Some follow up thoughts to today's class

As it turns out, I had prepared to show you something but failed to do so.  I have access to your I-Card photos, which I hope will allow me to match name, face, alias, and the work you do much faster than it has happened in prior offerings the course, where it took between a month to 6 weeks, and that was a for a student who came to class regularly.  Now I hope that will happen in the next couple of weeks.  We'll see.

Armed with this bit of information, I wanted to investigate a little whether interactions in the class might be different if I know you in this way and you know that I know.  In a large lecture class, the professor almost surely doesn't know you.  In that sense, you are anonymous.  If you have a TA, the TA might learn who you are the same way I learned the identity of my students, but typically there is only one discussion session per week.  So it might not be till mid semester before the TA knows everyone in the discussion section.   And perhaps it is even longer.  TAs might have 3 different discussion sections.  I have only the one class that I teach now.

So today I had planned to have some discussion about whether anonymous interactions differ from interactions where the people know each other, and if so why.  You may recall that I had a senior moment during the class today.  After that I lost my path to this particular question.  If someone prompts me on this next Tuesday, it might be a good topic to consider.

Here I will present the punchline and you can ask whether it makes sense.  Gift exchange is much more likely to occur when the people know one another.  In the situation where identities are unknown and where they are likely to remain that way, gift exchange is unlikely.  Do note that when you are first meeting someone new, particularly when the people are from different cultures, gift giving often occurs as a symbolic gesture up front to create the conditions for subsequent dialog.

One last point here.  In our class, actual gifts from student to professor or from professor to student, are out of bounds.  If you want to give me something that I will value, put some effort into the course.  I will try my best to reciprocate.