Our final exam is scheduled for 8 AM to 11 AM on Monday, December 18th. I plan to do an online quiz instead, in similar manner to the other quizzes. That is, it will be given in Moodle. I have posted this in the class calendar to start at 11 AM on Sunday December 17th and close on December 18th at noon. This gives you a full day when to take it and part of the time overlaps the scheduled time of the final.
I hope, very much, that this does not create a conflict for anyone. If it does, however, note that I will not give a conflict exam earlier than this. If you need to take a conflict, it will have to be after the 18th. In this case, you should notify my asap so I can make arrangements.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Plagiarism and Moral Hazard
Nobody responded to this in class today about my question of whether you intended to go do graduate school in economics, but consider this (very low probability) scenario where every student in the class raised their hands, either earnestly or because they misrepresented their preferences in a way that they thought would advantage them. How would I have reacted in that case? (Note that to get into graduate school you need letters of recommendation from your professors.) This would have created some moral hazard for me!
Here are the links to the papers I showed about plagiarism. This essay by Jonathan Lethem is really a great read, so I encourage you to have a go at it after the semester is over. It will get you to reconsider your own beliefs about what "original thinking" means and how much of a debt we have to contributions that have come before our own. Also, it might help you understand that one joy I have as a professor is when some former student plagiarizes me, and then lets me know about it.
And here is the piece of mine called Do we plagiarize inadvertently? The thought behind the piece is that we (professors, librarians, campus administrators) read students the riot act about academic integrity, but don't attend to the practical education or how to deal with citation (or lack thereof). I do think as a good citizen you should make some efforts to cite properly, even in informal communication, but before too long there are diminishing returns, so there is no doubt we are less careful about citation in informal communication.
There is one topic I had wanted to discuss in class today but forgot to do so. This is about citing works that you haven't read, or have read but didn't understand. What is the right thing to do in this case? What is the common practice?
On a team writing effort where there is some comparative advantage among the authors, it is my view that as long as one member of the team has read the work, and it is that person who authors the text where the work is cited, that is sufficient. Other team members can trust their teammate on this one. (This usually works, although you can imagine the pitfalls that are possible.) In a solo writing effort, if you cite a work that you haven't read, and you do so incorrectly, you run the risk of discrediting your own piece. If you recall our little discussion today about detection, you might very well get away with it. But then again, you might not. If the purpose for the citation is to show that you've done your homework, then do your homework. That is the simple message.
However, I will confess to, for example, taking a concept I know already, finding the Wikipedia page on the concept or some other generalist source, and then linking to it without reading the whole page thoroughly. Sometimes Wikipedia has errors in it, so this practice is not without risk. However, it is mostly benign. I do it to show I'm not making the concept up, that I learned it ahead of time.
Regarding works that you don't understand, there are some famous works (Keynes' General Theory comes to mind) that are very difficult and hardly anybody understands them, but they were seminal in a line of thinking that followed. Those works should be cited, with reverence. Otherwise, it is quite a risky think to cite a paper you don't understand that others do understand, unless you are asking help from them to explain it to you.
Here are the links to the papers I showed about plagiarism. This essay by Jonathan Lethem is really a great read, so I encourage you to have a go at it after the semester is over. It will get you to reconsider your own beliefs about what "original thinking" means and how much of a debt we have to contributions that have come before our own. Also, it might help you understand that one joy I have as a professor is when some former student plagiarizes me, and then lets me know about it.
And here is the piece of mine called Do we plagiarize inadvertently? The thought behind the piece is that we (professors, librarians, campus administrators) read students the riot act about academic integrity, but don't attend to the practical education or how to deal with citation (or lack thereof). I do think as a good citizen you should make some efforts to cite properly, even in informal communication, but before too long there are diminishing returns, so there is no doubt we are less careful about citation in informal communication.
There is one topic I had wanted to discuss in class today but forgot to do so. This is about citing works that you haven't read, or have read but didn't understand. What is the right thing to do in this case? What is the common practice?
On a team writing effort where there is some comparative advantage among the authors, it is my view that as long as one member of the team has read the work, and it is that person who authors the text where the work is cited, that is sufficient. Other team members can trust their teammate on this one. (This usually works, although you can imagine the pitfalls that are possible.) In a solo writing effort, if you cite a work that you haven't read, and you do so incorrectly, you run the risk of discrediting your own piece. If you recall our little discussion today about detection, you might very well get away with it. But then again, you might not. If the purpose for the citation is to show that you've done your homework, then do your homework. That is the simple message.
However, I will confess to, for example, taking a concept I know already, finding the Wikipedia page on the concept or some other generalist source, and then linking to it without reading the whole page thoroughly. Sometimes Wikipedia has errors in it, so this practice is not without risk. However, it is mostly benign. I do it to show I'm not making the concept up, that I learned it ahead of time.
Regarding works that you don't understand, there are some famous works (Keynes' General Theory comes to mind) that are very difficult and hardly anybody understands them, but they were seminal in a line of thinking that followed. Those works should be cited, with reverence. Otherwise, it is quite a risky think to cite a paper you don't understand that others do understand, unless you are asking help from them to explain it to you.
Today's Quiz
Monday, November 27, 2017
Some Ideas for the Virtual Elevator Speech
I made a template Presentation for you to download and review. It can be played in slideshow mode and then plays automatically, with background music. The slides are meant as instructions on how to make your presentation. So that covers the layout part.
Content-wise, the big deal is image selection. Some thinking should go into what sort of image best represents the idea you want to communicate. I expect that to be the bulk of the work, with there also some effort put into your slide titles to tie into the images and establish connections with your paper. The images should be taken from the Internet, but don't use one which has a copyright notice on it. Otherwise, everything is fair game, though do note we are a G-Rated class and your content should fit that requirement.
