Adventures in Curriculum Development

As a graduate student who has completed formal coursework, there is a real sense in which my primary job right now is researcher. Working on my dissertation, submitting some papers for publication, and getting some face time at conferences are the major projects for me before going on the job market in 18 months. However, a big part of my career will also be teaching undergraduates, and to that end I have been getting lots of experience teaching both lower- and upper-division courses.

I will be teaching one such lower-division course over August intersession. For those who have never experienced intersession, let me sum it up in a word: Intense. Essentially intersession crams 16 weeks of lectures, exams, and discussion into 15 days. Each class is more than three hours, all told. Students have to try to absorb over a week's worth of material in an afternoon, think about and study it the next morning, then do it all over again the next day. It is hardly less intense to teach it, since I have to keep myself talking for almost three and a half hours, with no more than a couple ten-minute breaks along the way. Not my preferred way to transmit knowledge.

To top it off, I am completely rewriting my notes for the course right now, as I am converting to a brand new textbook. The textbook is written by a couple of economists who also write one of my favorite blogs; as such, the book is witty and engaging, and describes all of the usual material for the principles of macroeconomics using advanced but accessible techniques. I'm really looking forward to using it. That said, I'm having to deal with a bit of a learning curve in order to fit the material into 12 lectures and three exams.

At the same time, I am planning to rewrite the curriculum for the distance learning courses I grade. The current textbook is out of print and not well suited to students gaining any sort of understanding without a lecture. This curriculum development will be easier, but at this point it's one more thing.

So here we see another aspect of my future career: curriculum development. I'm not sure if the amount of work I'm putting into this right now will pay off in the long run, but I do enjoy finding better ways to communicate the central ideas of what I teach.