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March 9, 2016

Associate Chair Crosses the Pond to Present on Pedagogy

doug mckee photo

Doug McKee, Economics Associate Chair, recently returned from the University College London (UCL), where he gave a talk at UCL’s Centre for Teaching and Learning Economics as part of an education seminar series.  For his presentation, Prof. McKee spoke on teaching large classes while still engaging student attention and comprehension.  His talk focused on incorporating elements of surprise and keeping students engaged with interactive class activities. 

The education seminar series is part of the new Yale-UCL teaching collaboration which has been established by the recently launched Centre for Teaching and Learning Economics, part of the UCL Economics department.  The center is partnering with Yale in an effort to grow strong global collaborations that include speaking events hosted at both universities.  According to Dr. Parama Chaudhury, Senior Teaching Fellow and Co-founder of the Centre for Teaching and Learning Economics, “the aim of the partnership is to develop the kind of links that exist already in terms of academic research, and to formalize them in the form of a teaching and learning network in economics.”

Dr. Chaudhury will visit Yale at the end of March giving two talks sponsored by the the Economics Department and Yale Center for Teaching and Learning.  Her first talk on March 28 will discuss the CORE project, an online, economics curriculum geared toward undergraduate students.  The program reflects recent real world events and practices, and introduces students to strategic behavior, imperfect markets, and the role of institutions from day one, rather than slowly building-up first principles over time as is standard practice in introductory economics courses. In her presentation, Dr. Chaudhury will explain how this challenging new curriculum has been introduced at UCL and how they have developed complementary teaching materials to support lecturers and tutors.

On March 30, Dr. Chaudhury will discuss how she uses team-based learning (TBL) in her first year undergraduate class which introduces students to research in economics. Staying true to the philosophy of TBL, her presentation will be a show-and-tell-and-listen rather than a standard seminar, where she will ask attendees to participate in the kind of activities that would take place in a classroom environment.

For more information on each event’s time and location, please visit the Economics Department events page.