Directions for the "Introduction" discussion board:

Hi, It is good to be a part of TLB project. I'm at Georgia State University, teaching Principles of Macro. My colleague, Shelby Frost (who is Micro course coordinator) and I have been involved in APLU grant working with adaptive learning platform. I have been keen to working with how to teach student how to learn critical thinking. In a large enrollment (>150), with a wide range of student readiness, and a various life stage, a conventional discussion is not quite working. I have adopted flipped course and have taught online and hybrid course formats.
I would like to gain an experience that I can use in my courses to facilitate student's active learning of critical thinking. I like to read cook books for fun. Anyone read Food Lab? It is a cook book with a science approach.
Lastly, my last name changed recently but I am using the old one (it is "O".) till I get all my IDs updated.
I am looking forward to seeing you! - Grace O

Hello, my name is Grace Onodipe. I am an Assistant Professor at Georgia Gwinnett College, in the Atlanta area. I teach Introduction to Economics, Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Macroeconomics, Business Statistics, Quantitative Analysis for Business, and International Economics. Prior to coming to GGC five years ago, I taught fully online courses. I have been flipping my classes for several years now. My research interests are in the area of the scholarship of teaching and learning - flipped learning, active learning strategies, etc. I consider the flipped classroom as a meta strategy that supports all other strategies, such as peer instruction and TBL. I hope to be able to incorporate TBL into my flipped class in the near future.
For fun, I like to travel on a cruise with family and friends!
Looking forward to San Antonio!

Grace Onodipe (not to be confused with Grace O)

Hi. This is Phil Ruder. With Mark Maier and Scott Simkins, I will lead our workshop after the CTREE 2018 conference. I look forward to spending the afternoon of Friday, June 1, and the morning of Saturday, June 2, with you. I am finishing up my 24th year of teaching at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon -- at the western edge of the Portland metropolitan area in the northwest of the state. My current research involves developing materials for and assessing the effectiveness of using those materials to teach college economics with team-based learning. I have been teaching with TBL pedagogy for five years now. TBL formalizes the various active learning approaches to guiding student learning that I have used throughout my teaching career. At various points in my career, I have used in-class experiments and various forms of problem-based learning. My work to improve my TBL classes consists largely of developing better application exercises. I have spent the most time improving the materials for my micro principles classes; now I am turning more attention to improving the learning activities in my upper-division classes that include intermediate micro, environmental, health, and international economics. My idea of fun is to exercise outdoors. During the summer, I bicycle 100+ miles per week. I also hike frequently and try to get out for a couple short backpacking trips each summer.

Hi everyone! My name is Becky Lafrancois. I am on the faculty in the Division of Economics and Business at the Colorado School of Mines in beautiful Golden, Colorado. I have been a Mines for 5 years. Prior to joining Mines, I was a faculty member at Michigan Tech. My research interests include energy economics and more recently SoTL. I use a lot of active learning in my classes, ranging from mini classroom assessment techniques to in-depth Excel exercises in Investments. I have been teaching calc-based Intermediate Micro for the past two years in a completely flipped format. I use some elements of TBL, but not the formal process. I am looking forward to learning more about TBL and developing some awesome activities. When I am not in the classroom, I enjoy traveling and hiking. This summer, I will be taking a trip to Quebec, Canada.

Hello from Cleveland! My name is Lucy Malakar and I teach at Lorain County Community College in Ohio (about an hour west of Cleveland). I just finished my 11th year and am the only full-time faculty member teaching economics (principles classes only). I try to use all sorts of engaging techniques in my lectures: multi-media, demonstrations, activities, and iClicker questions. I am very interested in learning how to implement team-based learning. I have attended CTREE session on team-based learning in the based but never felt like I came away with a thorough understanding of the pedagogy or how to fully execute it. There's only so much a presenter can do in an hour or two!

For fun I enjoy stand up paddle boarding, hiking and riding my recently purchased bike. I'm training to do a 100 mile ride with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society around Lake Tahoe next June (might have to skip CTREE that year). I also love to read and travel.

See you all very soon.

