For the Last Class Session

An Idealistic Approach to Student-Faculty Interaction 

I was taught the following at the Frye Leadership Institute  back in summer 2003.

• Every students wants to have a personal intellectual relationship with some faculty member

Does this still remain true today?  (If not, why not?)  How well did we do on that score?

• A totally optional discussion group on leadership for next semester

Class Attendance

• Demographics by eyeballing
• Observable factors that seem to matter: (1) gender and (2) transfer student or not.
• What the Syllabus says on the matter
• Some students reported (near term) disutility from going to class (test in some other class, preference for sleeping in, other possible explanations). 
• Class mixed on requiring attendance or not.
• The puzzle for me remains that for 2012-14 attendance was not an issue.  The vast majority of the students came to class.  

Deadlines

• There were some interesting comments (because they showed a lack of rationality in the strict sense) about deadlines.  At least a couple of students wanted the blog posts to be due Thursday evening (an earlier and therefore tighter deadline).  
• One student wanted the deadline to be Sunday night, which coincides with deadlines for other courses.  
• I need some time between when you submit blog posts and when I read and comment on them.

Gift Exchange

• Walking the walk - did students learn to reciprocate?  
• Did the professor reciprocate when students offered up a gift?
• Were there some acts of kindness that students initiated?  

Bigger Picture Issues that Tie into Undergraduate Education

• Are you a sheep?  Or are you self-directed in your own learning?  
• Many of the final blog posts made it seem as if you were a sheep, though you may not have intended to communicate that. 

Stop Googling.  Let's talk.

• The preference to have the laptop out may be indicative of aversion of conversation more generally, because listening is slow and often doesn't provide immediate reward.
• Alternatively, I may have intimidated students in class with my questions that were too "off the wall" and without obvious answers, so students may have sought refuge in their laptops so they wouldn't have to answer the questions.

• Learning to Accept Responsibility without Feeling It Is an Undo Burden
• A post written about the class last year.

Lanny on Learning: We Or Me? via kwout

One More Quiz

How many ears does Captain Kirk have?

This Week's Blog Post and Comments

I moved the prompt from the calendar to the class site, because we were on vacation last week.  Some people didn't find the prompt that way.  I hope everyone will get caught up with that now.

Regarding comments, I think it is overkill here to comment on the posts of other students for this last post, but you might write a brief response to my comment.  Also, since students are divided in what they are writing about, there is less feedback for that a student when writing a comment on the other prompt.  So this time it is not necessary.

We should have an interesting discussion on Tuesday in class about this.  Students clearly have strong feelings on these matters.

We seem to have lost Internet at my house

If it doesn't come back on by the morning, I may be slower responding to your posts.  Apologies in advance if that occurs.

The video on the Shapiro-Stiglitz model I promised yesterday

Here it is:

Our last class session is Tueday

We will review the blog posts due tomorrow and discuss what students report there.  Following that, I will answer any and all questions students might have about the last quiz and material that might be covered on it.  We will reserve some time at the end for administering the ICES forms.

I observe the following without comment.  Today we had the lowest attendance of the semester.  I believe there were 7 students and because of that  I forced those sitting in the back to come nearer to the front.  Also, among those who were not present, two submitted the Excel homework during the class session and one submitted it after.

I could not get the projector to work today, so much of what I had planned to do went out the window.  I will make a brief video to show some thoughts about the Excel homework - further implications.  However, I am not up to doing that today so I will do it in the morning and post it to the class site when I'm done.

Today's Quiz

The projector didn't work in class today, but truthfully I only thought of this after class was over.  There are three questions.  They all pertain to this image.

1.  What is this guy's name?

2.  What magazine is this guy associated with?

3.  What slogan is he identified with ?