Willamson-like Critque
First and foremost, I would like to thank you for teaching this course as I know that teaching this course isn't something you had to do initially. Rather, it was something you mostly wanted to do in the beginning (which may have changed due to most of the students actions throughout the course).
As for the rule regrading the class attendance not being required, honestly I think that this gave me a better opinion of the course. Admittingly, I'm not a morning person and the option of attendance not being mandatory, although, mostly influencing my behavior to not show up to class most of the time, it also, in result, let me "enjoy" the course more in a sense. I have two other courses this semester in which attendance is mandatory and a significant amount of points are taken off each time you miss a class even though sometimes you really can't show up to class. As for modify this rule, I believe that this depends on what you, as the instructor, want from the students in this course. I know that a big portion of the class didn't show up with this rule being in affect, so if you want more students showing up to class then you should definitely make attendance mandatory with some sort of repercussion for not showing up. This is your course, so I firmly believe that attendance is one of the aspects of the course, among many others, that you should be able to fully control based on your expectations for the course.
Also initially, I was expecting for attendance to be mandatory as that is normal for courses like this, so students wouldn't really think anything of it if attendance was mandatory in the beginning anyway. However one thing I think could have been different about your approach if deciding to leave attendance not mandatory is not to really talk about this rule that much at all. I'm not completely sure if you talked about this rule for a period of time during the first few classes as I wasn't registered for the course at that time, but if you did, I think this may have potentially been a wrong move as it could have actually influenced the behavior of the students even more to not show up to class as they know that you are "okay" with it to a certain degree. If this rule wasn't really talked about, although students may figure out that they don't get any point taken off if they don't show up, but they would also have to try to figure it out themselves if you are okay with it or not. And with a connection to a concept in this course, many student may be more risk-adverse so they would be more likely to show up to class.
As for the rule regrading soft deadlines, I don't think this rule should not be in affect at all with maybe the exception of during midterm weeks in which students have multiple midterms in one week. As a prime example, I'm especially busy with the many credit hours I'm taking this semester, however I can still make time to work on this course prior to the "deadlines". Previously I posted one blog post late by a couple of days, and even though I knew we had soft deadlines, I felt somewhat bad that I was wasting your time because you would have to read and write a response to my post at a later date when it could have been done when you were already working on the other student posts. So in result, I decided to not miss a blog post deadline again. I think that by having this rule, you are just adding stress to yourself which is stress that is definitely not needed as it is the job of the students to get in assignments by deadlines just like in every other course.
I'm aware and really do appreciate that you are understanding of the busy schedules of students, however I don't think soft deadlines is the best option to convey this. I think that you could potentially change the rule to that students have an amount of times in a semester, such as one or two times, that they can turn in assignments late without having points taken off and anymore late assignments than that, they should get some points taken off the assignment. I believe that this change to the rule would be able to limit your stress a lot more, while also still being able to convey that you are understanding of the busy schedules of students as most of the other classes don't even let students hand in assignments late at all.
As for the rule regrading the class attendance not being required, honestly I think that this gave me a better opinion of the course. Admittingly, I'm not a morning person and the option of attendance not being mandatory, although, mostly influencing my behavior to not show up to class most of the time, it also, in result, let me "enjoy" the course more in a sense. I have two other courses this semester in which attendance is mandatory and a significant amount of points are taken off each time you miss a class even though sometimes you really can't show up to class. As for modify this rule, I believe that this depends on what you, as the instructor, want from the students in this course. I know that a big portion of the class didn't show up with this rule being in affect, so if you want more students showing up to class then you should definitely make attendance mandatory with some sort of repercussion for not showing up. This is your course, so I firmly believe that attendance is one of the aspects of the course, among many others, that you should be able to fully control based on your expectations for the course.
