An updste from the RCT-course

Then we arrived in Stavanger, the oil capital of Norway, on a day with a big jump in oil prices. However, no one in the RCT course was talking about oil. Everyone’s focus was on the research.

Nearly 20 researchers from different fields participated in the course, mostly PhD students but also others. Even an emeritus was among the participants. (I hope I will be as curious and eager to learn as him when I am his age.) However, it is not an everyday occurrence to have a visitor who is ranked among the world’s leading education economists.

It was a real pleasure to participate in Eric Bettinger’s lecture today. Different aspects were touched upon. They related to the components of an RCT (units, treatments, and outcome), mechanisms and counterfactuals (e.g. different outcomes from different dosages), selection bias (the one fulfilling the intervention differed from the one not fulfilling the intervention), the balance between the treatment and the control group for different non-manipulated variables (such as age, sex, etc.), the level of detail in the research question/generalization from the results (for a certain group of children at a certain age versus for all children) and the importance of theoretical justifications for a treatment for the advancement of the science.

Bettinger showed a great deal of enthusiasm through his pleasure, interest and engagement. He knows what he is talking about and gives a lot of examples from a variety of fields. Interaction was encouraged, and the lecture shifted between traditional teaching with well-designed PowerPoint slides (including nice references), training and discussions, which ensured variation and gave a feeling that the lecturing did not lasted too long, even if it was seven hours. Questions and comments were encouraged, and we were also given the opportunity to ask questions during the (approximately) 10-minute break. The language was clear, and the important points were stressed from different points of view. So Bettinger is not only a great economist but also a really great teacher and should we believe some of the existing research this may not be a too frequent combination.  A RCT-study from Netherland by Palali, van Elk, Bolhaar and Rud (2017) looked at the relationship between research quality and teaching quality and investigated if good researchers also are good teachers. They found that master students thought by teachers with high quality publications got higher grades. However, the student’s evaluation of the teaches did not fully reflected this since they were not ranked higher.

After today’s lectures, we took the bus back to Stavanger and went for a short walk to find our Airbnb house. After Indian takeaway food and some shopping (it is really cold here in Stavanger so I  had to buy a new jumper), we started our second task for today, namely to revise our questionnaire to the speech and language therapists, preschool teachers and health nurses. Finally, before we went to bed we did our homework.

I am looking forward to another course day tomorrow!

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Reference:

Palali, A., van Elk, R., Bolhaar, J., & Rud, I. (2017). Are good researchers also good teachers? The relationship between research quality and teaching quality. CPB Discussion Paper 347. Maastricht: CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.