This class was
very interesting to me because it approached economics in an organizational
perspective. I was a little nervous initially to take this class because it is
an upper level economics class but the topic interested me more than the other
options. I never realized how there are legitimate economic theories regarding
interpersonal relationship and organizations in economics. All the information
I have learned in this class can be applied to real life economic situations
and I hope I am able to apply these materials that helped me throughout in the
course somewhere down the road. Transfer pricing and how all the factors in a
supply and demand curve can affect almost everything in the economy really
impressed me: market price, supply, demand, etc. The blog posts were very
helpful because it made sure that students were able to focus on what the
subject of the week was and apply, in their own personal opinion, a blog post
regarding the topic. This helped me because by putting my thoughts into words I
was able to get feedback from the professor to help clarify what I understand. The
one problem I had with the class was sometimes the excel homework was
difficult. Maybe a small part of lecture on Monday being allocated to how to do
the excel would be helpful; I was able to overcome this by meeting when the
professor when I needed to but for those who cannot do so, maybe a formula reference
sheet or something would be helpful. I also appreciated the way this class was
structured; it was a combination of offline and online involvement.
You are not the first to comment on wanting some lecture prior to doing the Excel homework. I will respond here the way I responded to the other student who raised that point. The typical approach is lecture first, then homework to test understanding of the lecture. But that way, students are often unprepared for class. When you graduate and have to go to real meetings at your place of work, prior preparation for those meetings will be essential. Shouldn't students practice that sort of preparation ahead of time?
ReplyDeleteThere is a related issue of whether figuring out the Excel was possible if you put in the time, or if as you said you would never have been able to get some of this without getting help from me. In some cases this might be just a minor thing, like having the right cell reference. But in other cases it might be something else - having some comfort with the math modeling. I fear that many students in the class did not have that comfort, which made Excel homework that much more challenging.
Trying to translate into real world issues, I wonder if intelligent people can think through what is happening when they are being scammed. The particular case of Bernard Madoff and his investors comes to mind. Shouldn't the investors have known they were being swindled? I am not sure, but I do believe being comfortable with the math is essential to make this sort of determination.
I do agree that it is necessary to prepare in meetings before attending; preparation is a lifelong skill and I duly appreciate and respect the encouragement of that on your part. I guess it is partly on the fault of the students for the lack of effort to be prepared. As far as the Excel difficulty, I think the main problem is some students are not too familiar with the usage of excel. Personally, I had not used excel since taking CS 105 two years ago; i was able to figure out the basic components on how to use excel with the aid of the instructional video in the beginning of the semester. It is most certainly on the responsibility of investors to know whether or not they are being scammed; my dad is a strong believer that there is no such thing as moral obligation in the real world and that anything goes.
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