Class Review and Critique
Prior to this class I had two general ideas of what an organizations was. The first is the boring, bureaucratic one that is made fun of in movies like Office Space. The second is the exciting fast paced one of the startup. I know both are caricatures. Regardless, they still largely influence my perception of what an organization is. After taking this course, those ideas still largely influence my perception. However, I no longer view them as two distinct groups, but points in a larger spectrum. I've learned that as firms grow and reorganize, new roles are created to keep incentives aligned.
I liked the structure of the course. You mentioned how we should take advantage of our learning, and I think that the discussion/blog combination really helped in the process of learning. It's a model that I would consider using when learning something new.
The classes where there was a mix of lecture were good. The ones where there was lecture, horse shoe, and small group were even better. I would have liked more of those. I did not like the classes where you did the chalk and talk for the excel assignments. If you think the in depth explanation was necessary for a certain topic, I'd prefer a video lecture with a quiz. I'm not trying to advocate for more homework, but I think more problems to solve would make those topics easier to understand than the board explanation.
The blogging would take me between 1 and 2 hours. The first few posts I did what you suggested not to do, which was just sit down and start writing. These ones took the longest, and they also felt that way too. Then for the next batch of posts I started working on them while I ate breakfast on Saturday. I'd just scribble down some thoughts, or make an outline if I was lucky. These took a bit of time, but the time didn't feel as long. For the last few, I started looking at the posts a lot earlier. I'd copy and paste the prompts into a draft and break down the prompt into separate parts. I wouldn't work on it until later, but having seen the prompt it was easier to think of something to write about and catch the portions of lecture that were related.
My process for doing the Excel homework was downloading it one or two days before it was due and then glancing over it. If I thought I could do it pretty quickly, I waited until the due date. If it seemed like it might be a tough one, I started it right away.
I wasn't as much of a fan of the Excel homework. At first I thought it was a good idea of how they were put together in conversational way. Sometimes I found them too long in their dialogue. In these cases, it became difficult to actually get anything out of the explanations, and I would jump right into attempting the problem. Maybe an alternative would be to do some problems from one of the books instead.
I liked the few parts we read on re-framing organizations, and wish there was more of that throughout the course. I also thought the other book was pretty good too.
I liked the structure of the course. You mentioned how we should take advantage of our learning, and I think that the discussion/blog combination really helped in the process of learning. It's a model that I would consider using when learning something new.
The classes where there was a mix of lecture were good. The ones where there was lecture, horse shoe, and small group were even better. I would have liked more of those. I did not like the classes where you did the chalk and talk for the excel assignments. If you think the in depth explanation was necessary for a certain topic, I'd prefer a video lecture with a quiz. I'm not trying to advocate for more homework, but I think more problems to solve would make those topics easier to understand than the board explanation.
The blogging would take me between 1 and 2 hours. The first few posts I did what you suggested not to do, which was just sit down and start writing. These ones took the longest, and they also felt that way too. Then for the next batch of posts I started working on them while I ate breakfast on Saturday. I'd just scribble down some thoughts, or make an outline if I was lucky. These took a bit of time, but the time didn't feel as long. For the last few, I started looking at the posts a lot earlier. I'd copy and paste the prompts into a draft and break down the prompt into separate parts. I wouldn't work on it until later, but having seen the prompt it was easier to think of something to write about and catch the portions of lecture that were related.
My process for doing the Excel homework was downloading it one or two days before it was due and then glancing over it. If I thought I could do it pretty quickly, I waited until the due date. If it seemed like it might be a tough one, I started it right away.
I wasn't as much of a fan of the Excel homework. At first I thought it was a good idea of how they were put together in conversational way. Sometimes I found them too long in their dialogue. In these cases, it became difficult to actually get anything out of the explanations, and I would jump right into attempting the problem. Maybe an alternative would be to do some problems from one of the books instead.
I liked the few parts we read on re-framing organizations, and wish there was more of that throughout the course. I also thought the other book was pretty good too.
Your comments about chalk lecture on the math modeling wounded me. (I'm saying that a little tongue and cheek, but bear with me for a minute.) That's how I used to teach - all the time. I get nostalgic for it once in a while, so get the urge to return to the old days.
ReplyDeleteThere is, however, a more serious way to consider that particular point, to which I'll rely on a different student who commented about the Excel. He argued that there was too much text explanation there and he simply wanted to hurry through that and get to answer the questions. With the online lecture, something similar can be done. But, as you suggest, with the face to face variety, if nothing in it clicks with you, what's the point? From the faces of students in class on Thursday when I did that little exercise about valuing an asset, it sure seemed it didn't click with most students, if any of them. I wonder if that is simply a style thing, and there is another way to get the message through effectively, or if it is a technical competence thing, where students haven't learned algebra in a way that's useful to them. In class on Tuesday I will talk about this a little regarding how it might matter if you eventually get managerial responsibilities.
Given your comments about Bolman and Deal, let me generalize a bit here. Students tend to want practical knowledge about organizations, where the economics itself tends to give a theoretical approach (for example, consider the Efficiency Principle in Milgrom and Roberts). It is easier to make personal connections to the practical stuff. But we are a class in Economics and it is a bit odd for the student preference I just articulated to come from Economics students. So I aim for some balance, though of course that is imperfect.
There is one other thought on this. Sometimes good teaching makes students uncomfortable. Nobody wants to uncomfortable, but sometimes you learn more then. I'm not sure that observation pertains to the models in the Excel homework, but it is one possible explanation, though, as you suggested, maybe you need much more practice than what that homework requires for you to master this stuff.
I think it would be difficult to pin point the exact reason for why some students don't like that style of teaching. Perhaps some testing could help? Say if it is a competence issue, students might be uncomfortable to openly say they don't understand something. It would take some time, but maybe a little math quiz at the beginning of the semester could be given, and then a poll from the students could be collected asking what they thought of the teaching method. It's pretty much what you had for the class evals, but maybe you could throw in a more specific question that could pair with the math quiz results.
DeleteI agree with you about the structure of the Excel homework. I think that the actual material of it is, on its own, very useful and a good idea. However, seeing large walls of text followed by one or two questions is just begging for students to skim or skip the text and just try the problem immediately. The text should be in video form so the problems and material can be more visualized. As much as I love Excel, I think alternative services that combine problems and videos (such as Jose Vasquez's Flipit website) could be more useful and appealing to students.
ReplyDelete