Cooperative learning and wining on reality T.V.

I have been watching lots of T.V. lately. I should say too much T.V.! There are many Reality T.V. shows on the air. There is the Apprentice with Don Trump (don’t get me started on that loser), Big Brother 9999, Survivor (somewhere new but same old show), I want to be a Hilton and The Law Firm. All of these show have wannabe famous contestants with a mediocre intellect with high opinion of their own intellect.
Another common theme is in these contests and the topic of this post is: they all do things that the Co-operative learning literature talks about. The teams, tribes and inmates are put or form their own groups, and compete to complete a task. After completing the task they themselves or Donald grades them. This is similar to how group activities work in the classroom. I know there are some students who hate cooperative learning and group work, but I think now I can sell this cooperative learning (group activities) more easily to such students. I would make a T.V. show called the Economist where two groups the Dismalist and the Marginalist compete for _____ and I can tell one student each week “You have failed!”

Diversity

I saw an interview on Charlie Rose with Kim Clark Dean of Harvard Business School. On Diversity at Harvard he said (paraphrased): Overt Racism is over but we have to fight against the implicit prejudices. These are more dangerous because most of us are not aware that we carry these prejudices around with us. This is where education can bring awareness.
Is this an accurate statement? Is overt racism over?
What are these implicit prejudices and how do we fight them?

Older students

It has been hot lately and to fight the heat I have been drinking beer. I don’t like to drink alone so I have been going out with friends to drink. The other night I drank with a friend who is a freeway flier (part-time faculty who teach at 2 or 3 schools) like me. He was complaining about night classes. I told him I love night classes. The students in night classes are usually older and thereby better students. This started the question of why are older students better. Is it because older students have more life experience to draw upon? Is it their discipline? Or is it that their basic skills (3R) are ahead of the more recent high school graduates?

Dancing Rabbit Assignment

As I was writing the last entry I started looking at the website for the Dancing Rabbit commune. I found an interesting page in their website that could be used in an econ class.
I was surprised that they have an Economy page and they have created and issue their own currency.
I have to think of an assignment for this idea of mine.
Here is the page that got me looking titled bunny money

12 Planets

Insomnia again. I was watching the show 30 Days on the FX channel last night, and the topic was taking two average American consumers from New York City to a commune that is off the grid. They were to live on a commune called Dancing Rabbit for 30 days. Before they went to the commune they were followed by some environmental consultant who watched their behavior. The analyst told them that if everyone on the planet lived as they did we would need 12 and half planets. The above statement got my attention.
Since last night I have been thinking about how one would explain this using economics?
If we accept the consultants claim that we would need 12 planets to sustain the lifestyle of the two volunteers, could this explain unequal distribution of resources?
Or is our current structure a temporary outlier that will be corrected by the market forces?
What will be the effect of these market forces on our standard of living?
Or is this what economist call tragedy of commons?

Does Student Dissent Promote Learning?

All Social Science instructors have experience with an outspoken student. And in the days of 24 hour cable news with shows like Crossfire most students believe that yelling is debate. I have observed students that could not separate the theory from the instructor (see my June 2nd posting "My Letter To The Editor"). I am fortunate that I have not had such students. This is due to me playing both sides of the debate in a very obvious way by using outrageous arguments from both sides. Students are never sure about my political leanings and see me as a fair moderator. However, I have had experiences where the discussion goes into the FOX zone. When do you stop the discussion and get them back to the topic? Do you stop them or allow them or allow them to make mistakes? When do you stop the crazy ranting and raving of some students with strong opinions? Yes, but how would one do that without being accused of being a pinko liberal or a right wing nut?

Are Entrepreneurs Mental?

The link above is about online entrepreneurs but it would be an interesting article for a Macro class when teaching the Keynesian view of Investment.
Could we create entreprenuers with a little pill?

Insomnia, Hangovers and the Free lunch

Last night as I channel surfed trying to overcome my insomnia, I ran across a show on Discovery Health channel with Dr. Drew. This show did not catch my attention because of the sexual topic. What caught my attention was Dr. Drew talking about substance abuse, I believe he was talking about alcohol and hangovers. Dr. Drew said the following: "There is no free lunch in nature." With that statement he had my attention for the next 20 minutes left in the show.
Dr. Drew is a Psychologist or something, but he should get a degree in economics too.

