THE TEACHING ECONOMIST - William A. McEachern 
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Issue 30, Spring 2006
William A. McEachern, Editor
The Grapevine
In their third such effort, Michael Watts of Purdue and William Becker of Indiana surveyed the instructional approach used in teaching undergraduate economics. Based on responses to a five-page questionnaire mailed in the spring of 2005 to all types of higher education institutions, the authors found that a median of 83% of respondents rely primarily on the lecture approach, or "chalk and talk", as they call it. This was about the same median found in surveys they carried out five years ago and ten years ago. There have been modest increases in placing class notes online, computer lab instruction, and classroom experiments. Still, there is much inertia. Watts and Becker also found an increased emphasis on teaching at the surveyed institutions. Their paper, "Is There Less Chalk and Talk in Undergraduate Economics Classes?" was presented at the American Economic Association meeting in January.
Larry Neal, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has won the 2005 Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History. Neal taught undergraduate and graduates courses in European Economic History and for fifteen years edited Explorations in Economic History. The prize, awarded annually for the last dozen years by the Economic History Association, is named for Jonathan Hughes—brilliant, funny, literate, and a master teacher," a jazz saxophone player, and, from 1966 until his death in 1992, an economic historian at Northwestern. Previous winners include Daniel Barbezat, Amherst (2004); Charles Feinstein, Oxford (2003); Barry Eichengreen, Berkeley (2002); Carolyn Tuttle, Lake Forest (2001); Jeffrey Williamson, Harvard (2000); Robert Whaples, Wake Forest (1999); the late Robert Gallman, North Carolina (1998); Martha Olney, Berkeley (1997); Henry Gemery, Colby (1996); and the late William Parker, Yale (1995). Douglas North, Washington University in St. Louis, won the inaugural prize in 1994, one year after his Nobel Prize.
Eric Steger of East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, likes to generate class discussion by posing questions. While discussing the costs of production, he asked students "why don't low cost countries like China produce almost everything?" He says this question got the students thinking about the realities of business decision making. Students raised a number of potential obstacles to production and trade including language barriers, business customs, shipping costs, rules and regulations, supply disruptions, political risks, and questions about quality. Professor Steger began another class by writing the following question on the board: "Is $1000 per hour great pay?" He asked students what they would want to know before they answered such a seemingly simple question. One said he wanted to know how much $1000 would buy. Another asked what the job was. Professor Steger believes that a good question can trigger a lively discussion.
The economics department at Johns Hopkins University established in 2002 the Bruce Hamilton Research Seminar Award given annually since then to the graduate student who "best exemplifies the high standards Bruce has set through his insightful and constructive comments at seminars over his many years as a faculty member." (Hamilton is now emeritus.) That sounds like a good idea, and a useful signal to the job market.
A revision of the Test of Understanding of College Economics (TUCE) will be available soon. Questions have been revised or replaced, scrutinized by a team of economists, and normed based on results from colleges and universities at all levels. As before, there are 35 multiple-choice questions on each of the micro and macro tests. The macro test changed more than the micro test because of reduced emphasis on competing schools of thought. The revision was discussed by William Walstad, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Michael Watts of Purdue in "The Test of Understanding of College Economics: Revision and Preliminary Results" presented at the American Economic Association meeting in January.