Teaching at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center

When I was done with my year's teaching in 2000-01 I was asked to comment on the experience. Here is what I wrote about the students and the teaching experience.

June 2001

I found that teaching the students at the Center was overall a very positive experience. The students were articulate, motivated and extremely bright. That said, the purpose here as I understand is to point out some of the challenges.

First, I often found it difficult to tell if the students understood the concepts on which I was lecturing. There was a general tendency for the students to keep silent and only rarely ask questions or make comments. A great deal of this was no doubt due to the fact that I lectured a lot, and rarely held class discussions. I would change that, if possible, but the subject matter makes it difficult.

Second, I found that there was a great deal of variance in terms of background – particularly in the principles class. Some students had bachelor’s degrees in economics and were pursuing advanced degrees in the field, and others had never taken an economics course in their life and had only minimal exposure to the math tools they needed. Still, I found that the majority of students were willing to learn difficult concepts and math tools, once they saw why and how the tools were used. I used a great deal of calculus in my principles class and found that those students who were unfamiliar with the concepts took the time to learn them. This was a pleasant surprise, as I was prepared to drop back to non-calculus based approaches, if necessary.

Third, I like students to cooperate on homework. So I encouraged them to get together in study groups. However, I suspect that a great deal of the time, they merely copied the homework of one of the two or so class leaders who had a clear understanding of the material from previous exposure to the topic. I don’t see anyway to enforce this, but I think it hurt many students at exam time, as they were inadequately prepared.

Finally, I found that overall the experience was not all that different from teaching US students. I did need to explain things clearly, but I could tackle more complex concepts more quickly, as well. Also, I had to be careful not to pick jokes for class that relied too heavily on puns or plays on words.