Hey #EconTwitter, a thread on how this professor is adapting to teach online.

Background: I teach @ColoradoCollege, where we live and learn on the Block Plan. Students take 1 class at a time, profs teach 1 class at a time, we do an entire smstr of stuff in 18 days (usually).

I'm teaching our intro class, which is micro + macro + calculus. Added fun: bc of the pandemic, we cut the term to 15 days.

15 days! With calculus!!

I usually teach from the @Austan_Goolsbee, Levitt, and Syverson intermediate textbook, and supplement with in-class activities for the principles intuitions. Well that can't happen now.

So we switched to Modern Principles by @tylercowen and @ATabarrok.

I've used the book before and I really like the writing.

PLUS: @MRevUniversity already has high production videos with captions in several languages and transcripts for those who need screen readers.

We've also been using a lot of the Sapling materials from @MacmillanUSA, and the students really like both the @MRevUniversity videos and Sapling's Learning Curve.

See? Survey data say so.

And what about the calc?

I made my own videos!

First, a smash up of @tylercowen and @ATabarrok's ch 5 and @Austan_Goolsbee LS's ch 2, with my videos on elasticity with calculus () and partial differentiation ()

Next, @tylercowen and @ATabarrok's ch 25 and @Austan_Goolsbee LS's ch 4, with my videos on the marginal rate of substitution with calculus ( and )

I'm pretty proud of that MRS video. What are indifference curves? Duh. They are lines on a topo. Great analogy for my outdoorsy students.

Week 1 of 3 is done, and the students seem pretty happy so far!

Big thanks to @MacmillanUSA, especially Cayte and Travis who are our representatives.

@tylercowen and @ATabarrok have also been very available and helpful.

How did I make my videos? PowerPoint and Screen-cast-o-matic, uploaded to @YouTube

Graphs generally? @Desmos

Those 3D graphs? @geogebra