Traditional last post

I think that the most valuable lesson that I learned from class is how to look at organizations. Before taking this class I rarely thought about the reason that organizations were the way they were. This class has given me a sound understanding of the basics. This ground work enables me to be able to look at an organization and understand the forces and reasons that it is the way it is. While I think that this is an enormously valuable skill to have it is a bit vague in regard to this post.  If I were to be a bit more specific I would say the transaction costs was an extremely useful lesson that we learned in class. Nearly every economics professor I have taken a class with talked about transactions costs, if only in passing. This is the first class were I fully understood what transaction costs are and how they related to other economic ideas. I do think that a part of this is the article that my team read. I would not have as strong as a grasp on transaction costs if I did not read The Nature of the Firm by R.H. Coase.

I liked the structure of the live class. I think that its structure made it more enjoyable and easier to learn the material. By minimizing the lecture time, I found it easier to understand what was happening in class. Which also had the benefit of making class enjoyable.

When I do the excel homework I will try to do it without watching any videos or reading any of the other material that we are told to do.  I always end up watching and reading what we should have, this is because I either have trouble answer a question or fully understanding what the homework is trying to teach me. I do think that I learn better when I spend a few minutes thinking about the homework without any help to begin with. If I am stuck on a question after doing everything that I said above I will normally ask a teammate. As I am writing this it occurs to me that I could have gone on to the blog. I do not have good answer why I do not, other than I prefer to ask someone I am used to working with than to post a question on the blog. The time I spend on the excel homework is a bit hard to estimate. Some like the last homework were very short (I think it had 6 questions) other are considerably longer or involve a bit more thought. I think on average homework takes me about 30 minutes to an hour, but this is really a guess. When I am going to write a blog post, I will read the question an hour or two before I start writing so as to be able to think about it for a bit. I then spend about an hour writing, and revising my post.


I cannot think of any changes that I would make to the class that are no cosmetic. The class as a whole was fairly fluid, which allowed us (the students) to work with the material and gave us some say in what we learned. I think that I would have learned a lot if the groups had to read a two of the articles instead of one. I do not know how this could be managed, nor do I relish the idea of giving future students more work. That said I if there was a way to pair the articles. So that they work with each other that it could be very useful. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanDecember 9, 2017 at 3:22 PM

    Regarding your last suggestion, in class on Tuesday (before we review the final quiz, which I know is why you will be there) we will discuss my moral hazard in teaching the class. It is actually considerable and has shaped the structure we currently have. Making things quite different does have to address my moral hazard constraint.

    I'm glad you liked the class structure. You are one of the few students who seemed fairly comfortable talking up in class, even from the first day of the semester. I actually teach a one-session workshop on Socratic Dialog to TAs as part of what is called the grad academy, which aims to get them ready for the school year. I ask them, if you want to do Socratic Dialog in the very first class what do want to have happen? The answer is you need a student who is extroverted who will answer the question posed and then be willing to engage in follow up as well. In our class, you were that student.

    I think it also helped that we both seem to have a sense of humor, though that didn't really become evident till later. The role of humor in economic transactions is never formally considered, but I think it is important as a way of generating willing participation.

    As to your approach on the Excel - I will say that I never read a manual for a software application, until I get quite stuck. If I only get a little stuck, I still expect to figure it out myself. The difference with the Excel, is that in many classes students expect to get exposure to a subject first in lecture and then have homework based on what was presented. So the issue is whether you also don't attend lecture in other classes to be consistent with what you said. I do think this issue of approach is correlated with gender. Guys don't read manuals (and they don't ask for directions when they get lost.) If you thought of the online lecture as something potentially interesting in its own right, quite apart from the homework, maybe you would have approached it differently. Although, to be truthful, you'd probably have to be a math nerd for that to have happened.

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  2. Milton Friedman Econ 490 fall 2017December 11, 2017 at 7:15 PM

    I agreed with your comments about not going through online videos and such on specific excel homework until I got stuck on them. This is probably because it seems like a more efficient use of my time in finishing the homework, but it also causes a loss of understanding of some topics that I may have received through watching the videos in the first place.

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  3. Ben BernankeDecember 12, 2017 at 12:47 AM

    I agree that I would have liked to have worked more on other articles since the one I read provided me with interesting information that improved my understanding on the economics of start ups. I wouldn't have liked the extra work, but I might read some of them for fun when I am bored over break one day. I would enjoy learning about the papers from other team members who would be able to explain them to me. I also think trying to explain the paper deepened my understanding of the topic even more.

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  4. Francis Edgeworth Econ 490 Fall 2017December 12, 2017 at 5:29 PM

    I agree with you on the fact that I could finished the excel without reviewing the materials. However, this was only beneficial in the short run as I performed miserably on the first quiz. For the second quiz I decided to change my style. This proved to be successful as I was happy with the grade I received in the second quiz. In the end it is all upon the person taking the class.

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