Friday, December 6, 2013

Final Blog Post


Economics 490 has been very beneficial with learning more in depth about Organizations. Although I believe I did have a good amount of knowledge before beginning the course, the course was very helpful with explaining specific examples, models, and the algebra behind the models. The live class was different than many economic courses that I have taken in the past. A lot of my political science course have the same type of structure that this course did and I believe that this method of teaching is more enjoyable for students. The interaction was constant and entertaining during class. It also made me feel as if skipping a class would be detrimental for my grade in the course since that is how we learned most of our concepts and where I was really able to finally understand the Excel homework.
            Blogging was something new from me and I am pretty indifferent with my opinions towards it. I do think it was a great idea to have discussions about the blog posts in class and how the professor called out specific student’s blog posts because that showed that what I was writing will actually be read. I did feel that I did learn a lot about blogging and about how an economic concept could be perceived as something completely different from different students. I made sure to write my blog posts first and then read my peers to test my knowledge beforehand on the concept that we were to talk about. For my blog posts my process was pretty standard. If I didn’t understand a concept I would go back to our class website and read more about it or Google the concept and just write for anywhere from 20-40 minutes. The Excel homework required some research before hand so that I could understand the concepts or else I would never be able to complete the assignments. The Excel homework usually took a lot longer than the blog posts and every Excel homework varied in the amount of time it took me to complete it.
            What I think could be an improvement in the course is for every Excel homework assigned if as a class we had a discussion about the concept and basic equations before the homework was due and not after. I think this would tie everything together more and I know we did it a couple of times but to make it a requirement before every assignment would be beneficial and cut a lot of time that the Excel homework took to complete. 

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for your post. Let me respond to your comment about being indifferent to the blogging. I had the feeling reading most of your posts that you were hedging your bets - not saying what you really though about things, but saying something plausible on the topic. Other students were more open in their posting.

    Why does this matter? We'll discuss this in class on Tuesday but let me review here as well. The idea is to be empirical about the economics you are learning, but testing the ideas via the experiences you've had and seeing if the two jive or not. So the blogging aimed at bringing out relevant experiences for you to do that. To get that benefit, you had to be more open in your posts.

    I can very well understand the hedging your bets approach. Several students wrote about the blogging being frightening, especially at first. And you specifically opted for the Moodle approach at the outset, presumably as a way to get more self-protection. But this gives an instance where such self-protection can block learning to some degree.

    We will also talk about the issue you bring up regarding the Excel homework. I encourage you to read Paul Milgrom's final post, who also discusses the issue but comes to a somewhat different conclusion.

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    1. I guess it is because I have never been much of a writer in the style of "blogging." Any type of writing I have ever done is just through essays for classes and because of that I do think I was nervous to say what I really thought - which is one of my regrets.

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  2. I agree with your comment on the Excel - learning the material beforehand as opposed to during a graded homework would have been preferable for me.

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