Also initially, I was expecting for attendance to be mandatory as that is normal for courses like this, so students wouldn't really think anything of it if attendance was mandatory in the beginning anyway. However one thing I think could have been different about your approach if deciding to leave attendance not mandatory is not to really talk about this rule that much at all. I'm not completely sure if you talked about this rule for a period of time during the first few classes as I wasn't registered for the course at that time, but if you did, I think this may have potentially been a wrong move as it could have actually influenced the behavior of the students even more to not show up to class as they know that you are "okay" with it to a certain degree. If this rule wasn't really talked about, although students may figure out that they don't get any point taken off if they don't show up, but they would also have to try to figure it out themselves if you are okay with it or not. And with a connection to a concept in this course, many student may be more risk-adverse so they would be more likely to show up to class.
As for the rule regrading soft deadlines, I don't think this rule should not be in affect at all with maybe the exception of during midterm weeks in which students have multiple midterms in one week. As a prime example, I'm especially busy with the many credit hours I'm taking this semester, however I can still make time to work on this course prior to the "deadlines". Previously I posted one blog post late by a couple of days, and even though I knew we had soft deadlines, I felt somewhat bad that I was wasting your time because you would have to read and write a response to my post at a later date when it could have been done when you were already working on the other student posts. So in result, I decided to not miss a blog post deadline again. I think that by having this rule, you are just adding stress to yourself which is stress that is definitely not needed as it is the job of the students to get in assignments by deadlines just like in every other course.
I'm aware and really do appreciate that you are understanding of the busy schedules of students, however I don't think soft deadlines is the best option to convey this. I think that you could potentially change the rule to that students have an amount of times in a semester, such as one or two times, that they can turn in assignments late without having points taken off and anymore late assignments than that, they should get some points taken off the assignment. I believe that this change to the rule would be able to limit your stress a lot more, while also still being able to convey that you are understanding of the busy schedules of students as most of the other classes don't even let students hand in assignments late at all.
I wrote to another student that I don't really understand missing a class in one's major. When I was a student, there were not incentives for attendance. I do understand the early morning thing (though 9:30 to me is not that early) and I understand having some resistance to a course that is required but where you don't see how the requirement actually matters to you. In the major, especially an elective class, the situation is different. So student expectations on this and my expectations are out of alignment.
ReplyDeleteYou did mis the class session where I talked about Akerlof's model of labor markets as partial gift exchange. That's the economic version of a workplace where collegiality drives much of what people do. They perform because they can see how their performance benefits others at work. It's clear that not all organizations achieve this, but it is much more enjoyable to work at a place that does achieve this and I believe productivity will be higher at such a place as well.
In the current culture as you describe, it may be impossible to teach that lesson so that students learn it, not just so they can spit it out on a quiz, but so they act in accordance with the idea. Experiential learning is much more powerful than book learning. That's why I found this part so disappointing. A handful of students did come most if not all the time. But I believe they did this as a personal commitment device, so they'd learn more from the class that way. I don't believe anyone acted for the benefit of the class as a whole, as if that's an entirely alien idea and thus not worth entertaining.
If you have some time, given your evidently very busy schedule, you might reflect on that some. There is one extreme view of treating students purely by conditioning, the way Pavlov experimented with dogs. That's the requiring attendance argument. But there is a different view that students should be treated as already fully responsible, and get them to learn what is required for that, even if they are yet there.
In response to your statement "I understand having some resistance to a course that is required where you don't see how the requirement actually matters to you." I admit during the very beginning of the course, I didn't really know how the material we learned was applicable to my life, however as the course went on I began to realize that this course would actually be very helpful for every student, not just within economics. Learning about work group dynamics, company structure, different factors that contribute to human behavior, analyzing different perspectives of situations, and etc. are very applicable concepts that I think every student should learn before they enter job market as it will give them a brief overview of what to expect and how to try deal with certain situations that they may face in the future.
ReplyDeleteAs for the learning process, although you said you were disappointed in the experiential learning in this course, I believe that these blog post contributed significantly to experiential learning. The prompts of these blog post made me think of many of my past experiences, most of which I have never reflected in the certain perspectives that you asked and I probably wouldn't ever have reflected on those past experiences in those perspectives if I wasn't asked to. And I assume that this was your intent with these blog posts. For me at least, I will take this lesson and use it as much as possible for the rest of my life. Thanks!