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Being that the requirement for an economics major is to take four 400 level economics courses, it was important to me that I chose courses which I felt were going to be both interesting and useful in the future. I liked the way in class discussion and even more so the blog posts forced the students to be able to not only mathematically solve a problem, but also intuitively predict an outcome. Another important aspect for courses this year was flexibility, as I was out of town a lot for job interviews especially the last couple months. Therefore, if I missed class I was able to catch up because the homepage on BlogSpot contained a lot of valuable wrap-ups from class and readings to get a better understanding. In addition, I felt like it was very easy to engage in class because the structure of the class centered on trying to get the students to apply situations to our own experiences. In a lot of classes when I ask peers of mine to highlight the most important material covered they usually can barely tell me the topic of conversation. This is because classes that are set up in strict lecture form with PowerPoints and students on their laptops tend to inhibit the desire to absorb a lecture.

The most important thing a professor can do for his students is to provide a classroom experience in which one can look back on that lecture a few days later and be able to provide the general idea or main take away of the lesson. Although we were allowed to use our laptops for the first portion of the week I even noticed that as time went on students began using them less and less because we all realized that the best way to learn in this class was to listen and engage. I think it may have been useful to have PowerPoints in the class so that the students could follow the conversation better, especially when terms were used that we may not have recognized.  In addition, it was apparent to notice those who did speak up a lot and participate in conversation. I myself am very shy especially in a classroom setting and do not tend to speak up a lot in class. There were others like myself in class; therefore, the blogs were a great way to speak my mind and not have to hold back. Since we had alias attached with our names I felt more comfortable sharing stories I thought related to our class.

As for the bonus points that were first awarded for class attendance, I do not think those really affect incentive for attendance. I myself almost always forgot to sign in and would never remember to fill out the survey. I also am more of a hands on learner, which is why I do like having lecture slides. I enjoyed the style of teaching, but I did find myself lost sometimes without the material right in front of me.

The excel homework is where I did most of my learning. I would usually spend about 1-2 hours working on it depending on the length of the assignment. The text which came before the problems was very useful, and I enjoyed the way the problems were broken down and built off of one another. Also the quizzes were similar to the style of the excel homework. To study for these, I would usually refer to all of the readings the Professor mentioned and then go through the excel homework again based off the notes I had taken and paid attention to the parts that took me a while to solve.

For the blog posts I would read the prompt and usually focus on the first thing that popped in my head in regards to my own experience. The prompt did a very good job in “prompting” meaning that I always knew the direction I wanted to go in the minute I finished reading it. My favorite post was one I had written about my grandfather. It was right after dad’s weekend and they had left only a couple hours before I had written it. It was cool to be able to spend a few days with them and be able to relate this back to this course. After I established what it was I was going to write about I first wrote an outline detailing my experience and then bullet pointed all the terminology from the lesson I wanted to use.

Lastly, the pattern of attendance throughout the course obviously decreased. This is caused by a multiple of reasons. Students could be using that time to study for another class or make-up homework, out of town, interviewing for jobs, sick, etc. All of my classes where participation is not required, students usually will not excuse themselves from class because there is no attendance, and as less students go the less they feel incentivized themselves to go. However, I noticed that the structure of the class coincided to what the Professor was trying to teach on organizational economics. There are no points or quizzes in the real world, but relationships and reputations you hold for yourself. This was clearly demonstrated in our final paper. A lot of students do not like group projects because it is not always easy to depend on another person for your grade. However, most organizations are built off of its employee’s ability to work well with one another and find solutions to a problem. My teammates and I spent hours together working on the paper. If one person was confused on a topic we would make sure we did not move on until everything was fully comprehended. We did not just own the section we wrote, but the entire paper.