Hi all from Amsterdam! I am Ioanna Avgeri and I teach principles of economics in a UFP program of ONCAMPUS at the University of Amsterdam. I have a short experience as an economics teacher (just finished my 3 year) but I have been using classroom experiments and flipped classroom processes since the first year I started working. Even though I am a new teacher I am already overwhelmed by the rigidity of the usual end-of-chapter exercises. I want to be able to create application exercises and to fully incorporate TBL methodology into my classes in order to increase student engagement and develop their critical thinking skills.
I graduated from the University of Amsterdam with an MSc in Economics and a focus on development economics. My research interests are development economics and experimental economics along with economics of education. I have worked as a researcher and a market analyst in the Netherlands before deciding to become a teacher. This is my second year attending CTREE.

I love stand-up comedy, photography and taking long road trips.

I am looking forward to attending this workshop and learning from/with you!

Hello from Pasadena, CA. I teach at nearby Glendale Community College. We’re now 30 year transplants from New York where I went to graduate school and taught at the College of New Rochelle. Scott and I are co-principal investigators, along with Phil, the principal investigator (meaning he does much of the hard work and is responsible for all of our finances.) I’ve been experimenting with TBL the last two years,joined by Glendale colleagues from whom I’ve learned much. Unfortunately they aren’t in economics, so I’m looking forward to working with all of you to develop economics application exercises, the clear weak point in my TBL. Scott and I, with KimMarie McGoldrick and many collaborators, developed Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics at the Science Education Resource Center where we’ll be creating the application exercise library.
Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Anton! And, if you are from a community college or if you are interested in what goes on, or does not go on, at community colleges, please join us for an informal breakfast discussion at CTREE (see program for time and day).

This post was edited by Evgenia Papoula on May, 2018
Greetings from Amsterdam! My name is Evgenia Papoula, and I work at ONCAMPUS Amsterdam which is based at the University of Amsterdam. I have been working as an Economics, and Maths teacher for the last 5 years. Currently, apart from teaching, I develop the material and assessments for Economics, and Maths, and serve as an Academic Manager. I promote active learning in our school, and have used in-class experiments and problem-based learning to increase student engagement and promote critical thinking. I want to be able to fully incorporate TBL methodology in my classes and share the practice with my colleagues. I have a MSc in Economics with a specialisation in Development Economics, and apart from teaching, I have worked as a consultant and researcher in international development. My research interests include development economics, human development and economics of education, and impact evaluation.

I love photography, reading, pilates, and hiking. And given that I live in Amsterdam i spend a lot of time biking!

I am looking forward to meeting all of you!

Hi Everyone! I'm Shelby Frost from Georgia State University (Atlanta Campus - I'm specifying now that I see there's someone from the Perimeter Campus). I have been at GSU since fall of 2000 in a non-tenure track line with a focus on teaching. I regularly attend conferences related to economics education, most times presenting, but I have not really published any of my presentations yet - I hope to change that soon. So I would say my current area of research interest is SoTL. I am the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at GSU, and I also serve as the Director of the GSU Center for Economics Education, and I am actively involved with the GSU Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. I help to train our graduate students to teach (my colleague, Grace O - who posted here before I did, and I co-teach a pedagogy course for them). I am the course coordinator for our Principles of Microeconomics course, and the only person so far who has taught that course totally online. Grace and I are both experimenting with different delivery systems and piloting an adaptive learning platform in our principles courses as part of a large grant that GSU received from the APLU. I always aim to have as much active learning as possible in my courses, but after reading much of the materials for this particular workshop, I can say that I have never used TBL as presented in this literature. I have seen examples of some parts of it (such as those scratch off cards for the tRATs), but I have never used them in teaching my courses. Actually, after reading more about TBL, I have many questions about it, and I am eager to learn more. I think I understand why the focus of this working group is to develop AEs for TBL in Economics, because I think that is likely the most challenging part of the process. I have not had much luck with group assignments when I have tried to implement them recently, so I am interested in hearing more about how this can work, especially in online courses. I was skeptical when I read that TBL by its very nature reduces some of the issues with group activities, but I was relieved when I read where someone acknowledged that there is likely to be some push-back from students. I am coming to this workshop with an open mind and ready to learn.

