Mark L. Burkey's  TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Why I am a Professor

While I was working as an undergraduate tutor for economics classes at Appalachian State University, I realized that I had found a calling.  I was able to help students that were experiencing difficulty learning to understand economics and statistics, to get them excited about it and want to learn more.  I still get goosebumps when a student says “Ohhhhh, now I understand it!”  I work hard to do an excellent job in the classroom, and never stop looking for ways to improve performance. 

I have attended many teaching workshops over the years.  The research on how memories are formed, and ways to improve critical thinking are what excite me the most. Two books that have most informed my teaching practice are:

a)   G.M. Nosich “Learning to Think Things Through: A guide to Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum”

b)   Richard Paul and Linda Elder “Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life”

I particularly like Socratic questioning and active learning techniques.  For example, I ask students to justify why a book says something, rather than simply asking what it says.

What I Do

My teaching at North Carolina A&T has primarily been in statistics and econometrics (ECON 305, 310, and 512) and introductory and intermediate microeconomics (ECON 200 and 311 (formerly ECON 410)).  I have recently developed a new course called “Data Skills for Economics” (ECON 290), where I use R Programming to bolster students’ statistics and data analytic skills in preparation for taking econometrics. After looking at dozens of textbooks and R Coding books, I ended up writing my own book and exercises, because no existing resource combined a review of statistics with an introduction to R coding at the appropriate level.

These courses are all very analytical and mathematical, and so the challenge in teaching these courses is to quickly review and build confidence in their mathematical skills. After this is done, I keep a constant pressure on students to turn their focus away from “getting the answer” and towards understanding what they are doing, and why, and what it means.

In all undergraduate courses the struggle is to maintain high standards and “cover the requisite amount of information” while also making sure that this knowledge is understood well by the students.  The Science of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has found that teachers need to carefully structure how, when, and how often material is introduced and repeated in order to help students build toward mastery. So, we as teachers need to work to optimize the amount of information students are exposed to at one time, intentionally building on and repeating the information on multiple occasions both during class, and outside of class. While no one approach is perfect, my general procedure involves the following pattern:

1)     I try to choose a textbook which is interesting to read, and a little below the level of difficulty of the course.  This way, every student should have the ability to read the book and understand the basics before each lecture.

2)     To ensure that the reading is done before class, there is always a reading assessment of some kind before the lecture to ensure that it has been done.  These assessments are not meant to demonstrate mastery, but are designed to ensure that the student has an initial, broad overview of the main ideas in a chapter. Examples include:

a)     McGraw-Hill Smart Book assignments

b)     Online Reading Quizzes

c)     In-class, 5 minute essays or short answer quizzes

3)     Given that the students’ minds are primed with the basics that the lecture is to cover from the reading and the quiz, we begin class with a brief discussion of the importance of what we are about to study. At the beginning of class, I ask students to explain the main ideas they learned, and during a problem-solving exercise we use these ideas to actively work out problems and examine possible solutions.

4)     My most significant teaching innovation consists of the hundreds of worksheets I have created. These handouts contain the most important formulas, a scenario, blank graphs, and some data we will work with (see supporting materials for examples). The students and I work through this handout together- they on paper, and I on my laptop/projector using a digitizing stylus. The students understand that it is their job to do the calculations, and my job is to be their guide. As we work through problems, we take pauses to ask “Why did we just calculate that?  What does it mean?” This also allows students to have a chance to “cool down”, so that they do not suffer from cognitively overload.  

5)     As an example, when analyzing the production decisions of firms, we discuss the goals of a firm, solve for the entries in a cost table, graph them, and experiment with several possible rules that might maximize profits. We then appraise why the rule presented in the textbook is the one that actually maximizes firm profit.

6)     We apply the material to the most interesting, real world examples I can find, to show the students why learning the material is interesting and useful.  A recent example we analyze is the recent crash in the market for Taxi Medallions in New York City caused by competition from Uber and Lyft.

7)     At the end of each chapter there is always a homework assignment, where some problems look very much like what we did in class, but some problems present the material in a very different way. The intentional use of lateral thinking reinforces their learning of the material.

