Connecting the dots

The most obvious themes that I saw with all my blog posts were economics and how organizations work. Since that is the name and the purpose of the class I do not think that this is what was meant by the prompt. I am going to assume that everyone in this class has written about those themes in each of their posts. In all my blog posts, I have loosely touched on opportunism and/or the lack of it. I do not think that I have done a great job explaining that in every one of my posts, but each one of my posts talks at least alluded to it. I think that opportunism is a part of working as a group, and while I may not have noticed or talked about it in my earlier posts it definitely was on my mind and influenced what I was writing. I also loosely talk about how organizations are structured in my blogs. Every one of my posts talks about a different group I have been a part of. I then talk about the way that those groups functioned, who was in it, and what the purpose of the group was. Like opportunism I do not think that this is extremely clear, but group structures have been a running theme in my posts.

Yes, there are ways to connect the prompts to course themes. The prompts are meant to be a place to start the blog post. I should be able to internalize the themes of the class, and then be able to connect the prompt to what we have been learning in class and the class homework. I rarely think about connecting my blog posts to the homework. I think that by adding a segment in each of my posts about what we learned in the homework and how that relates to the prompt of my blog posts I would be able to greatly improve my writing. I also have not talked about downstream and upstream divisions. The downstream and upstream divisions of an organizations is an effective and useful way to look at any group. Too me, it is now much more obvious how the actions of a groups are dictated by what they are doing, who they are doing them for, and what each group hopes to gain from the interactions between the two groups.

When I first started writing my blog posts I tried to get each post down as fast as I could. I treated them as a chore. I would look at the prompt, write the first one or two things that I thought about down. I would then extrapolate on those ideas until my post was long enough.  After which I quickly glance over the post to make sure that there was not any glaring flaws or problems with it. I have slowly been giving more time, effort, and care to writing my post. I now read the post prompt, and write a sentence or two right before I go to the gym. After an hour or two I will, sit down and write out a full post. I them make sure to reread the post at least twice before I post it to my blog. While writing I try to make connections between the prompt and what we have been learning in class.
This mostly came about because I started taking the blogging seriously. While blogging may not be my favorite thing to do. I do what can be gained from the blogging, and I truly believe that it will help me in the long run. The way I write my posts has changed mostly because of this. I am taking the writing more seriously. This means that I try to make sure to give each blog post the time and attention that I need to understand what the blog post is asking. I also spend more time on actually writing the post.


I would like to see posts that have a variety of way to answer them. The more different the answers from the posts, from my other group mate’s posts and the discussions we have in class, the better my understanding of the prompt and the themes we have been discussing in class. This also has the added benefit of making it more interesting. When I read my group’s posts and we each talk about different thing I am forced to reexamine my ideas on the prompt. This leads to a better understanding of the subject matter in general. I think that I am learn more about what we are talking about this way. This is especially true when we talk about the posts in class. Each different subject is a slightly different take on the themes that we are learning about. Also, I personally learn better this way. As a side benefit I find the conversations more interesting when there is a variety of things being discussed. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanOctober 14, 2017 at 11:33 AM

    I suppose you should be rewarded for being straightforward. There is some virtue in that. I do like it if students get at causality some in their posts. Since in your second paragraph you talked about things that you haven't done to this point but that might improve the experience for you, the question is why not.

    In the third paragraph you then talked about trying to get the posts done as fast as possible. That is one reason why not. But to use that reason in paragraph two, you needed to have mentioned it already. If you give some time to the pre-write, which does encourage you to think through what to include in the post, you might also add a little effort to the sequencing of what you say.

    You then reported that you started to take the blogging seriously. I'm glad you did, so I don't want to discourage that at all. But I'm left in the dark as to why that happened. If you can shed some light on what changed for you, that would be both interesting to read and potentially useful to me as a teacher, depending on what really was the cause.

    Your last paragraph I find somewhat baffling. You seem to assume there were only one or two ways to till with earlier prompts. I should note that another student said essentially the opposite in his post, that the prompts were too open ended and he wished they were more directed so he was sure he was on the right track. In any event, I am not trying to pigeon-hole students into particular answers with the blogging, and I will remind you that you can ignore the prompt entirely and write about something else, as long as you can tie what you are writing about to class themes. Let me say one last word on this. The students in our class are all Econ majors. Particularly the ones who are in state may be drawing on similar experiences. International students write posts that are different because their experiences are different. If you have a larger range of potential experience to draw upon, it might help you with creating variety in your posts.

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  2. Francis Edgeworth Econ 490 Fall 2017October 14, 2017 at 1:47 PM

    I also was not a fan of blogging, however further on the prompts made me a bit serious about the blog posts. I feel the prompts are neither open ended or close ended, I feel there is a god balance. Although, I do feel the word limit of 600 words is a bit more than I like.

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