What am I reading now?
I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was looking forward to several articles in The Journal of Economic Education that focused on Literacy-Targeted Principles of Economics. Right now, there are three on my radar:
Avi J. Cohen (2023) What do we want students to (know and) be able to do: Learning outcomes, competencies, and content in literacy-targeted principles courses, The Journal of Economic Education, DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2023.2282016
Mark Maier & Phil Ruder (2024) Assessment to promote learning in a literacy-targeted (LT) economics course, The Journal of Economic Education, DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2023.2285451
Gary A. Hoover & Ebonya Washington (2024) How LT principles can improve diversity, inclusiveness, and student interest, The Journal of Economic Education, DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2024.2309369
Cohen's article has already heavily influenced an update of my principles of economics course for next year. Maier & Ruder is an excellent complement to that article related to assessments. Hoover and Washington's latest version just made it online on Monday (March 4), and I also look forward to reading that article.
Although the authors focus on principles courses, I believe the ideas will help my upper-level courses as well. For example, Cohen's article helped me design five learning objectives for my Environmental Economics course. Using a literacy-targeted design has also helped me create better assessments tied to the five learning objectives.
Social Annotations with Hypothesis Update
I am generally pleased with the student responses to the first assessment question related to social annotations. I will make some tweaks, and I'd like to gather an additional assessment data point (March 15th) before I debrief.
The current week's social annotation exercise examines the value of a statistical life (VSL). For this activity, I joined the student conversation, added my S.I.T. annotations, and responded to another student's prompt.