Final Blog Post

I came into this course not knowing really anything at all about the economics of organizations, which is why I decided to take this class. I think that the biggest takeaway from the class would be the lesson on risk preference. I never thought about how much the choices that we make now impact the future so much. I think it made me realize that I currently have the ability to take risks in my youth more than I will be able to later on down the road. I need to capitalize now while I can and do things that may help me in the future such as apply to jobs that are a “reach” or join organizations and do things with my time that may benefit me later. I did enjoy the approach that the class took in terms of the conversation and the ability to engage with the teacher and other students. It made sure that the students had the right takeaways from the lecture because we were engaging directly with the teacher, who could correct us if we were wrong. As for the blog posts, I thought that they were beneficial but the platform that we used was a little bit confusing. I think that more success would be found if we used a more traditional platform like compass or moodle. The blog posts normally took me around an hour to complete. I would read the prompt and then do research about the topic, take notes and then sit down and produce the content. The length that the excel took me varied depending on the topic at hand. If I understood it outright I’d say it took me around 30 minutes. If I had to do research or collaborate with my classmates it took me 3-5 hours at times. I really enjoyed the excel because it took the topics that we learned in class and put them into numbers. It made the content applicable. I think that the one thing that could have been improved is the structure of lectures. Sometimes I would fail to understand what topic we were discussing. I thought it got off track some of the time. 

I thought that attendance should have been mandatory. In order for the conversational lectures to be effective, I think that a full class is better than an empty one. Had it been mandatory, I know that I would have gone more. I think that attendance would have been up a huge amount by my peers as well. It is not easy to get students to go to a 9:30 lecture if their grade does not depend on it. I also thought that the deadlines should be hard. I think that naturally college kids will push things off, and the soft deadlines gave us more room to do that. I think that having the blog posts due on Sunday night would have made the most sense. However I did think that the soft deadlines for excel were helpful because if you got stuck you didn’t just receive a 0% outright. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanDecember 9, 2019 at 5:17 AM

    Let me ask you two questions here. First, did you ever read the blog posts of other students or the comments I made on the posts of other students? I mean this to apply to the second half of the course, where the commenting on other posts requirement from the first half was dropped. I did try blogging with Moodle back in 2011, but students couldn't see the blogs of other students. I thought that was a real liability. I do like the idea of your posts being out in the open, partially because of this ability to read the posts and comments elsewhere and partially because I believe there is some incentive effect for better performance if you are writing out in the open - even if you are doing that under an alias. Truthfully, apart from me the only people who are likely to see your work are your classmates, but that your work will be seen at all matters.

    Second, what is your attendance like in other classes and is it based there on whether attendance is mandatory or not? If attendance depends on other factors than if it is required, I'd like to hear about those. Many of your classmates have written about time-of-day effects - they'd have preferred for the class to be in the afternoon. There wasn't anything I could do about that. The time slot was assigned to me. So I'm wondering if there are other things I might control that would have mattered to you.

    Still another issue for you is how this attendance pattern impacts your behavior in the future, after you graduate. Is there some connection between how disciplined you are now and how you will perform when you have a full-time job? That's not a question you can answer based on your current experiences. But it is something you might speculate about.

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    1. Michael Jensen Econ 490 Fall 2019December 15, 2019 at 10:39 AM

      I would occasionally read over blog posts of other students, mostly those who were friends and I knew their alias. In all of my other classes, attendance was required, so I would always attend those classes. It is unfortunate that the class had to be so early, because I do think that the time-of-day did effect the attendance in this class so students did not get the full benefit of the course. Also, I am aware that skipping things just because they are not required is not a habit that can follow me into my professional career. I know that I cannot do this even next semester as it will effect my future.

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