Thursday, December 5, 2013

Review about the class

I think the structure of this class is really creative. It also provides me lots of interesting organizational management concept to think about. For example, I think the Illinibucks idea and transfer pricing is interesting because I never think about the charge of goods and services between different divisions within one organization. I remember we write blog post about Illinibucks. When I wrote a paper about Bitcoin for my final project, I relate my concern of the market to this idea, even though their functions are different. But I realize that people’s behavior in hoarding Illinibuck might create deflation in the market. I have a better understanding of my opinion and rationale of it. I used to think this class is not that relevant to pure economics because it somewhat focus on human’s behavior in the organization. But at the end of semester, I realize that we can use some economic knowledge to explain the reasons of these behaviors. In my opinion, this is the most valuable take away point for this course.

Online blogging is really a good idea because people can learn more by self-reflection and think about the material in a more freedom way. I think the interaction in comment is really important because sometimes we learn more from other’s perspectives. However, the shortage of blogging is that it is too freedom. Sometimes I don’t know whether I am right or wrong, and getting panic if I see the comment that I did something wrong. It allows me to read other’s post before I start writing, even though I try to not do it and finish the post independently. But sometimes I will just be influenced by other’s thought and hard to come up some creative one after that. And I feel like I can derive the concept relevant to class from one experience, such as group project or previous internship, which is both a good and bad thing. But overall, I like this format of constructing the class because it is easier to relate course materials to our experience and make it more applicable.

It usually doesn’t take me a long time to do Excel homework and blogging. For Excel homework, I will go through the instruction in Excel and watch the tutorial on Youtube if necessary. Honestly, I am often stuck by several questions in Excel homework. So sometimes I will discuss them with my classmate or send them an email to make sure my understanding is correct. It usually takes me longer time to write the blog post, depends on how I familiar with the topic. However, since most of them are based on experience, the average time for me to do blogging is about an hour.


Sometimes I think that it is a little bit harder to think about examples different from the example in guidance before we really learn the concept. So sometimes we will misunderstand the purpose of the pose. I will suggest that for some abstract concept, we can have a 100-150 words reflection post after the discussion section and clarify some misunderstanding concept in the original post. This might be easier for the instructor to monitor whether we really understand the idea. Also, I feel that in this structure, honestly I will seldom read textbook and only refer to some concept when I prepare for the exam. I am not sure whether there will be better substitute of reading textbook. But if we can have more updated news article to help us understand the concept, it will be more interesting than rarely reading textbook.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the comments. Let me take them in reverse order. On the Milgrom and Roberts textbook, I base the topics we cover on it, but I don't go by their way of presenting them, at least after the first topic (the intern matching program). So I can understand not reading it, but it is there for reference. Bolman and Deal is a different matter, it has many anecdotes as well as explanations and I would encourage you to read it even after the course concludes.

    On the Excel, I might try for some online office hours, perhaps the evening before it is due. Would that be useful to you?

    On reading other people's posts before you write - I think that is ok. It is a kind of learning from one's peers. Copying them is not good but getting a sense of what they produced is fine. It is not cheating at all, so please don't feel bad about it.

    And on seeing the connection in the economics between different ideas we've confronted - that is music to a professor's ears. Thank you for that.

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