Through many years of tweaking to also make sure that the concepts logically build and self-reinforce throughout the semester, I have found that this method works very well.  From surveying students about how they react to these methods, I find that some students dislike the format (because it forces them to work on many assignments), but in general the method is seen by students as beneficial (also because it forces them to work on many assignments). When I teach online, I try as hard as I can to keep the format of the class as similar as I can to how it would feel to be in a face-to-face class with me.

In statistics and econometrics classes we on the answer to the question “why?”, instead of just answering “how?”  To this end, I focus on using computer programs to do the calculations, because this is what computers are good at doing.  The responsibility of the students is to explain why you choose to analyze data in a certain way, and to interpret what it means.  This is the job that these students will be paid to do one day, and a function that computers cannot (yet) perform.

Because our students generally need help to improve on graduate entrance exams (particularly in mathematics) I have made a purposeful decision to include extra mathematics in every class meeting in every course I teach.  Rather than including very difficult concepts, I reintroduce concepts that students have already seen (slopes, linear equations, percentages, and basic algebra) and teach them how their knowledge is practical and meaningful.  For example, in Introductory Microeconomics we solve systems of linear equations, calculate slopes, areas, and percentage changes on a daily basis.  In Intermediate Microeconomics we add calculus to the mix. 

Outside of the classroom I always have an open door policy to my students as well as any other students in need of aid in learning. In the COVID era it has been more difficult to stimulate student interaction, I so I invite students to join me on Zoom several times per week.  I see my job as a teacher to put effort into quality instruction and to accurately signal students’ learning outcomes and capability through the grading process. 

BurkeyAcademy.com and YouTube

In 2010 I had an elderly student in my class who was legally blind, trying to finish her degree (retaking Introductory Microeconomics as her last course she needed to graduate).  I had not received a notification about her special needs, and of course, she quickly began struggling in the course.  She came to my office after class one day and explained that she could not see the marker board, but that she could see well enough to read at a distance of about 6-10 inches. I asked her to sit as close to one of my computer monitors as she needed to, and I drew on the screen, repeating the graphing exercises and explanations we had been doing in class. With tears in her eyes, she told me that she now understood what we were doing!  Right then I started researching how to capture my voice and computer drawings into a video, and bought a laptop with a digitizing stylus to aid with drawing. I started emailing her links to YouTube videos that reviewed the things she could not see during class. She was overjoyed at this technique to help her learn the material, and I soon started sharing them with the entire class as an aid for their review as well.  Sadly, she died just before the end of the semester, but passed away confident that she would graduate. A&T awarded her a posthumous degree in Spring 2010. My work with this student laid the foundation for creating a YouTube channel that I call BurkeyAcademy, which now has over 6.3 million video views, almost 32,000 subscribers, and over 500 videos posted so far. I have several videos covering every topic in each class I teach (I have very few publicly-available R Coding videos, but they will be coming soon), plus videos for many other courses. I post review videos on YouTube and index them on www.burkeyacademy.com. It has been a great joy that thousands of students around the world also find my videos helpful. 

Measurement of Outcomes:

In all classes, daily assignments including homework and reading quizzes count for a large portion of the final grade, typically 30-40%.  Sometimes these are multiple choice, but often they are short essays, or calculating problems and interpreting answers.

Tests in sophomore-level courses typically are 60% multiple choice for basic concepts and calculations and 40% graphing, calculating, analyzing, and explaining. These analysis problems are very similar to the worksheets that we explore together in class. In junior-level courses, tests are approximately 50% calculation and essay based (using problems similar to the ones we solve together in class), with some multiple choice questions to verify knowledge of definitions and basic concepts. In econometrics an original research paper involving the collection and analysis of data is required.

Working with Ph.D. Students

Even though we have no graduate program in Economics, I have sought out opportunities to work with graduate students throughout the campus.  I have hired many undergraduates from the College of Business and Economics, and two engineering Master’s level students as research assistants on funded research projects.  I have also worked with 5 Ph.D. students at A&T (serving on their committees, chairing one), and served on the committee of a Ph.D. student in Economics at West Virginia University. This is very difficult work, but I consider it to be part of my teaching duties as a faculty member of North Carolina A&T State University.

Working with Colleagues

As I continue to learn and develop my teaching skills, it is also my responsibility to share my knowledge with my colleagues. Through teaching-related journal articles, seminars, one-on-one meetings, and working with the UNC System Digital Course Enhancement Initiative, I help others to learn from my success (and my mistakes).