RAPs so close together (and this would
also be at the beginning of the semester). I really want to review
everything from the previous class at one time because this course is about
synthesizing all that basic knowledge (i.e., I can't really spread out the
review of basic concepts across the semester). I also thought about just
doing the lecture-type review at the beginning and not starting the teams
until after that but am not sure if that would be too confusing for
students.
If anyone has done anything like this, or has any advice, I would really
appreciate it!
thanks so much,
Jennifer
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Jennifer Imazeki
Department of Economics
San Diego State University
homepage: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jimazeki/
Economics for Teachers blog: http://economicsforteachers.blogspot.com
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