When I was going through my past blogs I saw a patter
happening. In the beginning I used to just strictly answer the prompt but I
didn’t really give any further information that might show how I used the
concept in real life or to better understand the material. But as the course
moved on and with more and more blogs being posted I finally started to realize
that the prompts were not just busy work but it was to help tie what we talk
about in class together. It was really interesting to see this development and
how my blogs got better and better because I was using this newfound ‘skill’.
By realizing this I also see that all the themes were in some way related to
each other in the economic sense. For example, the one about the time where we
were a part of a team and the one where we or someone we know had to be
opportunistic.
I think that the best way to connect to the themes is to
connect the prompt to your life and try to answer it based on things that have
happened to you personally. For example, when I started I didn’t connect to the
prompt questions to my life story instead I was just trying to find a quick
answer and get it over with. Now when I first start working on the blogs I try
to think if there is something from my past that can answer the prompt and
through that it makes it easier for me to connect all of them together and remember
what I wrote about when class time comes about.
My process has definitely evolved in the sense that I try to
write as much as I can and even though sometimes it is hard to think of answers
to the prompt and fulfill the total amount of words necessary I started to
enjoy the process. In the beginning I would kind of give up when I got stuck
and leave it until later whereas now I try to get it done from one try and if I
get stuck it makes it in a way more fun for me to try to decipher my thought
process while still providing a good answer.
For future prompts I would like to see more open blogs where
we are allowed to write about different ideas such as the Illini bucks. I think
that those prompts make it more worthwhile to write about because more often than
not the things I write about is about things that I would like to see get done
either for myself or for my future. But I would like to see at least one topic
where it is more specific and where we would be given a problem to analyze. For
example, if we have an excel problem about some business or economy and based
on the numbers we look at we would have to write about whether that business is
doing good from an economic standpoint and give advice to the owner of the
business or something similar. I would like to see that because I would get a
better feeling about economics and how it ties to everything around me. Both of
these sound fun and yet challenging and it would make it more interesting to
read someone else’s blog and see what they thought to do in comparison to your beliefs.
I wonder if what you wrote about how you first approached the prompts reflects something about how coursework is perceived in general, not just in my class. Students don't see why they are doing it. They understand they will get a grade but not what value the work has for themselves. If this is a general condition about education it would certainly explain your early behavior. And if that is wrong, it would be good to know the right explanation for the early behavior.
ReplyDeleteI have written on other student's posts that to make connections in a more interesting way you have to read a lot - both specifically for my class and quite generally. The reading provides the context for the connections. It also shows you other people doing a similar activity and how they go about things. The pieces that you read and really enjoy can then serve as a model of how you should go about doing things.
Your suggestion about looking at an actual business is interesting. I am not sure where I'd get the data. I will look for some data I do have from when I was a campus administrator. (Where it is another story. That might take a while to find.) Perhaps I can concoct some exercise from that.
Yes I believe that this is a similar perception to a lot of the students. They don't always know why they have to do something but they know that they have to do it in order to pass the course and get a good grade. But for me with so many good topics to write about it gave me a different feeling as to the reason why I should relate to them and actually try to do more than just answer the prompt.
DeleteI also found myself being less analytical in the first few posts. I was good at answering the prompt, but that was it. I didn't bring the prompt to a broader scale, I kind of just talked about my own experience and left it at that. Through Professor Arvan's responses I think we are all becoming better writers, and that is a skill that is very valuable. The prompts you prosed seem a bit more challenging, but I think that might be good for us as learners, and help us do well later on when it comes to quizzes/exams.
ReplyDeleteI also found myself being less analytical in the first few posts. I was good at answering the prompt, but that was it. I didn't bring the prompt to a broader scale, I kind of just talked about my own experience and left it at that. Through Professor Arvan's responses I think we are all becoming better writers, and that is a skill that is very valuable. The prompts you prosed seem a bit more challenging, but I think that might be good for us as learners, and help us do well later on when it comes to quizzes/exams.
ReplyDeleteI found myself in a very similar situation than you at the beginning where the prompts seemed hard to answer with the word requirement and I would oftentimes feel stuck and simply answer the prompt. I think that all of us in Group C, as well as much of the class, felt this way in the beginning. I mentioned in my blog post that the fact that the expectations for the posts were unknown, it was a bit daunting. Now, however, after receiving feedback in class from Professor Arvan and comments from him as well as our group members, I feel like we have all grown as writers and know more of what to expect as comments when we write the blogs.
ReplyDeleteI think that your ideas for future posts would be a real change of pace and something very interesting, if the data is out there. I too really enjoyed the Illinibucks prompt and found it one of the easiest to write since it was a fictional scenario and the post was mostly just a thought process and helped us work through the scenario.