JET SET 2026

August 6, 2026

The past few years, George and I have attended just about every CTREE, Southerns, TeachECONference, and ASSA. This summer I added JET SET — the Journal of Economics Teaching’s Symposium on Economics Teaching — to the mix.

It was incredibly well-organized and brought together econ instructors from four-year colleges, community colleges, and high schools. I learned a ton from all three groups in presentations and many between session conversations! Huge thanks to Jadrian Wooten, Mary Clare Peate, and Melanie Fox for making it happen.

It was also super-fun to share what I’ve learned in my teaching career about the power of peers in the Thursday morning keynote:

Instructor time is the ultimate constrained resource: there are only so many hours in the day to answer students’ questions, give them individualized feedback, and mentor them one-on-one. As students increasingly trade human interaction for the convenience of AI support, the human attention they do receive becomes scarcer, and every one of those hours more valuable. Fortunately, instructors aren’t the only source of human interaction in a course, because we can structure our classes so that students teach, support, and inspire each other. In this presentation, Doug McKee shares his experience with a range of peer instruction techniques, including two-stage exams, think-pair-share, peer feedback on student work, study buddies in online courses, and group projects designed to prevent free-riding. Attendees will leave with concrete strategies they can adapt to classes of any size, in person or online.

You can download my slides.