via GIPHY

Most of the above, at least the details, are self-explanatory, I hope. If not, PLEASE ASK!. I also ask you to read the above section closely now, before the course starts. It will really help you be prepared for what’s to come.

But, what’s not obvious is why I do it this way.  Put simply, I do not believe in grades. To be more specific, I think grades and grading get in the way of people learning. I have a lot of research and arguments to back me up and this is a topic I hope to publish further about in my retirement (that word, again). But in short, students get focused on short-term regurgitation of details for some test. Students get anxious. And don’t even get me started on how imprecise and arbitrary the measurement is.

I want you to learn about economics because the more you know, the better you can navigate your life – regardless of your chosen profession.  It can be interesting, but grades just get in the way. More importantly, my research on learning and pedagogy tells me that we can’t quantify and reliably measure learning. I am firmly convinced that learning, real learning – the kind of learning where you feel the lightbulb go on and go AH-HA!- cannot be quantitatively and objectively measured (there’s a very similar problem in economics: how to measure ‘value’).

If I had my way, I wouldn’t have grades.  But I can’t do that. The school requires that I do grades. The schools you transfer to expect that LCC professors are assigning grades. So here’s my solution. It’s a modified version of a practice called “contract grading”.

I can’t measure directly what you’ve learned.  I can’t identify or measure the AH-HA! moment you’ll have.  What I can do, is lay out a process – a sequence of steps and activities – that I know with high degree of confidence will lead to learning about economics.  (for you budding business majors, this concept is actually the core concept behind continuous quality improvement processes and statistical process quality control). The process I’ve laid out is largely readings and doing the worksheets in a particular order, then followed by a scaffold of a practice quiz-followed by low stakes graded quiz-followed by later exams of the highlight concepts. Some concepts in economics aren’t well grasped just by reading. You actually need to try to use them to analyze something. That’s why the worksheets. That’s also why the worksheets can be repeated as many times as you wish. Do it till you get it or until you’ve given up and decided the opportunity cost of seeking those last 2 points isn’t worth it.

But what about the quizzes? Isn’t that an attempt to “measure what you’ve learned”?  Not really.  I hope you learn a lot of things that aren’t on the quizzes. I can’t write questions for everything I hope you learn. What I’m doing with the quizzes is basically doing a sampling to see if you did the readings and thought about them.  They’re also as much feedback to you as to me – and that’s why you can repeat them.  The quizzes are an imperfect indicator to me (and you) of whether and how seriously you did the readings. That’s their purpose. I also provide practice quizzes that don’t count. Once you get into the course, you’ll see that practice quiz questions are similar (but not identical) to graded quiz questions. If you can do well on the practice quizzes, you’ll do well on the graded unit quizzes. And if you actually remember longer term what you did on the graded quizzes, you’ll do well on the exams.

The final exam is a bit of an experiment. We used to have a mandatory, departmental final that was proctored and no-notes. It was all multiple choice in my class.  However, with the Covid pandemic we haven’t been able to proctor exams. So each instructor is on their own. I’ve opted for a split 25 question online MC test and a self-reflective essay you’ll write. You’ll have plenty of advance notice of the essay topic. The ECON program is currently working on revising how we do final exams, so there might be some tweaks to this yet this semester. If so, you’ll have plenty of warning. I don’t expect anything dramatically different from what I’ve been doing.

That leaves us with the forums and review exercise.  Writing is a way to help us think. I am not judging or grading what you write in the forums at all. I’m interested in what you’re thinking.  I have tried to create forums and prompts that will help nudge your thinking while you’re doing the course.  Please don’t treat this as “I just gotta say some b.s. with some buzzwords” type things. That doesn’t help you and it wastes my time reading it. Again, I’m not trying to measure what you’ve learned. I’m trying to see if you complete the process. I’m curious what you think. So write your posts and replies. You get the full points for writing – whatever you write.  In forums, I’m not looking for finished product. I’m not looking for you to write the next great economics research paper. I’m looking for you to “think out loud”. The only way to “fail” the unit one forum  or unit 14 forum is to not write it. Period. Oh, and BTW, if you think a video or a haiku or GIF or an image with some text explains what you’re thinking at that point, feel free to do it.

Regarding your overall grade, I can assure you this. I’ve been doing this a long time. Trust me. If you simply follow the process, do the work, and don’t procrastinate, you will succeed in this class.  I cannot remember a student who failed or didn’t succeed “because they just couldn’t get it” or “because they’re not good at math” or “because they were stupid”.  The only students who don’t succeed are the ones who don’t follow the process or don’t do the work, procrastinate, and try to do the whole course in 3 days.  And there are very, very few of those students.  I want you to succeed and I want you learn econ.  Work with me and I’ll help you all I can.

