Thursday, October 13, 2016
Are you rational (in an economics modeling sense)?
We will use this Excel workbook for an in class demo today. But I won't go over the third worksheet in class. You should do that yourself. (It will take perhaps 10 minutes). It has some small experiment for you to try and then gives an explanation afterward. Don't read the explanation till after you try the experiment or you will ruin it.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Grades Updated - Including Blog Posts First Half
I am sorry this took so long to do, but it is now done. Let me explain where we are:
1. The Excel Homework scores are now all correct. There were a maximum of 40 possible points here for the tutorial, efficiency and equity concepts, strategic approach to efficiency, and coordination mechanisms. Each submitted homework gives 10 points.
2. For the quiz that was just to try out Moodle quizzes, for everyone who did them I gave the full 10 points, even if you got something wrong. The content was not relevant to the course, so I rewarded doing it.
3. The actual quiz was auto graded in Moodle. That had a 50 points max.
4. The last thing I did, which took quite a while, was to assign points for the blog posts and to give comments on how to improve your blogging in the second half. There were 150 points max. Nobody got all the points but I believe I was pretty generous overall. The average was not quite 125 points. In coming up with this I relied more on getting the work in regularly (or not) than on the quality of what you posted. Truthfully, it is too early to grade your on quality. You are still getting your feet wet with the blogging. Post quality will matter more in the second half allocation of points.
Do note that this. In the second half I will not accept any posts that I do not see by Sunday evening at 6 PM, unless the student has contacted me ahead of time to explain some issue of why the post is late. As I said in class yesterday, it is just too hard for me to track the late posts and keep up with the class. I hope with this to encourage everyone to get their posts in on time.
------
The upshot is that 240 real points have been allocated and then 10 points more for that one little quiz in Moodle to test out the functionality. So that is almost one quarter of the points in the course. Based on that you should be able to track how you are doing. I know you care about grades, a lot. Though I am definitely not as wise as King Solomon, my hope with this approach is to encourage all students to put in their best effort in the second half.
------
Now let me conclude with an ethical dilemma, which is about comments on the blogs and what it says about that in the syllabus. Some of you have done that with some energy. Others have not done it at all. I am not sure why. What I'd like to encourage is that people do comment with energy for the rest of the class. So for the time being, I have not assigned these grades. (It says 75 points in the grade book.)
If I graded by the book the people who haven't commented at all would get zero, meaning they'd really get slammed. I see little good in that. However, I don't want to ignore the effort of those students who have been commenting in earnest.
So I've been thinking about giving every student some base level of points, B, and then awarding the remaining 75 - B points on a performance basis. Doing this is NOT IN THE SYLLABUS. So it should be considered by the class.
I do want to point out that I don't grade on a curve. Your own grade is not impacted up or down by the performance of your classmates. I hope you understand that as you consider this alternative approach to grading the comments for the first half.
1. The Excel Homework scores are now all correct. There were a maximum of 40 possible points here for the tutorial, efficiency and equity concepts, strategic approach to efficiency, and coordination mechanisms. Each submitted homework gives 10 points.
2. For the quiz that was just to try out Moodle quizzes, for everyone who did them I gave the full 10 points, even if you got something wrong. The content was not relevant to the course, so I rewarded doing it.
3. The actual quiz was auto graded in Moodle. That had a 50 points max.
4. The last thing I did, which took quite a while, was to assign points for the blog posts and to give comments on how to improve your blogging in the second half. There were 150 points max. Nobody got all the points but I believe I was pretty generous overall. The average was not quite 125 points. In coming up with this I relied more on getting the work in regularly (or not) than on the quality of what you posted. Truthfully, it is too early to grade your on quality. You are still getting your feet wet with the blogging. Post quality will matter more in the second half allocation of points.
Do note that this. In the second half I will not accept any posts that I do not see by Sunday evening at 6 PM, unless the student has contacted me ahead of time to explain some issue of why the post is late. As I said in class yesterday, it is just too hard for me to track the late posts and keep up with the class. I hope with this to encourage everyone to get their posts in on time.
------
The upshot is that 240 real points have been allocated and then 10 points more for that one little quiz in Moodle to test out the functionality. So that is almost one quarter of the points in the course. Based on that you should be able to track how you are doing. I know you care about grades, a lot. Though I am definitely not as wise as King Solomon, my hope with this approach is to encourage all students to put in their best effort in the second half.
