ALDP Teaching Innovation
Four vignettes
2025-07-23
The realities on the ground
Constraints breed creativity – but can burn you out.
Students are not at the right level – burden to gatekeep is high.
Shared responsibility about the curriculum is not just about conversation about who takes care of what –
- it is about moving beyond one’s training
- it is about constantly experimenting and documenting
Four vignettes
- Econometrics diaries
- Calculus in 6 weeks
- Actual lecture and lab topic coordination in mathematical economics course for freshmen economics majors
- Hypothesis testing as the very first topic in a stats course
Four vignettes - Four targets
Are the innovations only for innovation’s sake?
- Competencies?
- Contribution to CLOs and PLOs?
- How to actually assess?
- How to spend time in the classroom?
Econometrics diaries
- Students write a diary entry once every 2-3 weeks.
- Open way to communicate with instructor their difficulties
- Answering a prompt
- Encouraged to even try solving out or working out arguments for me to see
- No length restrictions
- Implemented Term 2, AY 2023-2024
Competencies?
- Perfect way to gauge “attitudes” and “values”
- Cognizant of one’s habits and biases
- Know when and how to take stock, step back, and challenge existing conditions and norms
- Early information for instructor and student
- Move away from low metacognition
Indirectly affect inherited CLOs
Directly affect one PLO
How to assess?
- 10% of final grade, but better than attendance grade
- No rubric – information device to adjust on-the-fly
- Current version: Completeness rather than correctness
- Future version: A chance to grade attitudes and behavior
- Buffer to reduce grade-bargaining
- High risk of perfunctory completion
- Does not scale well (10-15 hours of serious work with feedback for 25 students)
How to spend time in classroom
Spend time addressing issues highlighted in diary entries
Reconsider topic ordering and correct misunderstandings right away
But no one mentioned the value of the diaries in the teaching evaluation
- Reflection without action from the student side
- The broken chain in the Lasallian Reflection Framework
Calculus in 6 weeks
- Robust against “funwelcome” classroom disruptions and heterogeneous student preparation
- Submitted as an external grant for an online course (Term 1, AY 2024-2025)
- Never implemented in DLSU, but may be implemented as part of future leaner curriculum
- Video recordings and materials are available
- Realized after grant is completed that non-economics majors cannot handle graphs – Must adjust once again
Directly affect all inherited CLOs
Directly affect three PLOs
How to assess?
Coursera style: Get assessed at your own pace
Problem sets only
But no online participant submitted problem sets
What will happen in the DLSU version of this class?
- Treatment vs control groups
- Ethical clearances needed – think about least damage
How to spend time in classroom
- Sharp reduction in coverage allows more direct interaction with students and more time to repair and patch holes
- Will future retention become higher as a result?
- High risk of letting MathGPT deal with exercises
- High risk of students not caring enough no matter how large the demonstrated care by instructor
- Skipping skills to get to an advanced stage faster versus investing in skills to get to an advanced stage in a more informed way
Lecture and lab coordination
- CLTSOE has two courses called Mathematical Economics and Mathematical Economics Laboratory.
- Taken every Term 3 by freshmen economics majors
- Never coordinated in any meaningful way
- Took the task of coordination for my version on Term 3, AY 2023-2024
Lecture and lab coordination
Wanted to write a paper on early exposure to symbolic computation in Python
Wanted to rearrange content
- Optimization first, then linear algebra?
- Linear algebra first, then optimization?
Wanted students to see even beyond their course – but materials may not even be used by instructors of courses following these prerequisites
Competencies?
- Retention and proficiency are key
- Connect economics ideas directly to mathematical language one last time before going into the majors
- Set things up for further processing
- Capacity for abstraction
- Learn an unfamiliar software Python right away
- Verification and validation when using AI
CLO-PLO mappings for lecture
CLO-PLO mappings for lab
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How to assess?
- Bring book exercises and unanswered problems into the lab setting
- Lab notebooks – completeness only, iterative F2F corrections
- Open notes exams via Google Colab
- Evaluation form after every lab class
- High failure rate, even with repeated lab exercises – Students not proactive enough to want to verify their own answers, never mind discovery.
How to spend time in classroom
- Sharp reduction in coverage allows more direct interaction with students and more time to repair and patch holes
- Will future retention become higher as a result?
- High risk of letting MathGPT deal with exercises
- High risk of students not caring enough no matter how large the demonstrated care by instructor
- Skipping skills to get to an advanced stage faster versus investing in skills to get to an advanced stage in a more informed way
Hypothesis testing as first topic
- Economics majors take one statistics course in the current curriculum.
- Math is not the main skill in statistics – but it shares abstraction as an important device.
- We get a heterogeneous range: No exposure, some exposure, and mostly exposure to template-style statistics.
- Took the task of introducing it first for my version on Term 1, AY 2024-2025 – with some objection from PLC
Hypothesis testing as first topic
Why should it be the first topic?
- Researchers in the Philippines have disproportionately used hypothesis testing as a way to answer research questions.
- The way it is taught is via a template which students cannot understand but can actually do.
Opportunity to hear students ask the question “If statistics are numbers subject to variation, then why should we believe them?”
Access to difficult topics, like the bootstrap
Competencies?
- Should you use hypothesis testing at all?
- Better appreciation of the need to quantify uncertainty
- Capacity for abstraction
- Use software in a less template-y fashion
- Verification and validation when using AI
Indirectly affect PLOs
CLO-PLO mappings
How to assess?
- Use vignettes and then determine if situation calls for hypothesis test
- Assess ability of student to change the relevant parts of R code to mirror other similar situations
- Find other similar examples in reality and in media
- Doing math without actually doing math – change the way math is perceived
How to spend time in classroom
- Focus on the topic which dominates choice of method in the Philippines
- Reduce template-y approach, reduce reliance on tables
- Provide more direct motivation than usual ways of motivating statistics – key is sampling variation and how to decide claims based on sampling variation
- Better clarifying questions from students
- High difficulties in exams: Defining what the parameter is, articulating the argument rather than the template
Four vignettes - Four Five targets
Are the innovations only for innovation’s sake?
- Will it reduce the invisible workload?
- Competencies? Should we think of the average rather than the ideal DLSU student?
- Contribution to CLOs and PLOs? Make students care about these. Think about indirect vs direct contributions.
- How to actually assess? Research ethics clearances for RCT and data collection
- How to spend time in the classroom? Document time use