Dogs and Diminishing Marginal Utility

I am the one that takes the dog for his walks. Every time I grab his leash he is at the door waiting to be taken out. Also the dog has learned that my wife and I eat in the kitchen, so if anyone goes to the kitchen he follows. The other day the three of were sitting in the living room. My wife and I stood up. The dog stood up. I went to the door at the same time my wife went to the kitchen. The dog did not know which way to go. After a few second he made a decision and followed my wife to the kitchen.
He gave up a chance to go out in order to see if he can score some food.
This is a story on Opportunity Cost, and not a very good one if it ended there. I started to imagine the following story:
Observing this exciting behavior in the dog the economist in me took over and decided to measure this phenomenon (please remember this did not happen but I will pretend it did happen). My wife agreed to help me with my experiment. We agreed that every time one of us would go to the kitchen the other would go to the door with the leash. We would record the time and which way the dog went. Did he go to the kitchen or the door?While analyzing the data I noticed an interesting pattern. In the mornings and evenings he would go to the door and ignore the person going to the kitchen. What could explain this? Discussion…… Answer Diminishing Marginal Utility, Substitution effect and maybe Increasing Marginal Cost.
He is fed in the morning and evenings. After eating he is tired of food (Diminishing Marginal Utility). He is more interested in going out and smelling stuff (the substitution effect). Also there might be Increasing Marginal Cost to staying in the kitchen as he needs to relieve himself after eating. (I am not sure of this sentence)!
I have to work out the bugs out of this story.

The road to hell is paved with ...

I attended a workshop on Student Learning Objective (SLO) and Assessments. This is something new for college faculties and administrators when dealing with the college accreditation standards. The school has hired a consultant to help them get through the accreditation process. The consultant explained that each program and eventually each course should have 3-5 Student Learning Objectives. These are statements such as:
The learners, when tested with a Multiple Choice test, will evaluate and discriminate the answers according to their assigned reading.
Or
The learner, when tested with a Short-answer test, will assess and apply economic reasoning to contemporary issues.
Assessment deals with how the institution will assess whether the student has met such stated objectives. The instructor who teaches the class can not assess whether the students met the stated objectives or not. This creates some touchy issues such as Academic freedom and are we evaluating the instructors as we evaluate the students.
The consultant stated that assessment should be separate from faculty evaluations. This is just a way for the institution to look at itself and ask what is working and what is not?
My question which I kept to myself at the workshop is the following:
Where are the real world incentives in this project? Educators tend to be utopians and believe (or espouse) that knowledge is a reward in itself. This is true for some but not all. Also, they forget that knowledge is a tool that can be used for both good and evil.

Losing the Science

Something to think about!

Cost Benefit Analysis

I have noticed that my dog does something similar to cost-benefit analysis, or it seem as if he is calculating the cost. Sushi (my dog) loves the dog park. When I was working he would be taken to the park three times a week. Now that I am enjoying summer unemployment he gets to go almost everyday. I believe that he has noticed the correlation between playing at the dog park and bathing.
Before he had noticed this relationship, at the dog park he would tear apart anything in his way to get in the park. Now at the dog park gate he pauses and appears to be calculating the cost of going into the dog park. This can be explained by the Skinner (Psychologist in the 50's) or the Pavlov experiment. I wonder if this is a good story to introduce the cost-benefit analysis concept? I know I can do this and I know it will be hilarious. I can embelish with the dog getting out his calculator and figuring the MC and the Marginal Benefit.
My real question is: Are there any faults in my economics reasoning? Is there a connection between Cost-Benefit analysis and Skinner?

Personality of a Prof

In an earlier posting called Personality Matters I promised to check with some of my old professors and find out their personality type. This was to check the assertion by Borg and Shapiro that:

the closer the match between the temperament of the
student and the instructor the better the final grade of the
student.

One of my old professors wrote back and told me that he is an INTJ. I am an INTP. I got an A in both of his classes.

Teaching portfolio started

I have started the template for my teaching portfolio. I have created 5 pages:

1. Teaching Philosophy
2. Syllabi
3. Course Material
4. Evaluations
5. Curriculum Vitae

Now the trick is to create content. Syllabi I got . Course Material I got. Evaluations I got on paper so I should get started on scanning.

Note to self: Create a Portfolio

Think about making a teaching portfolio. This is a little K-12 but it could work for Community College. Lets see such a portfolio should include:

• Syllabus
• WebPages I designed and built (Electronic Portfolio)
• Student evaluation
• Evaluation by other faculty
• what else?

Here are some excellent examples from higher education:

Carolyn F. Austin: Teaching Portfolio

Joseph Braun's Teaching Portfolio