China Slows

Asia is beginning to weaken.  Given the stagnation in the western economies, this is not good news.  Unemployment in the Eurozone remains above 12 percent and US unemployment rates have fallen only because of the massive shift of workers out of the work force.  Growth in the West is so slight as to be within the margin of error for measuring the data.  The only real global economic strength has been Asia and that may be ending.

Granted there are bright spots in the US -- fewer in Europe.  US housing is stabilized and there are pockets of feeding frenzy here and there in the residential market.  But, overall, there is still weakness.  Now with Obamacare looming and the unleashing of the EPA, things could easily deteriorate in the US.

While everyone watches the Fed, the real story is a micro story.  The mass of regulation, rules and additional costs that businesses face, even if demand were to increase, will keep a lid on economic expansion.  Debt problems will also limit the future of Western economies.  Too many promises, too few resources to deliver on those promises.

Fed activity is mainly important for inflationary expectations and pressures.  With a sick economy (made sick by federal policies since 2008), there isn't much inflation.  But there will be.  That's what the recent uptick in treasury rates is all about.

Moodys is Right On

Moodys released a report on state pension funds today that implied that such funds currently hold only 48 cents out of every dollar needed to properly fund their obligations.  Three cheers for Moodys!

For decades, state and local pension funds have released grossly misleading and inaccurate figures suggesting that they are better funded than is merited by the facts.  Politicians have acquiesced in this charade since it was inconvenient, to use Al Gore's phrase, to speak the truth.

The chief method of disguising the truth is to make over-optimistic assumptions about future asset returns and unrealistic assumptions about the contributions that will be forthcoming in the future.

Based upon false information, state and local governments have touted reforms that hardly make a dent in the real problems.  Virginia is a great example.  The so-called pension fund reforms enacted by the Virginia General Assembly and backed by Governor McDonnell were misleadingly hailed as a 'major' improvement in funding.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  By maintaining mostly a defined benefit system supported by optimistic and unrealistic assumptions, the Virginia reforms simply locked in concrete a failing system without any serious reform.

The only properly funded pension systems are defined contribution systems.  Period.  If you are a participant in a defined benefit system (social security is a good example), the best advice for you is to start saving as much as you can.  Your pension system is most likely in deep, deep trouble.

GDP Revised Downward

Instead of 2.4 percent as originally advertised, the US GDP grew at a revised 1.8 percent during the first quarter of 2013.  Consumption spending fell off the cliff, which was unexpected.

So, the stock market rallied...big time.  Why?  Because the bad economic news suggested that the Fed might continue its bond purchases indefinitely.  "Long live QE3" was the rallying cry.

Meanwhile the President and his cronies were busily designing more strategies to lengthen unemployment lines: increase minimum wage, bury the coal industry, continue down the road on Obamacare, push for higher taxes, and stall the Keystone pipeline.

Nothing discourages this White House.  They will not likely be satisfied until unemployment gets back into double digit territory (so they can match their heroes in Europe) or until millions more Americans give up on working and move into disability or off into the black market.

On the ObamaCare front, the Administration is now recruiting Hollywood types and NFL superstars to begin a campaign to get young folks to sign up for ObamaCare health insurance, which will cost  the 18-25 set roughly twenty times the penalty for not signing up.  The premiums for young people are more then ten times what free market insurance would cost them.

There is some justice here, since young folks backed Obama's candidacy in overwhelming numbers.  Now, the young will find first hand what it is like to pay to subsidize others.  Don't expect the young to buy in.  Coffee house conversation is one thing; actually paying for ObamaCare is another.  They will not buy in.

Without the youth 'buy-in,' the ObamaCare numbers don't work.  But that's okay one supposes, since the so-called insurance exchanges mandated by the law are not in existence anyway.  ObamaCare is mostly an idea -- a terrible idea.  No one knows what the reality will be because no one in the Obama administration is doing anything significant toward implementation.  All of this will slam into the economy as the year progresses.

Between the coming of ObamaCare, higher taxes, the war on the coal industry, and the push for higher minimum wages, don't expect much improvement in the economy.  Even housing is going to struggle with the new regulatory environment which makes it border-line criminal for a bank to make a mortgage loan to someone who needs a mortgage loan.  Not to mention higher mortgage rates, which zoomed up from 3.7 percent to over 4.5 percent just in the last thirty days.

Meanwhile the stock market moves higher.

Unilateral Energy Disarmament

As the rest of the world gears up to massively increase their carbon footprint, Obama is moving to put the US out of the coal business.  That won't keep worldwide coal production from soaring.  It just takes the US out of the coal business.  Obama has made no effort at all to get global partners to sign on board.  Instead, the US is walking this plank all alone.

This is in keeping with the Obama strategy of strangling the US economy to gain accolades from the Harvard coffee houses.

Once again, American workers will bear the brunt of the Obama agenda.  It is not enough to have the worst economic recovery on historical record (at least since 1850).  Now, with Obamacare on the horizon, Obama provides one more nail to the coffin of American prosperity with his arbitrary EPA war on the American worker and energy user.