------
Now let me conclude with an ethical dilemma, which is about comments on the blogs and what it says about that in the syllabus. Some of you have done that with some energy. Others have not done it at all. I am not sure why. What I'd like to encourage is that people do comment with energy for the rest of the class. So for the time being, I have not assigned these grades. (It says 75 points in the grade book.)
If I graded by the book the people who haven't commented at all would get zero, meaning they'd really get slammed. I see little good in that. However, I don't want to ignore the effort of those students who have been commenting in earnest.
So I've been thinking about giving every student some base level of points, B, and then awarding the remaining 75 - B points on a performance basis. Doing this is NOT IN THE SYLLABUS. So it should be considered by the class.
I do want to point out that I don't grade on a curve. Your own grade is not impacted up or down by the performance of your classmates. I hope you understand that as you consider this alternative approach to grading the comments for the first half.
The Nobel Prize in Economics
This is the announcement of this year's winners, Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom, who have done fundamental work on contractual incompleteness (the inability to specify all contingencies in the contract).
And here is an essay by last year's winner, Angus Deaton, on The Threat of Inequality. It is an accessible piece meant for a general audience. (The link should work if you are on the campus network or if you use VPN from off the campus network.)
And here is an essay by last year's winner, Angus Deaton, on The Threat of Inequality. It is an accessible piece meant for a general audience. (The link should work if you are on the campus network or if you use VPN from off the campus network.)
Making comments more effective - how and when
Yesterday in class we spent some time talking about one of the pitfalls possible with vertical (power) relationships, namely the subordinate sucking up to the boss. I brought this up because I thought some students tried to do that with their most recent blog posts. It actually took some effort to construct a post that way, I am appreciative of that effort, but at the same time it would be much better for students to voice their own point of view and thereby develop that in a deeper and more confident way.
There is a different but similar issue with horizontal (peer) relationships, especially when the people don't know each other very well and the person sending the message wants to be polite and friendly. Then one is apt to say something rather bland, more encouragement than substance, a pat on the back rather than an thoughtful provocation. Our world is now filled with - have a nice day, LOL, various emoticons, and other similar messaging that may serve some useful social function but doesn't produce learning in the recipient of the message.
If taken to the extreme, there is the risk that this sort of thing can lead to a "hive mind" which is not capable of independent thought. (On the entertainment front, an excellent depiction of the hive mind is in the Borg, part of the Star Trek Next Generation series.) I leave it to you whether the hive mind remains an issue in real life. I am using it here rhetorically to set up its opposite.
I learned about this after I had taken extensive leadership training, which at its conclusion offered up several things we might read. One of those was the Contrarian's Guide to Leadership, a book that does provoke one's thinking. If you click on the Look inside link, you can get to the first chapter of the book, which is called Thinking Gray. I encourage you to read it. It will challenge you, not because it is difficult intellectually, but because it is different from what you are used to. Virtually every student in the class expects right answer and right ways of thinking about a situation. So the issue is whether students can try on a different hat, one where there aren't right answers so much but rather multiple points of view, each with something to speak for it. A thinking gray leader tries to maintain multiple points of view and, this is the part that will drive you nuts, doesn't commit to one of those being the better point of view, until it is absolutely necessary for making choices.
So you might consider your job when offering comments as getting the student who wrote the post to consider a potential different angle for looking at the topic. I'm hopeful that with this orientation the commenting will become more valuable both to the student making the comment and the one receiving it as there will be a more evident value add. I will note however, that coming up with such a comment might not be immediate, so let's consider timing issues below.
- - - - -
I also suggested in class yesterday that at the author's discretion part of the blog post can be more on the topic from the previous week. (The other part would be on the current topic.) Reflection is a way to continually make connections between posts, something I'm definitely trying to promote. Given that, comments might encourage deeper reflection and clearly more interesting comments are more likely to do that. So let's abandon the requirement that the comments on other students' posts need to be done before Tuesday's class, which was based on the idea that everything would be wrapped up in a bow via the class discussion on Tuesday. That was naive of me and probably encouraged students to make trivial comments. Teammates might discuss among themselves when they are likely to be writing their blog posts and when, as a consequence, they are apt to review the comments of their teammates in a way that might be incorporated in their next reflection. I hope you can internalize the timing so that it works for each team member.
