The End...

Christmas is coming, so the fall semester will comes to an end. I experienced a fall semester that was the total opposite of a semester in Amsterdam. Especially the class structure and the weekly deadlines in this course let me feel like I was in high school again. As I have wrote in an earlier post, the fall semester in Amsterdam consists of two 8-week courses and one 4-week course. Now that it is the end, I can say that I believe that I have learned more in certain topics than that I would have done back in Amsterdam.

The build up of study material in courses that last the entire semester, such as our course, is more clearly compared to a stuffed 8-week course. I liked the build up of the study material in this course. It started quite easy with the Efficiency Principle with the Game Theory and the Efficiency and Equity Concepts. These concepts weren’t new for me and I was afraid that I wouldn’t learn a lot of new concepts. However, as the semester went on, and especially after the last change to drop and add classes, the topics that were treated were new and more challenging.
            Topics, in the middle of the semester, that were challenging for me were Math of Risk & Risk Preference, Insurance under Asymmetric Information and Bargaining. I learned a lot from these concepts. Furthermore I really liked the use of graphs and the need to understand these graphs, which was really useful.
The principle-agent model and Shapiro Stiglitz model, at the end of the semester, were totally new for me. Both of them were more challenging than previous topics, but with the experiences on the excel homework during the semester I managed to complete them. As you see, the build up of the study material throughout the course was good and in correct order.

Not only have I learned a lot from the excel homework assignments, but the class session and online blogging were useful too. I enjoyed the discussion mode in the class session, even when I wasn’t really into talking much during some days. Most of the sessions started with a recap of the excel homework (Thursdays) or the blogging (Tuesdays), followed by the discussion mode on a new topic. I found the discussion mode very helpful to connect topics with each other and see topics from a different point of view than only the excel homework. The excel homework’s felt really theoretical and in the discussion mode these topics ‘came to life’.
            Through online blogging we could fit the class topics into real life situations and use our own experiences. This was the first time that I faced this kind of study method and this gave some difficulties in the beginning. However, throughout the semester I got better and better in blogging and I even found it more enjoyable than in the beginning. The feedbacks on the blogs were useful and interesting to read and reply on. The most I get from blogging is the improvement of my English and the way to interpret theoretical problems into own experiences. Besides, I encourage the soft deadline policy on the blogging. My busy days were often Wednesday and Thursday and this made it hard to deliver a good written blog at Friday noon. So due to the soft deadlines, I was able to write my blogs often at Fridays or Saturdays.

Sometimes it was difficult to connect the topics discussed in class and treated in the excel homework and in blogging, to each other. Often there was an overlap, however sometimes several subjects were mixed up. Having a weekly main subject could maybe prevent this. For example, give every week a topic; week 3: Game Theory, week 6: Bargaining and week 8 could be Asymmetric Information.
            Another thing that I would have liked to see is a one-on-one meeting when we received the half semester feedback and grades. If it was possible in time, we could have given every person a 5 minutes time slot during a class session to discuss the individual overall progress in the class, blogging and excel homework. In the beginning of the course, it was clear what you, as a teacher, expected from us. However, throughout the semester this could change. Students have different goals and by communicating these goals in such a one-to-one meeting, the progress of individual students could be improved.
           
My two main goals were improving my English writing and experiencing the American way to approach of Economics in Organizations. I am satisfied with my standing at the end of the semester. I experienced a way of teaching that I never had before. Back in Amsterdam, we often got one final exam in week 8 that often counts for 80 to 100% of your grade. In general, students don’t show up for 6 weeks and start studying 24/7 in week 7 and 8 and still pass their course. I realize that the study material will not stick as good as the way it does here. On the other hand, in Amsterdam we have lectures and workgroups in one week from different professors and this gives a lot of advantages.
           
I truly believe that I learned a lot in this course. By using different methods to approach study topics, the subjects got more realistic instead of theoretical. Furthermore I believe that this course helped me improving my scientific thinking. Maybe I won’t see the results immediately, but I am sure that once I experience blogging or a discussion mode again, that I will think back to this course. I want to thank you for the enjoyable class sessions, which I attended with pleasure. I experienced the American way to approach Economics in Organizations at fullest because of your great experiences from the past. I am just at the start of experiences organizations and I hope to use the knowledge learned in our classes in the future.

I wish you and your family a very nice Christmas. Furthermore, I am not a baseball fan, but I hope for you that the Yankees will come further next year!