Course Policies

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Class Attendance/Participation

Students are expected to be active online every week. 

Students who do not complete a Unit 1 assignment (forum) by the required Unit 1 deadline will be reported as not having attended and will be dropped. 

Scheduling and Due Dates: Flexible Schedule

Planning and scheduling your own work is integral to learning economics. In particular it helps you experience concepts of scarcity, opportunity costs, production possibilities, and other economic principles in your own life.  Therefore, I’ve designed this course to provide a significant amount of flexibility to you in scheduling your own work.

There are three “hard deadlines“, as listed below. The “hard deadlines” or “mandatory deadlines” are the only deadlines where there are required negative consequences if you don’t meet them.  Typically, if you miss a “hard deadline” you either get dropped (missed the Unit 1 deadline) or you have missed any opportunity to complete certain assignments (midterm), or both.  Either way you risk not finishing the course or at least making your grade lower.

Mandatory “Hard” Deadlines:

• Last day to complete Quiz 1, Post to Unit 1 Who Are You forum,  Aug 28 end of day.
  
• Last day to complete midterm test- Oct 25 end of day  
• Last day to complete everything including the final exam: Dec 11 end of day.

 Campus Closure (“Snow Day” or Emergency) Policy:

Since this is an asynchronous online class that, as explained above, really only has four “hard” deadlines, this class/course isn’t really affected by “snow days” or other physical closures of the campus. If a campus closure somehow does interfere with your ability to meet one of the four “hard” deadlines, please email me and we’ll work out arrangements.

Organization of the Course & Suggested Work Schedule

The course is divided into 14 Units grouped into 4 Parts according to topics. The Units of the course do not exactly follow the chapters in the textbook and not in the same sequence. For more information and details see the Lessons tab of the D2L course site, or better yet, see the “Jim’s Guide” and menu for each unit on the micro.econproph.net website. Unit numbers in the course do NOT correspond directly to chapter numbers in the book.

In addition to the required “hard” deadlines listed above, a schedule of suggested completion dates for each of the 14 units plus midterms and final is provided via the link below. This suggested schedule is a valuable planning and time management tool for students, please become familiar with it and compare your progress often. This suggested schedule is also available in D2L and can be bookmarked for your convenience. If you don’t meet certain suggested dates, the only consequence is that you fall a little bit behind and will need to “pick up the pace” as you move forward. It’s important to not fall seriously behind. In my experience the single greatest cause of poor grades in this course is procrastination. On the upside, if can discipline yourself to work regularly at a nice pace and not fall seriously behind, experience indicates you are virtually guaranteed to succeed in this course. More information about scheduling and deadlines is in Unit 1 of the course, and by checking the Suggested Schedule.  Plan your own pace and schedule accordingly. To help you plan your scheduling, look at the Suggested Schedule of Work Assignments (click on this link to view Schedule as a web page in a new tab or window).

Extra Credit

Extra credit is not available in this course. Students’ time is better spent reworking worksheets and quizzes. It produces more points for your time investment.

Discussion and Collaboration

Students are encouraged to assist each other in learning and mastering the material, particularly when dealing with the problem worksheets. A discussion forum will be provided for this use. Collaboration, however, is only for students to help each other understand the material. Trading, sharing, or publishing of specific answers to specific quiz or exam questions is prohibited and will be considered a violation of academic integrity

I encourage discussion between students and the sharing of ideas and information. One of the best methods for learning and truly grasping economic concepts is to explain them to others. Students are welcome to assist each other in learning. However, the direct exchange of answers to questions without discussion, argument, or reasoned explanation is viewed as academic dishonesty. I reserve the right to reject the score of any assessment that I suspect may have been obtained dishonestly and not through student learning, even without proof of any dishonest actions by the student.

Note on Use of “AI” Systems such as ChatGPT, etc.:  My above policy encouraging discussion and collaboration extends only to actual other human beings enrolled in the course or that otherwise might be reasonable sources of actual real human intelligence such as a tutor from the Learning Commons. I understand how — given the hype we’ve heard in the past year or so about the “wonderous” and “intelligent” AI systems that Silicon Valley has created —  how it might be tempting to use such systems to formulate answers for forums (like your journal assignment) or the final exam essay portion. Don’t do it. Please. You will be wasting your time, you’ll learn nothing, and you’ll get garbage back from a stupid computer that’s wasting enormous energy and water just to have a pretend dialog with you.  I’m serious.  I have a much better idea.  If you’re stumped or lost or even just feel hopelessly behind in the course and desperate –instead of checking with the AI things, CALL ME!  Yes, me. The professor. A real human being (I’ve got lab reports from my doctor as proof!). I can help you do the assignment AND learn something. And I like to talk about economics.