Final Post

Looking back on the course up until this point and what I learned from it, I cannot say it has been enlightening, nor can I say that it was a waste of time. There are somethings like the principal agent model which I had no knowledge of beforehand, but I do not say believe I have fully retained the knowledge of it. Admittedly, I have not been entirely diligent when it comes to truly studying and understanding these concepts, but I still believe that I should know a bit more about them then I currently do. As far as my opinion on the structure of the course, my thoughts remain unchanged. Having the learning take place outside of the class and only discussing it after the homework regarding it has been turned in just does not seem like a wise decision. 
The discussions are not very helpful for several reasons. One is the lack of people who bother to show up, meaning less ideas and concerns are raised. Another shortcoming is the general lack of interest within the discussions themselves, with the few people who do show up rarely participating. Finally, there is your tendency to ramble during the discussions. I understand how anecdote can be useful to help demonstrate an idea, but you go on for far too long and end up losing whatever message you were trying to convey. On a related note, you need to either hook yourself up to a microphone or speak up as you are not really projecting your voice as much as you should.
As far as blogging and homework is concerned, my method remains the same. Work on a small part of my blog posts each day to keep the workload manageable. In terms of homework, It usually takes me a while to do. This is because the information is not always as clear as it should be, and I have ended up performing trial-and-error on various assignments. That said, when I do manage to come up with the right answer, I also know how I came up with it and why it was the right answer. Having said that, an example problem would definitely be useful. While I understand why you use problems with a different set-up from the slides and videos and want us to transfer the knowledge, the process of transference itself is not always clear. 
As for what I would have liked to see in the course itself, two things in particular stand out. The first would be a better connection between the excel homework/quizzes and what is discussed in class. The material can feel disjointed at times, and half the time the math shown and vocabulary in the videos went over my head. While I do know that the course requires some background in regards to that sort of thing, do not assume that all students have taken the courses the previous semester and still remember everything. Have some material that can act as a refresher for various concepts both economical and mathematical.  The second change I would make is to not only change the format of the course to a more lecture based style, but also to make the homework based on what we just covered rather than what we would cover next. In my opinion, homework exists to help students learn to apply the concepts and lessons learned in class. This not only ensures that we understand how it works in practice, but also further ingrains the knowledge into our memory. Leaving room for questions and discussions can still be an option, but it should not be the majority of the class time.  

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanDecember 7, 2019 at 6:43 AM

    Thank you for the comments. First, let me agree with you. The acoustics in our classroom are poor. It is hard to hear others. I can understand it being difficult to hear me, but it was also difficult to hear students when they did speak up. I'm not sure how much that impacted the class discussion, but it clearly was a factor.

    Second, if you do want to understand what I was trying for with the approach, and why I have difficulty with your suggestion of going to straight lecture, after you're done with finals you might read the first three chapters in the book How People Learn. We mentioned this book in the first or second week of the semester. But perhaps I didn't emphasize enough the lessons from it. The chapter on Transfer is particularly instructive.

    To really learn you have to produce connections between the current object of study and things you already know. Then, to demonstrate that you've learned, you have to be able to connect that learning to yet other situations and apply the learning in a different context from where it was taught. No doubt, doing this requires a lot of effort. There is no real learning without that. But it may become easier if you already have the habit of doing it.

    The issue with the lecture first, then assess after, is that students come to view their obligation as reproducing the lecture, more or less intact. They don't practice transfer at all and they make few if any connections between the lecture and what they already know.

    If you are aware of these limitations and you understand about transfer, then I believe any method can work because you, the learner, will drive what you need to do to learn deeply. But if you are not so aware and are habituated to reproduce the lecture, the question is: that should be accommodated or combatted? I'm not sure of the right answer to that question, but I do believe it is the underlying issue.


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    1. Tjalling koopmansDecember 10, 2019 at 7:42 AM

      The main difference that I feel we have is how we view the material and how transfer occurs. To me, having the assessment first makes coming to class feel redundant. we already passed the assessment and according to your logic, we already understand the transfer and by extension the base theory, so why bother coming to class. I think that this mentality is why so many people do not come to class.

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