- Rutger

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanDecember 10, 2017 at 7:37 AM

    Thank you for the comments. Having an exchange student makes the course more interesting for me because, as you said, some of the patterns are different and you bring those things out in overt way. Last year I also had an exchange student. He worked for Ikea and was good natured, like you are. So that part is a plus, in my view.

    I will say that you shouldn't treat our class as typical of the American way, either for teaching undergraduate economics or undergraduate education in general. You won't find many econ classes that are similar in style, for at least two reasons. It is very unlikely that other such courses would emphasize informal writing, like in the blogging you did, and it is very unlikely that an instructor would spend so much time responding to students this way, for the obvious reason that the instructor teaches many more students than I teach, either in a large lecture course or in several smaller classes. So I wonder if you are taking any other Econ classes here and, if so, how those went for you.

    Regarding some of the details you talked about - one big exam at the end versus lots of assignments all the way through - there are two issues to think about that you can tie into our class. One is about the time path of effort. The high stakes exam approach is likely to produce low intensity during much of the term and then a big burst of effort near the end. The other approach is likely to make effort more uniform over the entire semester. While it may be that some things can be mastered by cramming, other subject matter requires repeated exposure and letting the ideas percolate for a while till the student can make sense of them. Now, the implementation of this matters, quite a lot. If students perceive the weekly assignments to be busy work only, nothing more, then they'll do them with minimal effort, So the assignments need to be interesting and challenging to get the desired result.

    The other issue is on managing student stress and whether the students come to feel they are being nurtured by the instruction they are getting or if instead they fell they are being assaulted by it. Since your course project was on implicit contracts, you envision that nurture is part of the implicit contract between the student and the university. In that sense, if the students comes to think of the assessments as too harsh, that would indicated a break in the implicit contract and the students would respond in kind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glenn Hubbard Econ 490 fall 2017December 10, 2017 at 9:14 AM

    As your partner for the class project, it was very interesting to hear your perspectives on the course as an exchange student and how things here differ from your home in Amsterdam. I had never before worked on a project that required as much work as this one with someone from another country, and I am grateful for that experience.

    I liked what you said about having a one-on-one meeting with Professor Arvan during the middle of the semester to assess goals and discuss progress in the course. For me, this class had more moving parts (Excel HW, blogging, blog comments, quizzes, etc.) than many of my other courses which have a uniform homework assignment each week and periodic tests. Because of that, I felt it more difficult to manage each of these aspects of the course and a meeting in the middle to make sure I was on track could've helped.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gift exchange is everywhere

The ability to work together in a team is very important. Not only is this the case during high school, university and work, but also just with daily life activities. I believe that no one can live his or her life without any help of others. It is in our nature that we have to depend on others to get certain things done and gain from it. Of course we make our own choices but most of the time others have influence on it. Working in a team requires helping each other because every person differs. This often leads to gift exchange as in the meaning of exchange of knowledge. One might have better skills in one area than another and by helping each other you can learn from each other. My own experiences with team production started when I was young. I have two siblings; one older brother and one younger brother, and we are raised with the vision to always help each other if needed. A memorable moment was the help of my brother in order to hide my teat. At a certain age, my parents...
Read more

Illinibucks options

As a new student to the UIUC I’m not really familiar with the things that are allocated to students on a first come first serve basis or on priority basis. However, I can still think about some things on campus where students could use Illinibucks, which would move the student to the head of the line. This would be registering for classes, dorm housing allocation and making an appointment in McKinley. I believe that Illinibucks would be most used for registering for classes if it would be introduced, mainly because certain classes are really high demanded. I got accepted to the university after the registering for the fall semester was opened, so when I had the chance to register for classes a lot of them were already full. If I could use Illinibucks I would spend them on the registering of classes, so that I could register for another course that I wanted to follow. Luckily ECON490 has a lot of options and that’s why I’m registered for four ECON490 classes. If this wasn’t the cas...
Read more

Decisions for the future

Filling your resume is assumed to be more and more important than before. Students are not only focused on getting a high GPA, but also trying to involve in organizations, having work and abroad experiences, and more. I believe that our current decisions as students are important for the future, however more roads lead to Rome. Thus, the decisions we make aren’t guarantees for a perfect job in the future. In my previous post about opportunism in the DJ scene, I’ve mentioned that I went to Cambridge because of my brother and dad. My father believes that taking a gap year after high school is an opportunity to live abroad, learn a language and to develop yourself. So after high school I went to Cambridge for 6 months and 2 months to California – Santa Barbara and San Diego - where I attended the language school Kaplan. I’ve achieved the Cambridge Advance Exam (CAE), made contacts all over the world and developed myself. This decision was also made with an eye toward the future, beca...
Read more