Honestly, I don't have much in the way of hobbies for fun. I have started to enjoy reading for pleasure within the last few years - even that is new.

Greetings from Phoenix, AZ, Everyone! My name is Joana Girante and I teach principles of economics, micro and macro, courses at Arizona State University. I've taught regular lecture, fully online, flipped, and will soon teach a hybrid, meet once-a-week course. In my flipped course, taught in an Active Learning Classroom where students sit around round tables in groups of six, I use active learning exercises I developed--there aren't many out there that are written with a clear focus on developing higher order thinking and would love to see what you guys have.
I attended a TBL workshop last year, at CTREE, and would like to learn more about this technique. I encourage group work but am not good at following through especially when there are many students (I teach classes of 100 students).
I don't do much research these days although I running controlled trials in my classes to assess the impact of the different teaching methods on performance.
In my spare time, I like to go to the beach (when I'm in Portugal). In Phoenix, I pretty much like to read or catch up on Netflix--I have two young kids, 5 and 8, and don't have a lot of (quiet) time for myself.

This post was edited by Craig Heinicke on May, 2018
Hello, my name is Craig Heinicke. I teach economics at the University of Richmond, Richmond VA. My teaching areas are principles of economics (micro and macro) and economic history. My research areas are American economic history and institutional change.

I have used many different types of what may be called active learning at various times over a twenty-five plus year teaching career at the College of William and Mary, Baldwin-Wallace University, and the University of Richmond. Most successful have been classroom experiments, although they are time intensive. I adopted TBL in my principles classes two years ago after attending CTREE conference sessions where the method was presented. I spent two months reading literature (much from the STEM disciplines) as well as CTREE participant papers before diving in. I am still very much a student of this method, but I have seen some successes already. Last semester went particularly well, although I have no rigorous way to compare this method with the others I have used. Phil Ruder has been so generous with helping me get started, and I have many others to thank as well (not limited to but including Alan Green, Mark Maier, Kate Silz-Carson and KimMarie McGoldrick).

One thing I like to do for fun: shore/surf fishing from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, although I catch very little.

I look forward to meeting you/ becoming reacquainted!

Good morning. I am writing on the second official day of summer, having submitted grades on Tuesday of this week (hooray!). My name is Carli Ficano and I will be joining the group in San Antonio along with my colleague and friend, Dr. Larry Malone. Larry and I teach in the Economics Department at Hartwick College, a small liberal arts college located in Oneonta, NY. I became a fan of flipped classroom pedagogy after many conversations with Larry on meeting the needs of a changing student population and, finally, after team-teaching a course with a colleague from Hartwick’s biology department who, herself, had already adopted TBL and flipped course structures. While my use of TBL continues to evolve, I was struck at how immediately the use of flipping changed the energy and engagement within my classes (which, at times, had come to feel like taking my dog for a walk in the rain – I often stepped outside of myself and imagined that I was dragging students through economics as they dug their heels in and scraped across the floor).

I have been on the faculty of the Department of Economics at Hartwick for 20 years, teaching introductory microeconomics, econometrics, labor economics, economics of race and gender, and public policy. I recently have assumed the additional position of Business Administration and Accounting Department Chair (separate from the Department of Economics) to help that department through a period of transition. In my capacity as Business Chair, I have sought to introduce a new group of faculty to the power of TBL and classroom flipping. I am very excited to learn from all of you and from the workshop organizers so that I can bring new ideas to both Economics and Business.

In my spare time I enjoy hiking, swimming, and skiing with my three kids (two of whom are now on their way to adulthood) and our dog. I also love to travel and recently took a group of students to Portugal for Hartwick’s month long January term where I co-taught (with the same micro-biologist mentioned above) a course on fermentation and local food systems.

I am looking forward to meeting and learning from you all next week. Until then!

