Division of Labour: Is it worth it?

July 27, 2005

Is it worth it?

Three students are recording my lectures in Econometrics II (euphemistically called "Research Methods") which have covered panel data, maximum likelihood, stochastic frontiers, limited dependent variables (logit/probit/mlogit/oprobit/tobit/truncated variables), and what I like to call the "good, the bad, and the ugly" of econometric practice.

I half jokingly asked at the end of tonight's class, the last of the semester, if one or more were podcasting me without my knowledge. Luckily no light bulbs went off (on?), but one student stated he had them all saved (sixteen two hour plus lectures) and that he would give them to me.

I hesitated when he said they would be in .wav format - which would require multiple CD's - but he immediately pointed out he would burn them to a DVD, probably with room to spare. So much for me being on the cutting edge of technology, I am still burning CD's.

I will now be one step closer to the scene in Real Genius when eventually the class was held with the students' desks holding tape recorders and the professor's lecture being played from a tape recording.

Actually, I am terrified to hear myself yapping on about such stuff. I cringe when I hear myself on a my voice mail message at home/work/cell, I wonder how bad it will be to hear me discussing econometrics (so might Profs. Cornwell and Atkinson at UGA ;-).

I wonder if anyone else has experience with this - from either the student or professor viewpoint. Comments/experiences/and whether it is worth podcasting your lectures appreciated. I am personally becoming more turned off by technology on both sides of the lectern (even more than I initially was back in the 1990s), but I wonder if I am missing something.

Posted by Craig Depken at 10:59 PM in Misc. · TrackBack (0)

Comments

I could not even imagine how an econometrics class could translate well to sound.
What are you going to hear in the playback anyway?

"*scribble scribble* and we'll use the method of lagrange here.. and...*scribble scribble* reduce this matrix... take this plim like soooo... and QED*"

My math/econ courses largely consitute theorems, proofs, and examples. I couldn't imagine hearing them would be any more worthwhile than reading the text and taking thorough notes.

Posted by: josh at July 28, 2005 02:09 AM

Agreed. Although here at UTA we use white boards and "non-toxic pens" so even the scribble-scribble is not there. My approach is to try hard to describe in English what the math is representing, but the English probably is tortured.

Perhaps I will peruse the audio selections and risk the release of selected portions?

Posted by: craig at July 28, 2005 02:21 AM

Most impressive of you to allow students to record your lectures. A step forward from our friend, Adam Smith, who seemed to take exception to his students writing during his lectures, at least in his early years of teaching at the University of Glasgow. He called them 'scribblers' and made it clear they should be listening, not writing.

Either he relented with experience and growing self-confidence, or the students who copied down his entire lectures in "Rhetoric and Belles Lettres" and "Jurisprudence" were careful to disguise their activities (1763). Both series now in print.

And what a gift that was to scholarly enquiry and our knowledge of Smith's philosophy!

Maybe your off-the-cuff remarks and asides may prove slightly, and momentarily, embarrassing, but your total approach, your enthusiasm for econometrics, as evidenced on Division of Labour, will surely be inspirational to younger teachers stuck in the simple regurgitation of endless tests and equations.

You might help raise the standards of teaching of econometrics and statistics (I always called the latter 'sadistics', both as a suffering student and later as a lecturer/professor).

Posted by: Gavin Kennedy at July 28, 2005 02:24 AM

Ah just yesterday as 3 of us in Brooks hall stumbled over ouselves to recall the difference between using GMM and IV we were thankful that both Prof. Cornwell and Atkinson were out of the office, and could not overhear our inept-ness.

Posted by: goodness_of_fit at July 28, 2005 08:34 AM

I'd be glad to convert your lectures to MP3 and put them online (I used to be a professional streaming media expert before I got trapped into broadcast television and IP-over-satellite). Email me...

Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at July 28, 2005 10:05 AM

Hey, try to get these to stream online eventually. Can always stand to improve my understanding of this stuff.

Posted by: scott cunningham at July 29, 2005 12:22 AM

Thanks for the comments. I now have the entire lecture series for Econometrics II but have not even tried to listen to it yet, so I have no idea about quality (of recording!), I have some idea about the quality of explanation - he, he.

I am closing the comments but will leave them up - especially for the humorous first one.

I have also been given Lectures 13-26 of my Econometrics I class (the first 12 are evidently lost on a crashed hard drive somewhere).

Posted by: craig at August 1, 2005 10:12 PM