Pre-Workshop Readings - Question 1

We are economists as well as educators. We understand incentives and cost-benefit decision-making. This perspective is useful in answering the question that teachers ask themselves when faced with opportunities to innovate in their pedagogy: 'why should I change what I do?'. Well, there are intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

Re intrinsic motivators: we need to show teachers that they will enjoy their time with students more if the students 'buy-in' to their teaching strategy. This means explaining to students how we are helping them to learn, e.g. the evidence on TBL in improving learning outcomes. And show teachers how TBL is fun for them (as teachers).

Re extrinsic motivators: we can offer incentives for innovation in terms of workload allocation and also in terms of funding for professional development. And show teachers that students will value their learning experience more through effective TBL strategies which will be reflected in favourable student evaluations of teaching.

In designing TBL practices and activities for lasting change, we should focus on the following:
- TBL activities should require students to interact with each other and create new knowledge from each other's thoughts
- TBL activities should require students to demonstrate critical thinking
- TBL activities should required students to synthesise each other's work to produce an end product that is greater than the sum of the parts
- studentteam members should be held individually accountable for their contributions

One of the best ways to promote change would be to create a TBL workshop for junior faculty and graduate students. This could, perhaps, be modelled similarly to the “Women in Economics” faculty development workshop, as a 1-2 day workshop (probably just 1 day) prior to a regional or national conference. Getting faculty on board with TBL early in their careers, and using workshops to introduce the techniques seems most effective.

I also think that having a registry of applications like we are putting together would really help. We could potentially (if we got funding for it) put together an online certification program in TBL in economics that graduate students could do in a few hours and put on their CV as they move into the job market. This could be simple like watching a few videos, reading a few articles on TBL, reading the applications that we put together, and taking an online quiz on it.

I very much agree with Ashley that targeting junior faculty and graduate students would be a productive strategy.

Another strategy that I think would be helpful is to target teams of faculty and/or graduate students from the same institution. Several reasons: (1) a faculty/grad student team would be very effective for those institutions that have grad student TAs; (2) if two or more faculty from the same department are using TBL, they can help/support each (e.g., observe and give feedback to each other), they are more likely to grow their group within the department (as opposed to one lone professor trying to spread TBL), any changes the TBL faculty team introduces are more likely to have long-term effects and survive the departure of one of them TBL faculty, and students are more likely to be exposed to multiple TBL courses, and not just one TBL principles course in a sea of lecture courses. That’s why I think we should encourage groups from the same institution to sign up for the TBL workshops, particularly if they are regional workshops, not necessarily tied to a national conference like CTREE.

Let me begin by saying that I am in accord with both Ashley and Marcelo that junior faculty and graduate students are important in this. I would say that graduate students are perhaps not targeted due to time constraints, but their participation at some level will likely help the process over a longer time horizon.

This is perhaps low level but: An interactive website that would allow responses by those experienced in TBL could be constructed (and perhaps connected with Starting Point's existing efforts) . One could have various levels of mentors, such as those who have some experience to those who are more expert.

Questions could go through levels, so the limited number of experts aren’t always fielding all of the questions, but also new adopters have access to very experienced practitioners in the end if needed.

This could accompany other aspects of dissemination and implementation as on pages 55-56 of Beach, Henderson and Finkelstein, 2012.
It may be possible to combine this with developing policy, but that requires a long time horizon and more resources.

This is an extremely large question. Therefore, I will reduce it to those issues that stood out for me as a professor of economics at a California Community College (CCC). I spent 10 years as the faculty developer at my institution and part of my duties were to orient the new faculty in every discipline. This was a both a rewarding and challenging undertaking because the faculty were very eager to learn but, also because the faculty approach their disciplines differently. Therefore, the active learning approaches that I had them read about had to be tailored to their discipline-specific needs.

As the RBI article notes, new faculty orientations are the best way to reach faculty to learn about TBL and to impact change over the long term. As I read the article, I then thought about the economics discipline as a whole and decided (after meeting a brand new faculty member in economics recently at an equity conference) that we must do a better job at reaching out to the new faculty. Instead of relying upon limited and broad-based faculty development offered by individual institutions, the discipline should have more active faculty development.

Marcelo's point about encouraging teams is an excellent one, in part because when things don't 'work', there will be others to debrief with, who can help faculty see that they need to tweak what they are doing, not give up altogether. The Henderson et al article highlights that lots of faculty may TRY new teaching methods but they may or may not CONTINUE USING them, especially if those methods don't "work" immediately.

In my mind, dissemination strategies will only 'stick' if they are combined with strategies in the other quadrants. As a faculty developer, I spend a lot of my time on the strategies that involve individual faculty (though I also am chair of my Senate's Faculty Affairs Committee, which gets into the institutional strategies) and I try to combine workshops that 'teach' methods with activities and discussions that get faculty to think about how they will assess whether those methods work when they implement them. I encourage faculty to take a 'scholarly approach' to teaching, to think formally about what their goals are, how this innovation will help them achieve those goals, and how they will evaluate whether those goals have been met. Maybe a simple way to incorporate this into TBL workshops is to start by having participants identify WHY they are the workshop in the first place (i.e., what is their goal and why do they think TBL will help them achieve it?), as well as end with them making a plan for how they will determine whether implementing TBL is helping them make progress toward that goal, and what they will do if things don't go smoothly.

