Grade for Comments Second Half have been uploaded

I will grade the project tomorrow and see if I can get the final quiz into Moodle (making sure it is not invisible).   I will also post the elevator speeches to Moodle tomorrow.  For those of you who have still to submit your elevator speech, I you can get it to me by then.

Thanks.

Grades for Blog Posts - Second Half Now Posted in Moodle

I need to take a break now.  I will get to the grading the comments after that.  I would expect those to be posted by late afternoon or early evening.

Comments Matrix/Moral Hazard with Music Selection

I have just uploaded the Comment Matrix - Second Half into Moodle.  Here I would like to explain what is there.

1.  For each post the alias is credited with a comment if that person made a comment.  Two or more comments don't give any more intensity in the recording.  Neither does a very long comment.  When I get to the qualitative assessment of the comments, which I still must do, it might come into play then.

2.  For the last post I only counted the comment by the author of the post.   I did previously announce this.  One of my broader issues with the class is knowing if an intended message gets through.  Often it seemed it didn't.

3.  There are aggregates, by post and by alias.  Unlike the last time where I did those manually, this time I used formulas in Excel to do the counting.  While mistakes are still possible, surely that makes them less likely.

* * * * *

The virtual elevator speeches have been trickling in.  I launch each one to see whether it will play.  So I get a sense of the music chosen.  In all cases the music appeals to me.  Why is that?  These pieces were supposed to be for students like you who were getting exposed to the subject matter for the first time.  Do you actually listen to classical music and/or jazz?

I won't hold it against you.  I'm just noting it here.  This is another one of those things that didn't happen last year.

Incidentally, another of those things is that the teams actually never chose a name.  They stayed with their letter only.  I wonder if that impacted team performance in any way.

Update on Where I Am with the Grading

There is a lot to track! I've posted the last Excel homework on the Shapiro-Stiglitz model and the last two blog posts.  I am in the process of tracking comments and reading through them (two separate activities).  I am not quite halfway there.  This is going slow, plus my arthritis is acting up doing this (I wonder why) so I need to take regular breaks.

The upshot is that I probably won't have the grades for Blog Posts and Comments Second half till Saturday.  I will let you know that as soon as those are posted.  I will get to the projects immediately after that.  The virtual elevator speeches have been coming in, but some are still pending.

Good luck on your finals.

A little humor and....

.... if you've never seen it before an essential part of anyone's education about American culture.

What I forgot to say in class this morning.

In doing our review I failed to mention an idea I am toying with - replacing either one of the live class sessions or perhaps both with mandatory office hours.  Students would be put into groups of 3 or 4 and have a 20 minutes session scheduled during regular class time.  Since the class meets for 80 minutes, I could do 4 such sessions a day.

In this way I'd hope to get everyone in the group to chime in.  And in that setting, as distinct from the full class, I wouldn't feel reluctant to call on you if you weren't otherwise participating in the discussion.

The big deal for me is that I haven't worked through how to keep these conversations somewhat novel.  If I can somehow figure out how to do that, then this would work for me.  Focusing on the blog posts of the particular group members might do the trick.

In any event, I am toying with this.  If you have some thoughts on the matter, you might make a comment here, or send me an email about it.

A totally optional discussion group on leadership for next semester

The last few years I have invited students to join me in the spring for a weekly discussion group on the topic of how they might get more out of their learning.  Three years ago, I didn't get enough nibbles.  Two years ago I had three takers.  We met each Friday afternoon throughout the spring semester.  It was an interesting experience, unusual for both the students and for me.  Last year I had two takers initially, but one soon dropped.  The other person was extremely shy and it was kind of odd to have conversations with him.  We went for a while but didn't meet quite as regularly.

This year I'd like to do something similar but on a different topic.  I maintain a reading list on leadership and learning.  We might start with a few pieces from there to help us find a rhythm.  After that, I'd hope that students would offer up their own pieces for us to discuss.

When the group seemed to work well we went for somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours and met in BIF.  That much of what we did I'd like to keep.  Based on that experience the ideal number of students is at least 3 and probably no more than 5.  If we can get that this time around we'll be a go.

If you are interested you can indicate that either by commenting on this post (and maybe that will attract some others to do likewise) or you can send me an email.

Let me say one more thing about scheduling.  I am not teaching next semester so I am pretty happy to meet whenever is convenient for the group (if such a time exists).  But I would prefer daytime to evening.  You should probably treat that as a firm constraint in assessing your own availability for this.