Teaching

My experience with teaching econ

Teaching

I taught economics since 2012, mostly at departments of economics but also to engineering grad students. I can teach methodological (maths, stats, coding) and thematic classes, to various audiences (econ students, engineering students, computer science students, junior and senior researchers).

Bureau of Economic Theory and Applications (Nancy, France)

Those workshops were given for junior and senior econ researchers at my research center.

  • Introductory R (2018)
  • Coding for economics (2017)

Graduate School of Applied Computer Science (Telecom Nancy), University of Lorraine (Nancy, France)

  • Graduate thesis supervision: Agent-based modeling applied to economics and finance (2018)

Department of Law and Economics, University of Lorraine (Nancy, France)

  • Macroeconomics 101 (teaching assistant, 2017)
  • Game theory (teaching assistant, 2017)
  • Contract theory (teaching assistant, 2017)

Graduate School of Engineering (Mines Nancy), University of Lorraine (Nancy, France)

  • Introductory economics (teaching assistant, 2015-2017)
  • Environmental economics (2015-2017)
  • Non-monetary incentives in firms (2016)
  • Economics of climate change for (2015-2017)

Departement of Economics and Management, University of Strasbourg (Strasbourg, France)

  • Statistics 101 (teaching assistant, 2012-2015)
  • Microeconomics 101 (teaching assistant, 2013)
  • Linear algebra (teaching assistant, 2013)
  • Mathematics 101 (teaching assistant, 2013-2015)

Pedagogical engineer

After teaching at various educational institutions for 6 years, I am currently employed as a pedagogical engineer by the Department of law and economics at the University of Lorraine (Nancy, France). My role is:

  • to assist faculties to leverage the university's online teaching platform (a customized version of Moodle) with new teaching methods and tools
  • to help track the outcomes of pedagogical changes made by the department, especially with the help of statistical dashboards and indicators1)
  • to coordinate various university offices to develop a new method that use iPads to test students
  • to improve day to day communications between the department and the students through new technologies

Economics outreach

I also ran an online economics outreach platform (in French) for three years called Le Signal Économie, from Sept. 2015 to Dec. 2018. I did:

  • podcasting, I interviewed researchers on their work
  • vlogging on YouTube
  • writing blog posts
  • developing an economics terms dictionnary
  • community management, especially with a Facebook group

Even though I ultimately had to shut the platform down2), it was a great experience! And I still continue to do a bit of economics outreach, on my spare time.

Teaching principles

Coming soon!

1)
A new law recently changed different aspects of undergraduate studies in French universities. One of the main question is: which impact this law has? I answer it locally, but I am also in touch with other pedagogical engineers in other departments at the University of Lorraine, and in other universities in France.
2)
Over the years, I accumulated way too many bad technical and editorial decisions, to the point the platform became barely manageable. It was a failure, but I am proud to the fact that I tried to run it, on my own, for three years, where I had literally zero experience with content and editing!
  • Last modified: 12 months ago
  • by Olivier Simard-Casanova