I agree with the approaches above. My thought is that classroom videos or maybe written vignettes of how TBL AEs work in different settings might be useful for potential users to view individually or maybe in a (new) faculty/grad student training program as described above. Hearing content of the intra- and inter-team discussions and seeing how it is all orchestrated could help with learning how to implement TBL and possibly motivate adoption.

This is a broad question and it is interesting to see many perspectives on it! Here are my thoughts:
1. I've talked with some senior colleagues who have tried different pedagogies in the past and did not stick with them, thus placing them with faculty who left at the "continuation" stage as defined in the reading. Some of them felt that the extra effort was simply not worth it, that "A students still got As, B students still get Bs, etc." In other words, they could not see tangible benefits of the pedagogy, were not that comfortable with it and thus decided the extra effort was not worth it. I also have gotten the impression that some faculty want to try things, so that they can say they are not behind the times, but they also don't really want to succeed because they are generally comfortable with how they teach and not truly interested in change. I think both cases indicate that management of expectations is important; it is easy for those of us who love particular methods to oversell them in our enthusiasm, setting up an expectation that if our colleagues just try them their courses will be instantly better! That may hurt our own cause, so to speak. Perhaps we should focus on honest reflection - what's worked for us and why - refer to evidence, acknowledging that small but significant changes are quite valuable, and work on developing intrinsic motivation, as Ross mentioned, so our colleagues develop a desire and an interest in TBL. Then we can offer support through our experiences and materials.
2. My University has a center for Teaching Innovation, established from a large gift to support teaching. I participate in many of their programs and have been frustrated by the poor communication across disciplines and the limited success that the center has had, in my view, in promoting effective long term changes. It seems to have fallen into a pattern where the programs offered are filled almost entirely by junior faculty who feel like they have to participate to make a good case for tenure at a teaching college. That's not a horrible situation, but there could be a productive dialogue across faculty with various levels of experience and across disciplines that doesn't really seem to be happening. In terms of the box from the first reading, it seems that the policy and shared vision aspects are lacking, in part because of a failure to get more experienced faculty to buy-in to being reflective teachers. I'd love to hear some ideas on how to foster productive collaboration both within the department and across the university.

I also agree with many of the ideas listed above. Particularly, I had also made a note that both graduate students and junior faculty would be a great target audience for this kind of discussion. However, as Ross mentions above, people respond to incentives. So, while those of us participating in this discussion may be internally motivated to utilize various teaching techniques, others may only do so if the benefits exceed the costs. In this workshop, by providing and disseminating TBL materials, we are finding ways to reduce the cost of implementation. In terms of the benefits, given that graduate students and junior faculty are both significantly time constrained, it may be worthwhile to consider what incentives TBL teaching practices offer. For example, does using TBL have the potential to make them a better instructor in a way that is marketable to employers? To what extent can we claim that more learning happens as a result? Does TBL help students that may otherwise struggle in the course? Can we also advertise the potential for individuals to publish in economic education when they are participating in innovative teaching strategies that may ultimately help support promotion decisions? As the article mentions, some of these issues would be addressed at an institutional level, but I think there is some framing that we could support to shift perspective.

My second thought is related to the various workshop ideas that are listed above; which, I fully agree would be a useful endeavor. A group environment provides an additional level of accountability and external deadlines that will motivate individuals. In addition, I would suggest that a focus of a workshop or conference be the follow through. I have attended many teaching conferences where I get great ideas, come back motivated to implement them, and then become distracted with other more pressing issues and fail to do so. Finding a way to maintain connectivity and encourage continued conversation is a crucial element.

Many great ideas have already been mentioned (sorry I'm late to the party!) ... Reflecting on various comments, I think it is difficult to get those already established in their teaching to change unless they are already interested in doing so. I think there is much more to be gained from investing in the less established - graduate students and junior faculty. The question is then how to effectively do so. My understanding is that there are some graduate programs where there is a teaching workshop (or some sort of pedagogical instruction) for new graduate students. Perhaps these programs could be targeted first. Reach out to the faculty in charge and ask them to partner with you - maybe even offer to help run part of their teaching workshop. Then you have your institution specific group who can support each other. Of course, not all graduate programs take teaching as seriously, so there would still be new junior faculty who didn't benefit from such instruction in graduate school. Perhaps some sort of mentoring program could be established (or partnering with an existing mentoring program) to provide teaching support for new faculty.

My other thought was that "teaching individuals about new teaching conceptions and/or practices" isn't enough. I think we need to have evidence of the efficacy of these approaches in our own discipline. This means research. I remember being at a workshop on active learning strategies (TIP) and in the opening session the argument is made for active learning. The very first question asked was "how do you know this leads to more learning?" We have to be prepared with evidence to answer this question or adoption rates will continue to be low.

