Bill Goffe

Avid traveler, Penn State economist, and a fan of evidence-based teaching methods.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

I’m forming an “economics education writing group” for this summer. Such groups work as a commitment device to help academics write more. We’ll meet on Wednesdays on Zoom from 9am to 1pm (eastern time).

For more information, please e-mail me at [email protected] .

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

I’m forming an “economics education writing group” for this fall. Such groups work as a commitment device to help academics write more. We’ll meet on Wednesdays on Zoom from 9am to 11am (eastern time).
For more information, please e-mail me at [email protected] .

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@effortfuleduktr I use something similar to illustrate how repetition does not necessarily mean that a memory is formed. I ask students to put their phone face down & then draw all the icons/apps on their home screen on scratch paper. Most might get 30%. This updates @DTWillingham penny example.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@7thgenFLMan @C_Hendrick I certainly don't follow every post by @C_Hendrick, but I don't believe that public school is mentioned often at all. As best I can see, posts are about teaching with scant mention of the level.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@MatthewCappucci How long between each shot? Just a few seconds or something shorter still?

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@AllyTaft For goods, see https://t.co/7fmuJXyWm6 . We also export a lot of services. One source has them as our third largest customer (after Canada and Mexico).

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@Wootenomics FWIW, I have read that asking for a set number of items in a summary might lead to biased results. I'm curious how it might differ if you did not ask for five?

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

I’m forming an “economics education writing group” for this spring. Such groups work as a commitment device to help academics write more (there is extensive literature on this point).

We’ll meet on Fridays on Zoom from 9am to 1pm (eastern time). We’ll start on January 17 and end on May 2. I hope that participants will attend for at least two hours; the time should enable West Coast economists to participate for this long. We’ll also have weekly readings and brief discussions on scholarly writing.

For more information, please e-mail me at [email protected] .

#teachecon

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@KelsiGHobbs Perhaps https://t.co/Lgbmg9zfdy

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@astro_Pettit So very cool! Looking forward to more.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

This is known as the "Curse of Knowledge" and is pretty well studied. Below is one nice reading on it.

The author is a peer of Akerlof, Spence, and Stiglitz but after his Nobel (in physics) he worked on improving teaching. Part of what he did was look at the literature on how people learn and this reading is a small part of that. (By and large, physicists care more about teaching than economists.)

https://t.co/PjL9Lz9e7i

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

I'm not sure that we know that much about active learning at all, to be honest. Studies (like Freeman, 2012) shows AL leads to better student outcomes, but they define it very broadly -- pretty much anything other than the instructor talking the whole class. Are some types of active learning better than others? I don't think that anyone knows.

Specifically, Lombardi et al. (2021) put it this way, "Therefore, as an umbrella term, active learning is not a useful concept for advancing research on effective undergraduate STEM learning." Dancy et al. (2024) suggest "What is needed, though, are studies to better understand how to optimize active learning."

Just wrapping a paper on this point, so your post struck a nerve. Me, I'm a fan of putting AL in a deliberate practice framework: Ericsson, Krampe, Tesch-Römer, 1993 and Ericsson and Pool, 2016. The make the point that it isn't so much students being active, but being given challenging specific tasks and subtasks that incrementally improve their schemas (mental constructs of facts, procedures, and concepts). Seen in this light, students can be conducting AL exercises that don't add much at all their skills or schemas.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@ernietedeschi Thoughts on why these data show rising real wages for lower income groups but there are frequent anecdotal reports to the opposite? Just vibes or something else? I've long been puzzled on this point.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@C_Hendrick Guess we need to sunset the human race...

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

Despite having read this many times, I'm still inspired by this instructor's approach to teaching. In part, I'm thinking of work by @SChewPsych on how students can come to trust their instructors to be beneficent.

"On the first day of class, I walk down off the stage to the middle of the auditorium and say, ‘I’m on your side. I’m not up there — I’m down here. I want you to know how important it is to me that you be successful."

https://t.co/L4zH1j7ecM

[Penn State Econ @PennStateEcon]

Penn State Economics is hiring Teaching Faculty at the Assistant or Associate Level
https://t.co/In0hEPFt55

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@RobertTalbert @drantbradley Along the lines of what @drantbradley described? Truly curious.

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

@dominickmatthew On the red, maybe volcanic activity on the Kamchatka Peninsula? Seems quite a stretch, but this link reports that thermal activity was visible from orbit last week. https://t.co/sKSve3G3O5

[Bill Goffe @BillGoffe]

FWIW, last March I was in the Mojave Desert (near the peak of Little Cowhole Mtn.) and did a timelapse from about 1am (moonless) to past sunrise. I went from 20 seconds, f1.8, ISO 3200, to 1/1000 seconds, f16, ISO 1600 (sun was in the frame). You might face a challenge with your rapid changes in light intensity -- I'm unsure if the software is designed for such rapid sunrises and sunsets.

Here's the timelapse, which is 100% unedited, but note the smooth transition. At some point, I need to learn LRTimelapse so I can bring out the dark foreground across the timelapse.

https://t.co/eV2OgkQhPh

Good luck!