Let me close about the poster responding to my comment. I would still like that to happen before the Tuesday class. I hope that is sensible and do-able.
There is a different but similar issue with horizontal (peer) relationships, especially when the people don't know each other very well and the person sending the message wants to be polite and friendly. Then one is apt to say something rather bland, more encouragement than substance, a pat on the back rather than an thoughtful provocation. Our world is now filled with - have a nice day, LOL, various emoticons, and other similar messaging that may serve some useful social function but doesn't produce learning in the recipient of the message.
If taken to the extreme, there is the risk that this sort of thing can lead to a "hive mind" which is not capable of independent thought. (On the entertainment front, an excellent depiction of the hive mind is in the Borg, part of the Star Trek Next Generation series.) I leave it to you whether the hive mind remains an issue in real life. I am using it here rhetorically to set up its opposite.
I learned about this after I had taken extensive leadership training, which at its conclusion offered up several things we might read. One of those was the Contrarian's Guide to Leadership, a book that does provoke one's thinking. If you click on the Look inside link, you can get to the first chapter of the book, which is called Thinking Gray. I encourage you to read it. It will challenge you, not because it is difficult intellectually, but because it is different from what you are used to. Virtually every student in the class expects right answer and right ways of thinking about a situation. So the issue is whether students can try on a different hat, one where there aren't right answers so much but rather multiple points of view, each with something to speak for it. A thinking gray leader tries to maintain multiple points of view and, this is the part that will drive you nuts, doesn't commit to one of those being the better point of view, until it is absolutely necessary for making choices.
So you might consider your job when offering comments as getting the student who wrote the post to consider a potential different angle for looking at the topic. I'm hopeful that with this orientation the commenting will become more valuable both to the student making the comment and the one receiving it as there will be a more evident value add. I will note however, that coming up with such a comment might not be immediate, so let's consider timing issues below.
- - - - -
I also suggested in class yesterday that at the author's discretion part of the blog post can be more on the topic from the previous week. (The other part would be on the current topic.) Reflection is a way to continually make connections between posts, something I'm definitely trying to promote. Given that, comments might encourage deeper reflection and clearly more interesting comments are more likely to do that. So let's abandon the requirement that the comments on other students' posts need to be done before Tuesday's class, which was based on the idea that everything would be wrapped up in a bow via the class discussion on Tuesday. That was naive of me and probably encouraged students to make trivial comments. Teammates might discuss among themselves when they are likely to be writing their blog posts and when, as a consequence, they are apt to review the comments of their teammates in a way that might be incorporated in their next reflection. I hope you can internalize the timing so that it works for each team member.
Let me close about the poster responding to my comment. I would still like that to happen before the Tuesday class. I hope that is sensible and do-able.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
I made a small error in the grade upload to Moodle
This is why I hate clerical work.
In uploading the scores for the Excel Homework on Coordination, I mistakenly called the homework by a name for a previous assignment. So the Excel grades need to to be changed to have the right entries in the proper columns. Once that is sorted out, I will get to work on assigning scores for the first half blog posts. That will almost surely be tomorrow rather than later this evening.
I apologize for the delay.
In uploading the scores for the Excel Homework on Coordination, I mistakenly called the homework by a name for a previous assignment. So the Excel grades need to to be changed to have the right entries in the proper columns. Once that is sorted out, I will get to work on assigning scores for the first half blog posts. That will almost surely be tomorrow rather than later this evening.
I apologize for the delay.
If you can have a look at this
And if you'd like to offer some reaction, please do so as a comment to this post.
Monday, October 10, 2016
For class session on 10/17
Connecting the dots
From my grade book on tracking the last several blog posts.
The prompt and student responses as a game of charades.
Cultural Literacy - For making connections and communicating about them.
Blogging with threads
From my grade book on tracking the last several blog posts.
The prompt and student responses as a game of charades.
Cultural Literacy - For making connections and communicating about them.
Blogging with threads
Even Toddlers Can Sew | a Sewing Project for Beginners | TinkerLab via kwout
Look how terrible the posture is:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)