Interestingly, I see no "strategies" listed in the dissemination quadrant beyond "Teach individuals about new teaching conceptions and/or practices," so I'm not sure what strategies in the quadrant the question refers to. In the discussion of the quadrant, the authors argue that successful dissemination requires "coordinated and focused efforts lasting over an extended period of time (typically one semester or academic year), use of performance evaluation and feedback, and a deliberate focus on changing faculty conceptions rather than behaviors."

The most commonly mentioned strategy in the discussion above are various types of workshops, perhaps modeled after CSWEP's CeMENT program (see Ashley's comment). Although this might be a good long-term goal, I'd view that type of workshop as a way to improve teaching in economics more generally, and not specifically as a way to promote adoption of TBL. It's important to note that the CeMENT program specifically recruits mentors whose research disciplines match those of the participants selected for the workshop (and selection to be a mentee is quite competitive). The mentors coach the mentee not only during the workshop, but usually throughout the year (or sometimes 2 years) that follows. So, although this is a nice goal to have, I'd view it as a long-term goal that would require significant support from the AEA Committee on Economic Education and the AEA more generally (in the form of $$$ to the Committee to fund this workshop) to be successful.

So in response to the question, I would ask, what is our goal in dissemination? Is it simply to make economics faculty members aware that TBL is an option for economics? Or is our goal adoption? I'm not sure the second goal can be accomplished with mere dissemination.

I concur with the ideas and comments shared by others in this forum. To me the central question is adoption and sustainability of research based instructional strategies, the challenges of which are described in the article. Most educators are exposed in some way or the other to the advancements in curricula and pedagogy either through their own interest or due to participation in professional development activities organized/encouraged by their institutions. Sustenance can rely for some educators largely on extrinsic factors than intrinsic, where extrinsic factors are department/institutional buy-in and directed promotional activities such as a reward/incentive structure. Intrinsic factors would qualify for faculty members interest in adopting strategies to effectively disseminate learning objectives and provide an enriching experience for their students. If department/institution is lacking in the cause then if faculty members can find support within the larger academic community in the form of accomplishments (recognition for contributions), resource sharing, continued purposeful interactions, and identifying collaborative opportunities, all in varying forms would help.

I agree that new faculty orientations are the best way to spread TBL. Additionally focusing on non-lecture oriented faculty may reach faculty open to TBL that are currently implementing other formal or informal active learning techniques in the classroom. Presentations at local/regional conferences may also help with titles that focus on active learning or student centered learning, as opposed to TBL, may reach those interested in advancing active learning in the classroom. I've had discussions with many people that either say they are aware of TBL or implement TBL in the classroom but after further discussion they are either misinformed of TBL or think TBL is a generic instructional technique as opposed to a very specific formal pedagogy.

Providing resources, such as AE's would be incredibly helpful. But implementation is incredibly difficult if transitioning from a more lecture oriented class or very informal active learning class. My first year of implementation were long nights and weekends, but I'm a glutton for punishment because now I'm doing the same for Core-Econ. Many faculty don't have the time and/or interest for the work required to transition. Providing additional resources will make it much easier for faculty. Resources may include: sample syllabi, study guides, potential RA questions across units/themes, as well as the degree to what if/any more traditional methods may be used (e.g. current event analysis, research papers, presentations, data analysis, etc.) Also, discussion on the course structure as it related to the material that is covered and/or not covered. Some faculty may feel they need to cover every point within the text. I thought extensively about content that needs the most focus, and have had to drop other things that I may have lectured on in the past. I would love all of your feedback on this topic in particular. Because the focus of content is something I struggle with every semester in a principles course in a classroom with a wide range of backgrounds and abilities.

Question 1 (from the workshop pre-reading emailed to you): If we were to use strategies within the Dissemination quadrant (Figure 1 in the Change Magazine article, "Facilitating Change ...") to promote TBL teaching practices in economics, how can we improve them to make them more likely to effect lasting change (given the challenges laid out in the "Use of Research-Based Instructional Practices..." article)?

The takeaway from the Change magazine article for me is that we need to spend much more time thinking about developing communities of economics teachers who are committed to active-learning pedagogy. My thinking before now has primarily focused on reaching individual teachers interested in implementing elements of TBL in their classes.

I have had some influence in this regard in moving my one economics colleague toward incorporating much more active learning in his classes and -- through repeated stints on Pacific's Faculty Personnel Committee and a close relationship with the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences -- in moving the college toward a more rich evaluation of teaching performance that focuses more on how teachers structure and lead their classes and less on SET numerical averages. The latter challenge is ongoing and requires a great deal of education of administrators and of the faculty colleagues who serve on personnel committees.

One area of endeavor that I have not pursued lies in collaboration with economics teachers at the 20 or so undergraduate colleges in the Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle areas. Creating a regional community of practice seems a promising path to supporting teachers using active learning in their classrooms.