Teaching Large Classes

4 November 2009 at 9:49 am Peter G. Klein 2 comments

| Peter Klein |

Advice on teaching large introductory classes, from a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend:

Stick with the stories! Walter Heller made it all the way through introductory macro at Minnesota entirely on stories from his days in the Kennedy Administration. I don’t recall him actually mentioning the word macroeconomics for the entire quarter. The class was so large a woman choked in the back without anyone noticing.

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2 Comments Add your own

1. David Gerard | 4 November 2009 at 9:57 am

Do you suppose the choking incident is a metaphor for Minnesota macroeconomics?
2. Specification Skeptic | 4 November 2009 at 12:14 pm

My introductory macro class was like this; it was obvious by the 2nd week that the lectures were useless. I went religiously to the TA’s sections, did the textbook reading, did great on all the quizzes, aced the midterm, and figured I’d be fine.

Then the final turned out to be all about US monetary history from 1930 to the present, which (to be fair) WAS on the syllabus, but had conveniently never been discussed in the sections…I was lucky to get a B.

Silly non-stationary information-dissemination processes!