Final Blog Post
Final Blog Post
When entering this class, I had no expectations about the professor or the topic. I needed to take a 400 level Economics class, and this one seemed to be one of the more interesting ones.
The two assignment types that helped me the most were the concept quizzes and the blog posts. The concept quizzes were helpful because it made me read through the lecture slides. The notes section of the lecture slides were great as they went into detail about the topic on the slide. The concept quizzes were not extremely difficult and weren't that long, which I appreciated. They helped me to better understand specific terms. The blog posts are also helpful. These had me look at past experiences and apply them to the topics we are learning in class. Most of these topics I have never thought about before in terms of my past work experience. The comments guided me to become a better writer and to understand the topics better. As opposed to harshly penalize us for misunderstanding a topic, the professor left comments to explain our mistakes. This gave the notion that the professor truly cared about our success, and that he wanted us to improve.
I think not requiring attendance was smart. The class webpage was set up really well and a fair amount of learning could be done on there. However, I do think that many people, including myself, took advantage of this. With class being at 9:30am, I think that many students either chose to skip, or accidentally missed class due to various reasons, including, perhaps, lack of sleep because of late night studying. I do think that going to class was beneficial to fully understanding the topics discussed. When I went to class, I had a better grasp on the week's material, but when not in attendance, the material could be challenging at times. The most difficult assignments were the excel homework. These started basic, but got much tougher as the semester went on.
The soft deadlines were nice. Everyone is busy with multiple other classes, and I appreciated that the professor still gave us points for work despite turning it in after the desired deadline. In a way, I felt like I was able to do better work because of this. I was able to do the assignments when I had more time to focus on them as opposed to rushing to meet a deadline. Overall, this is beneficial to understanding the topics. It isn't that students necessarily forgot to do assignments on time, they simply needed to find the time to do them, and the soft deadlines reduced stress.
I think, in the future, the soft deadline and attendance rules should stay the same. To make things more organized, maybe materials for each week's topics could be placed in folders on the course webpage. That would make it easier for students who missed class for whatever reason to catch up on work and understand the material. Aside from these rules, there are a couple other suggestion I have for improving the class. The lecture slides were great when they had notes, however some didn't have any notes and it is tough to learn and study from them. Many had pictures on them and a term, but completing concept quizzes from them wasn't always easy. I found myself searching up terms on Google instead of relying on the lecture slides. Perhaps, however, this is a motivation for students to come to class. When coming to class, we can take notes on these terms. I really liked the soft deadlines, but it may be a good idea to offer a small reward simply for completing assignments on time, such as the concept quizzes, to motivate students to do them. I believe that many students wouldn't do assignments on time simply because there was no consequence for turning them in late. So, instead of creating a consequence, maybe all of the assignments could take after the concept quizzes and offer a few extra points for on-time completion.
You are the first student who reported liking the concept quizzes and the PowerPoint slides with notes in them. Others found the concept quizzes not that helpful. It is hard to please everyone. So it's good that at least somebody benefitted from the approach.
ReplyDeleteI was amused by the line about studying late at night. You're probably already aware of this, but in case not some years ago we were named the number 1 party school in the U.S. And, of course, we have Unofficial St. Patrick's Day, which I had never heard of before until several years ago and I doubt happens at most other campuses around the country. So there is some reason to believe those late nights are devoted to things other than studying. In terms of the language in our class, as given in the homework on Bargaining where the parties sent messages to the arbitrator, you may have strategically misrepresented your preferences. That's perfectly fine in this context. The main point is that being up late made coming to class difficult. I get that. Many other students said something similar.
Now let me turn to a larger issue, which you might think about in regard to your suggestion in the last paragraph about giving bonus points for timely submission. This is whether students get addicted to small incentives and let them drive their own behavior rather than to take more responsibility for themselves and not need incentives to do that. I'm afraid such addiction is a real thing and it is actually quite harmful overall, though in any one instance it might be effective. I would like you to consider that and ask how you will develop such responsibility after you graduate, if you haven't yet done so.