Teaching Content on the First Day of Class

There are a variety of approaches to the first day of class. I firmly believe that each instructor needs to figure out what works best for them and what is most representative of what their course will be like.

I teach actual economics on the first day.
My primary reason for doing this is to give the student a feel for my style as an instructor. Secondarily, instead of having a content-free first day, I can reserve that day to address a time crunch later in the semester (e.g. snow storm).

This semester I'm teaching A Citizen's Guide to Economics (our snazzy title for intro to econ), Principles of Macro, and Quantitative Methods for Economics.

Here is what I teach in each on the first day. **Sometime I'll write about the other first day stuff that I do ... like setting the tone, etc..

A Citizen's Guide to Economics
This class has no prerequisites. If you can get into my open-access institution, you can take my class. I teach it at 9:30am so conceivably, it could be someone's first ever college class. Here is a link to the my syllabus.

I teach an interactive, introductory lecture. It starts with a humorous, motivational-style poster slide that I made of Adam Smith that says "Economics - Confusing people since 1776". Here is a link to my slides and the handout that they fill in as we go along (not your typical PowerPoint slides handout - it has discussion question prompts, etc.).

Principles of Macroeconomics
This course has writing and algebra prerequisites. The vast majority of students are business majors taking it as a required course. They've been in college for a while and know the drill. Here is my syllabus. I use Greg Mankiw's Brief Principles of Macroeconomics and Aplia for this course.

I start with chapter 2 material (Understanding How Economists Think) on the first day. Here are my slides and the notes handout that students fill in as we discuss the material (again, this is not death by PowerPoint - I pause quite a bit, I ask lots of questions, I say tons of things that aren't on the slides). Students do a 2-minute paper about a concept they learned and noting a concept that is "fuzzy". Then they get into pairs or trios and complete this worksheet as I walk around. The worksheets I use have some questions from old Mankiw instructor resources (not the current 6th edition) and some questions that I've made up. Some students finish faster than others. Once they've turned their worksheet in to me (each student must turn one in, although they can discuss with their partners), they are free to leave. This allows me to spend additional one-on-one time with students who have more questions. We start the following class period by discussing the worksheet.

My classes are currently about 45 students. However, I used this same format when I taught classes of 200 students. In the large sections, TAs helped me walk around and answer questions.

Quantitative Methods for Economics
This course is our version of calculus and statistics. Primarily, our majors take it. Here is my syllabus. I use two texts for this course, both by Teresa Bradley, one for math and one for statistics.

We start with the math portion of the course. On the first day, this means applications of straight lines. Here is the handout that we work through together - mostly me at the board, but sometimes them. It takes a few class periods. I also hand out this reading guide for the chapter.

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Friendly note: Please remember that people vary. My current approaches to teaching may or may not work for you. That's okay. Your current approaches to teaching may or may not work for me. That's okay, too.