The route to third world status is paved with good intentions and truckloads of hubris.

WHAT WAS YOUR BEST?

 

In my previous blog posting, I talked about the creation of faculty learning communities as a way to generate conversation about various aspects of teaching/learning/education.   At that time, I brought up one of my favorite topics.   If you have read this blog for long, you are aware that I am a firm believer that the way you test will strongly influence the way your students learn.   If you want to create a different class environment, you need to test differently.

Therefore, in discussing faculty learning communities, I strongly feel that every aspect of testing should be a topic of serious conversation by people who want to become better teachers.

So, today, I have a question for you.   I would bet it is a question that you have never been asked before no matter how long you have taught.   And, I would argue that it is a question we should be asking all the time.   In fact, I think we should have a national contest built around this one question.   I believe the answers might well improve college education (which is not a small statement to make).

Here’s the question.   Think before you answer. 

Whether you teach history, political science, math, accounting, or the like, in your testing during the past semester (or academic year), what was the very best question you asked your class on a test?   If testing matters so much, then we should all have some really good questions that we are especially proud of having written.   Why did you feel that particular question was so good?

Excellent test questions set the tone for your class:   this is what I consider important, this is the way I want you to learn, this is the kind of thinking you should be doing, this is what I want from you rather than memorization.   Students need guidance – nothing guides them quite like what they believe will be on the tests.

Okay, so what was my best question for the past semester?   As most readers of this blog probably know, I teach accounting at the Robins School of Business at the University of Richmond.    We have very bright students who are willing to do as much or as little as you ask of them.   It is all about asking.   In testing, I want them to know that I am going to ask them for a lot of serious thinking.

One of my courses is Intermediate Accounting II.   Most of my students believe that accounting is basically the memorization of set rules that they must apply to particular situations.   Many of them are left-brained and love the comfort of those rules.   They are not necessarily happy that I want them to think outside of the box.

However, my experience has been that, in real life, accountants are thrown into odd situations almost every day and must use all of their brain cells to figure out what is going on so that they can determine what response is needed.  

You can learn the rules for being a medical doctor but the actual application is much more stressful (and interesting).

On my first test this past semester, I wanted to break the students away from the memorization of rules.   So, when they opened the test, they discovered that they had an accounting client on the planet Kryptoplasm.   The businesses on that planet use a unique set of accounting rules (referred to as Krypto-GAAP).   I then presented a variety of situations and described the basic rules found in Krypto-GAAP.  I then asked the students to determine the impact of converting the financial statements prepared on that planet into financial statements that could be used in the US (based on US GAAP).   For each situation, they had to tell if reported net income would go up or down, whether the reported liabilities would go up or down, and so on.

The students had never seen anything like this which is what I wanted.  

What was I trying to accomplish?

--I wanted the students to read the questions carefully.   They could not anticipate the accounting rules on the other planet so they had to read the words and think about what those people were doing.   I think the ability to read and think through what you are being told is vitally important in solving problems.

--I wanted to downplay the importance of memorization.   No matter what you tell a student they will believe that they can prosper by memorizing everything you have said.   I wanted no questions that simply asked them to replicate a mechanical rule.

--I wanted them to make judgments as to which rules should have been applied.   By describing the weird things that were happening on this planet, they had to step back and think about how those events should be reported.   The problem was more than just manipulating numbers.

--Despite being set on a faraway planet, I wanted the students to be placed in a real life situation.   Having a client do weird things is no stretch of the imagination.   Too many tests have nothing to do with real life and reinforce the student’s suspicions that college classes are just student exercises.

Did I like the results?

Yes, in fact, I liked this question so very well that my second test used the same format (without warning the students).

Yes, in fact, the standard joke in my classes quickly came to be “what would they do in Krypto-GAAP?” which alerted the students to the fact that accounting rules are not set in stone but simply selected at a point in time and place as the most appropriate method.

Did the test question work?   I have no hard data but I do know that I had a really good semester in Intermediate Accounting II.   My students quickly came to be open to talking about accounting in interesting and theoretical ways.   We learned the rules but we didn’t become obsessed with the rules.   I think one of the major reasons why the semester went so well was because of the message that I sent out in that first test (and then followed up on in the second test).   This question helped show the students the kind of thinking I wanted them to be able to do.   The way you test is the way they will learn.

So, what was your best question of the past semester?

LET'S ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT TEACHING

Assume someone offered you a million dollars to become one of the great college teachers in the world.  Given that much incentive, how would you approach the challenge?   Well, my plan would be to break teaching down into all of its many basic components and study each one very carefully – looking for ways to make it better.  I think you build a better machine by taking it apart so that you can analyze the individual pieces and try to improve each one.   However, over the years, I have never actually had anyone suggest this approach as a way of becoming a better teacher.   Improvement in teaching is more often talked about in generic ways.  

My thought is that you need to select one specific component of your teaching and then focus on it for a while.   How can I do this better?   In fact, there have been many semesters over my teaching career where I spent the entire time trying to improve one particular aspect of my teaching.   Then, the next semester I would choose some other component to study.

