Traditional Final Post

I feel that this class was quite enjoyable and gave me a lot to learn. Coming into this class, I did not know what to expect and I chose this class due to the space available. I particularly valued the knowledge I received on transaction costs as I had no idea what it was. I feel class also prepared me well for the essays we had to do. Perhaps, because my essay was on transaction costs. Either way, it gave me an insight on why firms are formed and the different types of knowledge people have. More importantly, this class taught me to analyze the world as if I were an economist as in discussions we would have to describe concepts in economic terms. At first, I was not so keen on the blog posts, but as the course progressed it was an opportunity for me to showcase how I am understanding the concepts of the class. The comments do not aid me in my learning of the course material. I feel it would be useful for someone who has never given feedback to another student. Other than that the only advantage of writing comments on my peer’s posts is that I got to know them a better and in a certain way it increased morale.

For example, after reading the posts of my teammates I could identify who would be better suited in writing what part of the essay. One of my teammates X had a wonderful example of transaction costs in his internship last summer. As a result, our group decided that X should talk about his own experiences in our essay as he seems like the best man for the job. This proved very productive when we had to write our essays. Thus I feel students don’t understand the point of certain assignment initially but the meaning comes to them after a while. This is what happened to my group at least.

I believe the structure of the live class was adequate. I would probably make an incentive for participation. Many other classes have participation as a grade that is combined with attendance. This may cause more lively discussions in class, as at certain points the class is silent. Especially on the Thursday class after the excel. It seems that everyone that completed the excel homework should answer the professor's question in class, but for some reason, there are long silences. I think this might confuse the professor, as they might think that the assignment is too tough or that all the concepts are going above the student’s heads. Hence, this would be ideal for both professors and students to enforce participation.

The excel homework personally takes me about an hour or two to complete. It usually depends on the excel as well. Sometimes it takes me longer as I try to understand the concepts before playing around with the excel sheet. This means that I look at the videos or slideshows that are linked to the excel homework before attempting it. The blogging does not take more than 1 hour. I feel the longest blog post was the post in which we had to read three articles and analyze them.

Overall, I feel the professor did a fantastic job on the course. This is easily seen in the amount of the effort put in. It was unfortunate to see that the 20-minute video that the professor posted only received an average view of 5 minutes. However, even though many did not watch the full video, the majority of the class did appreciate the video. I especially liked how we had our own website for the class. This was initially a bit difficult to get used to as I kept on forgetting to submit the attendance extra credit quizzes. Later on, though it was nice to see everything on one site. If I had the option to retake this course, it would be a definite YES.


Comments

  1. Professor ArvanDecember 9, 2017 at 3:10 PM

    Thank you for your comments. You, more than other student, brought up how students behave in other courses as mattering for our class. That's a good point, one well worth considering.

    One of the difficulties I have with your suggestion about incentives, such as for class participation, is that when I was a student I would have participated, and back then nobody gave incentives for it. I'm afraid I would have been put off by it. Many of the other students who wrote a Williamson-like critique were the ones who attended regularly. They said they didn't need that sort of incentive and, reading a bit between the lines, I think they were less than sympathetic for students who didn't attend very often.

    Talking up in class is a different story. Several students indicated they'd rather listen than participate in the discussion, and now I'm talking about Tuesdays, not the Excel stuff. For a student where English is not the first language, that is understandable. For other students, they may lack the confidence to participate. I'm not sure how to build confidence, but I don't think incentives meant to counter what people would prefer to do necessarily is the right way to go about things.

    Let me comment a bit on the time input you described. Was it possible for you to complete the assignments relatively quickly, but if you wanted to get a deeper understanding of the subject, that would have taken longer? My sense of things is that students sometimes put in as much effort as is needed to get credit for doing the work, but not necessarily more than that. Yet more than that is likely needed to understand what's at issue in a deeper way. I don't know if that is true in your case, but I believe it to be the case for most of the class.

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    Replies
    1. Francis Edgeworth Econ 490 Fall 2017December 12, 2017 at 5:25 PM

      I understand your point of students not needing incentive to participate. However, personally in one of my classes we have to discuss readings and as a result participation is part of our grade as the professor knows if you have read the material or not. I would describe myself to be a bit shy, however if participation is required I will speak up. However, this may also cause many people to participate with BS points as well, just so they can get the points. So it is difficult to strike up a balance.

      Yes, I could have completed things in a hurry, but it would not be productive to my learning. I performed like this before the first quiz. I was unhappy with my performance in the first quiz, and decided to change my style. This proved to be successful as I was happy with the grade I received in the second quiz and hope to replicate it on the final.

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  2. John Maynard Keynes Econ 490 fall 2017December 11, 2017 at 7:28 PM

    I think it is interesting that we had completely different approaches to the excel homework. I saw the excel sheets as an opportunity to play around. Most homework from class only give you one or two tries this means that I make sure that I know what I am doing before I put in any answer. The excel homework let me try out every idea that I had. If I was wrong I could try again.

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