Project Overview

Initial Publication Date: January 14, 2009

Co-PIs:

Mark Maier, Glendale Community College, mmaier@glendale.edu
Cathy Manduca, SERC, Carleton College, cmanduca@carleton.edu
KimMarie McGoldrick, University of Richmond, kmcgoldr@richmond.edu
Scott Simkins, North Carolina A&T State University, simkinss@ncat.edu

Background:

This National Science Foundation (NSF) project will make innovative pedagogical resources and effective teaching practices easily accessible to economists via a web-based pedagogic portal. Starting Point is being developed in collaboration with the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College (MN) and will build on their successful Pedagogic Services framework that makes pedagogical modules accessible to practitioners across disciplines via a central pedagogic database. The Starting Point site will introduce economists to teaching innovations both within and beyond the discipline, provide instructors with the tools to begin integrating and assessing these innovations in their own classrooms, and encourage the sharing of teaching innovations.

Module Content:

Each pedagogic module will contain a general description of the pedagogical method, summaries of research demonstrating student learning gains, classroom implementation guides, and a library of economics-based examples that illustrate the teaching method in action.

Pedagogical Innovations (and module availability): Starting Point will develop a total of 16 pedagogical modules, incrementally rolling them out over the next two years according to the following schedule:

  • Fall 2009 – Context-Rich Problems, Just-in-Time Teaching, Quantitative Writing, Teaching with Cases, and Cooperative Learning
  • Spring 2010 – Classroom Experiments, Teaching with Computer Simulations, Effective use of Personal Response Systems, Guided Inquiry, and Student Research
  • Fall 2010 – Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching, Service Learning, Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum, Documented Problem Solving, Using Media to Enhance Teaching and Learning, and Interactive Lectures

Opportunities for Participation:

There are three points of entrance for those wishing to participate in the teaching/learning activities associated with this project:

  • Module coordinators will be seeking economic educators to contribute economics-specific examples for each of the modules listed above.
  • The project leaders will be coordinating economic education sessions at national and regional conferences as well as teaching workshops highlighting the work associated with this project. They will be seeking participants to provide reflective feedback on the work completed by module coordinators.
  • The Starting Point project will include a public forum for discussion and information sharing. The forum will be a vehicle to keep abreast of Starting Point activities, related workshops, and complementary research in other disciplines.