ALDP Teaching Innovation

Four vignettes

Andrew Adrian Pua

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?

Vignette 1

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

Vignette 2

Calculus in 6 weeks

  • Teach the very first calculus course for any major, but focusing on economics as context

    • Assume the worst background
    • But start with minimal algebra skills – linear equations, quadratic equations, and graphs
    • Remove the unnecessary rigor (I will get letters!)
    • Directly relate to economics topics in a less perfunctory manner – take abstraction seriously

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

Competencies?

  • Create tractable models of the environment

  • Make the price of forgetting algebra skills steep

    • Recurring ideas are exploited
    • How do you form a definition for a slope of a line?
    • How do you solve for \(x\)?
    • Early access to nontraditional topics
  • Learn Python right away

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

Vignette 3

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

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

Vignette 4

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

Concluding remarks

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