Self-Evaluation

Initial situation

The teacher organized his course around 3 types of sessions: traditional mandatory sessions dealing with theory; optional problem-solving sessions with personalized corrections and a presentation of the corrections by the assistant; and optional reading group sessions with an oral presentation to the whole class. The sudden increase in the number of students (from 40 to 120) forced the teacher to change the format of these sessions, as there was no longer enough time to ensure the correction of each problem set and the oral presentation of each paper.

Project implementation

Due to the increasing number of students, the teacher now offers a self-grading system to the students. As before, students solve problems in random groups of 2 or 3 and submit them before the session during which the assistant presents the solutions. These are then made available on Moodle. Each question is assigned several points. By comparing their solutions to the one proposed in the correction, the students must send a grade to the assistant for their own work. To ensure fairness, the teaching staff announces that a random check will be made on the marks awarded and that any abuse of indulgence will be sanctioned by a mark of 0.

Concerning the reading groups, in order to avoid having to devote several sessions to the oral presentation of each group, the presentations will now take place on a single day at the International Labour Office (ILO). This day allows, in addition to the presentations with sometimes the participation of the authors of the reports presented, a visit of the ILO accompanied by one of its members during the lunch break. These readings are organized in order to introduce students to influential articles and reports in the field of study. In random groups of 3 or 4, students are required to read an article and prepare a 15-minute oral presentation of that article. Teachers attend and grade the presentations and discussions of the articles.

Problem solving and reading groups are not mandatory. However, if students choose to participate in all these activities, the marks received for each of them count for 25% of their final mark. The teacher specifies that they are only considered if they are higher than the grade obtained on the final exam so that it is always beneficial to take part in them. The final exam, depending on whether students participate in the previous activities, counts for 50 or 100% of the final grade. The final exam is in written form and includes general questions on the content covered during the course and exercises like those proposed during the problem solving.

Thoughts and advice

The teacher notes that on self-assigned grades, instead of being more lenient towards themselves as one might expect, students are being overly strict.

Organizing the presentation sessions in a single day at the ILO requires a lot of logistical work in terms of organization in relation to the other courses that the students are taking.

The teacher points out that in his own experience, innovation is more accessible at the Master’s and Doctorate level than at the Bachelor’s level because of the smaller number of students. He also drew attention to research that has shown that innovations that seek to make courses more interactive often benefit the more advanced students to the detriment of the less advanced. The same is true for the flipped classroom format.

Student feedback

“The course balances out well theoretical frameworks and empirical studies in labor economics. It captures all fundamental models in detail and allows us to analyze their application in prominent works. It develops our presentation skills along with the ability to scrutinize and question employed methodology and authors’ assumptions. It develops our quantitative skills in solving problems that require both understanding of the theory and the economic interpretation of the results.” “The problem sets that you can submit and grade yourself are one of the highlights of the course.”