Okay, what brought all of this to my mind?

Andy Litteral, one of my friends and colleagues here at the Robins School of Business, gave a presentation two weeks ago describing a couple of “faculty learning communities” with which he has been involved this year.  An informal group of faculty members would meet periodically to discuss a general topic (use of the case-study method, for example).   They make presentations and discuss what they had discovered in their own explorations of the topic.   They can continue to meet for an indefinite period of time until the topic had been exhausted.  

I have long argued that many schools need to create a better forum to encourage faculty to discuss the subject of teaching among themselves.  Unfortunately, we often wait for an administrator to form an official committee (which can then turn into a lot of work to accomplish very little).  Perhaps the faculty should do this for themselves and forget the administration.

As Andy described it, the faculty learning community basically organizes itself (almost like a club) with the goal of examining a topic of interest and thinking about that topic more deeply.   Only people who were interested in the topic would join but each member was expected to be an active participant.  These community conversations apparently last until everyone feels that they have accomplished whatever is possible.    

To me, faculty learning communities seem like a great idea.  Obviously, such communities do not have to be about an aspect of teaching but they certainly can be.

After describing the workings of a faculty learning community, Andy broke the group that was present that day into teams of 5-6 faculty members.   He asked each to come up with one potential topic to serve as a foundation for a community discussion next fall.    That by itself was a great question – what would be a topic worth discussing?   What would you like to explore with a group of faculty members?

Being overly opinionated, I suggested that my group discuss one of my favorite topics:  student testing.   If you have read this blog for long, you know that I always argue that “the way you test is the way the students will learn.”   In my opinion, good testing has a very positive impact on student learning.

But what is good testing?   Where do you get your questions?   Should you reuse questions from year to year?   Should you give essays or problems or multiple-choice questions or a combination?     How do you test critical thinking skills?   Should you give partial credit?   Should you provide answer sheets?   Should final exams be comprehensive?   How do you handle students who complain that the grading was unfair?   What happens if a student misses a test?

To me, those questions are all vitally important to doing our jobs well and I would love to be part of a faculty learning community to simply focus on testing for a year.  I think that alone would make me a much better teacher.

But what other faculty learning communities could be set up around teaching?   Here is where you can break teaching down into its various component parts and analyze each one so very carefully.

--Everyone says classes should be interactive but how do you get all students (and not just an extroverted few) actively engaged in class conversation?

--Preparation is a key for learning but how do you get students to prepare before they walk into your classroom?

--How does a teacher actually go about preparing for a class?   What exactly does that entail?

--I am an accounting teacher.   How do I help my students learn to write better?

--Schools are supposed to develop critical thinking skills.   What exactly is critical thinking and how does a teacher develop that in a class?

--How do you teach classes of over 40 students?   How do you teach online courses?

--Educational technology is becoming more and more prevalent.   What works best and what doesn’t work as well?

Okay, I could go on forever.  But here’s the point:   If you really want to get better as a teacher, could you (yes, YOU) pick one of these topics or a similar topic and create your own faculty learning community at your own school?   I would think that if you selected any of these topics and got a group of 3-8 interested teachers together to chat periodically and make presentations of what they have done, the entire group would become better teachers in a relatively short period of time.
**

Added on May 4, 2013.   Someone sent me an article about a law class at the University of Virginia (http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/alumni/uvalawyer/f12/flipped.htm) and I couldn’t help but notice the following sentences about looking at every aspect of teaching the class in order to make each part better:    "I put all my materials and my course through an atomizer, and now I'm reassembling the bits in a whole new way," Verkerke said. "I've drawn the guiding principles for this new approach from research on teaching and learning, and from the insights of cognitive psychologists. The overriding goal is to harness the power of 'doing' to promote deeper learning for students."

I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU

As I have mentioned, I will be giving a presentation in Anaheim in August at the annual convention of the American Accounting Association.   I will be talking about this blog (and, hence, some of my ideas about teaching) for 75 minutes.   (When it comes to teaching, I can easily talk for many hours.)

Over the last couple of years, I have written 166 entries on this blog.   I think some have been pretty good but others have been rather stupid.   In writing and in teaching, that is how it goes.   Perfection is never my goal.   I like to throw out a lot of ideas and hope that a reasonable number are helpful.

My idea for this presentation in August is that I will talk about some of the blog entries that have been the most helpful to teachers out there in colleges around the world.   However, I can only guess at that.   So, I would like to enlist some help from YOU.  

If you think that any of these 166 essays have been especially interesting or insightful, please let me know.   Just drop me a note at Jhoyle@richmond.edu and give me the title.

In teaching, you can usually look in the eyes of the students and know what is working and what is not working.    Writing a blog is different -- there are no eyes for me to study, no body language for me to try to interpret.    I do get email feedback occasionally but not enough for me to know which essays might have been most beneficial.  

If there are one or two of these essays that you think I should discuss out in Anaheim, please let me know.   I really would appreciate the help.