Hello! My name is Jimena González, and I this is my second year at Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY. I am an environmental economist, who is also interested in development and behavioral economics. My main research interests include the adoption of conservation practices by farmers and their adaptation to climate change. Moreover, I am currently working on understanding students’ environmental attitudes, knowledge and behavior on campus. My behavioral economics research includes the elicitation of risk preferences through experiments.
I have been using TBL for the last 2 years in Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Macroeconomics, and Environmental Economics. While I try to follow all the components of TBL, I find that the application exercises are the hardest to design or find. As a junior faculty, I am concerned about the time it takes to come up with relevant application exercises. I look forward to learning about the different exercises being used by the workshop participants. I have enjoyed using TBL, and I have received very positive feedback about it. I also
I love listening to podcasts, and I am a big fan of Freakonomics and NPR Planet Money. I often ask students to listen to Planet Money episodes that are connected to course materials.
I am from Bogotá, Colombia. I am big soccer fan, and I look forward to watching the World Cup this summer and cheering for Colombia.

Greetings all, pleasure to be here.
I’m Galit , Research associate at Harvard Kennedy School . I teach empirical methods (econometrics), micro and macro economics. My research interests are public finance and public policy, labor economics, education and economic growth.
In recent years I developed an interest in research and innovations of economic education. I was involved in a summit for implementing international trade, developed a course for international young researchers, registered patent and trademark of a dynamic model in the economic education- “Teach-Touch” Economics and kept working on active teaching methodologies. Joining this Team-Based Learning seems as a natural part of this work in progress.
For fun, I enjoy movies, concerts and visual art.
I look forward to meeting you all very soon. Thank you!

Greetings, my name is Larry Malone, and I am participating in this project with my Hartwick College colleague, Carli Ficano. I was originally an undergraduate sculpture major at SUNY Purchase, but emerged twelve years later with a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research. Mark Maier predated me at the New School, and our paths would intersect in Palo Alto in 2001/02 during our residencies as Fellows at the Carnegie Foundation for Teaching and Learning.

My background in Art instilled an appreciation for Peer Criticism through collective undertakings of the notorious "Critique." I came to see the power of critique as a positive force for deep learning and understanding. Over the span of a 32 year teaching career, I have managed to incorporate Peer Critical Learning into every class I have taught. I was introduced to TBL by the project team at CTREE in Denver, last year. My introductory focus is now exclusively Macroeconomics, and this past spring I taught a course entitled Macroeconomic Policy to 18 students, divided into teams of 3. The course utilized the guiding principles of TBL, but not the formal structure. I look forward to the workshop, where I may share my passions for cooking, aesthetics, and travel with fellow TBL'ers.

This post was edited by Scott Simkins on Jun, 2018
Until now, I overlooked my responsibility to introduce myself to everyone here. My apologies! I teach at North Carolina A&T State University, the largest historically black college and university (HBCU) in the U.S. I currently serve as interim economics department chair and have been back in the department for 2.5 years after leading the university's teaching and learning center for 12 years. Before that I was a tenured faculty member in the economics department at A&T. I've been at A&T for 23 years and at UNC-Greensboro for 8 years prior to that.

I'm excited to be working with Phil, Mark, and all of you on this TBL project! For Mark Maier and me, this project is the fifth NSF-funded economic education pedagogy-related project that we've collaborated on as PIs since 2000 - and Mark has done still others related to teaching economics in community colleges! So, we are committed to promoting disciplinary change in teaching and learning through evidence-based teaching practices. The work we'll be doing this weekend on TBL Application Exercises (AEs) is critical to the TBL process and to expanding the use of TBL in economics courses. We look forward to adding your AEs to an expanding online library of AEs at our Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics web site (created through an earlier NSF grant). Thanks for being with us! We look forward to working with you!

My wife and I are both from New Ulm, MN and share a very German heritage. Last summer we took a two-week Rick Steves trip to Germany and hope to travel abroad regularly going forward. We've been to Australia before, and I've been to the UK a number of times, and also to Kerala, India. In addition to travel, we enjoy theater and visiting our children/spouses - now 26, 29, and 33! We're together annually as an extended family (30-40 of us) at a lake in northern MN during the week of the 4th of July - a fantastic memory-maker for us and our children!