As to the music, it is best for it to be purely instrumental, no vocals. This way the music complements the content on the slides and doesn't compete with it. One possible source of such music is to find Karaoke versions of popular songs. Here popular means for students, not for me. Remember, other students in the class are your primary audience. If you find such music on YouTube, there are many converters out there to make an mp3 (audio) file from the video. I've used this one with good success.
You need to put in timings/transitions for the slides. This requires a bit of arithmetic like this - if you have 20 slides and you want the presentation to run for 2 minutes then that is 10 slides per minute or 6 seconds per slide. You don't need to have it completely uniform that way, but it is certainly easier. Slides with a lot of text (you won't have many of these) should have some more time to allow the viewer to read what is on the slide.
Finally, the music should autoplay. There are some tools for doing that.
If you need help with this I can certainly provide that, but my hope is that at least one team member will have these skills and this sort of things is something that each of you should learn, if you don't already know how to do it.
Content-wise, the big deal is image selection. Some thinking should go into what sort of image best represents the idea you want to communicate. I expect that to be the bulk of the work, with there also some effort put into your slide titles to tie into the images and establish connections with your paper. The images should be taken from the Internet, but don't use one which has a copyright notice on it. Otherwise, everything is fair game, though do note we are a G-Rated class and your content should fit that requirement.
As to the music, it is best for it to be purely instrumental, no vocals. This way the music complements the content on the slides and doesn't compete with it. One possible source of such music is to find Karaoke versions of popular songs. Here popular means for students, not for me. Remember, other students in the class are your primary audience. If you find such music on YouTube, there are many converters out there to make an mp3 (audio) file from the video. I've used this one with good success.
You need to put in timings/transitions for the slides. This requires a bit of arithmetic like this - if you have 20 slides and you want the presentation to run for 2 minutes then that is 10 slides per minute or 6 seconds per slide. You don't need to have it completely uniform that way, but it is certainly easier. Slides with a lot of text (you won't have many of these) should have some more time to allow the viewer to read what is on the slide.
Finally, the music should autoplay. There are some tools for doing that.
If you need help with this I can certainly provide that, but my hope is that at least one team member will have these skills and this sort of things is something that each of you should learn, if you don't already know how to do it.
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Where I am on the Second Drafts/Moving on to the last phase of the project
So far I have received submissions from 7 teams. I have read and returned 5 of them and I am done for today. If I didn't get to yours yet, I apologize. Something else came up today and that took a chunk of time. I will get it back to you tomorrow. If your team hasn't yet submitted the second draft, you better get it to me tomorrow, early afternoon by the latest. Otherwise, your team will be put in jeopardy for not doing the work.
Many teams didn't do the references correctly. While I try to be causal about many matters, references in papers are something that academics take seriously. In the body of the paper, the reference should read Last Name of Author(s) (year of publication). Then at the end of the paper there should be a references list with a full citation of the paper. You ultimate submission of the your paper has to have the references done correctly.
In addition, I marked up papers, as my way to read through them again seriously. I want to note that I enjoyed the cover letters and really it is the best thing I did about the project - requiring them. One thing I hope you get from my class is that thinking is conversation. The cover letters are conversation with your thinking in response to mine. I wish I could do more assignments like that.
However, I didn't mark them up. From the point of view of production, the cover letters are intermediate product. The next version of the paper that you will submit is closer to final product.
Once I receive those and verify the references are done okay, I will post your papers to a folder in Moodle, so if you are interested you can see the papers of other teams. Having your paper posted in Moodle means your team is cleared to do the last phase of the project, the virtual elevator speech.
Many teams didn't do the references correctly. While I try to be causal about many matters, references in papers are something that academics take seriously. In the body of the paper, the reference should read Last Name of Author(s) (year of publication). Then at the end of the paper there should be a references list with a full citation of the paper. You ultimate submission of the your paper has to have the references done correctly.
In addition, I marked up papers, as my way to read through them again seriously. I want to note that I enjoyed the cover letters and really it is the best thing I did about the project - requiring them. One thing I hope you get from my class is that thinking is conversation. The cover letters are conversation with your thinking in response to mine. I wish I could do more assignments like that.
However, I didn't mark them up. From the point of view of production, the cover letters are intermediate product. The next version of the paper that you will submit is closer to final product.
Once I receive those and verify the references are done okay, I will post your papers to a folder in Moodle, so if you are interested you can see the papers of other teams. Having your paper posted in Moodle means your team is cleared to do the last phase of the project, the virtual elevator speech.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Happy Thanksgiving/About the Projects
I want to wish everyone in the class a happy Thanksgiving. I hope the break has been good and relaxing for you.
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At present 4 teams have submitted their second drafts and cover letters. I will start looking at this stff on Friday, and I'd like to be done no later than Sunday afternoon, so be advised that was a soft deadline will become increasingly hard over the next few days.
You might be amused by one of my rhymes on this point, written early last Saturday, when only one submission had come in.
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At present 4 teams have submitted their second drafts and cover letters. I will start looking at this stff on Friday, and I'd like to be done no later than Sunday afternoon, so be advised that was a soft deadline will become increasingly hard over the next few days.
You might be amused by one of my rhymes on this point, written early last Saturday, when only one submission had come in.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
A little puzzle about gift exchange and pay for performance from our class
Sometimes there are natural experiments done that produce data and then let economists (and other social scientists) try to explain the findings with some plausible theoretical explanation. In our class we have had such a natural experiment.
Early on there were class session evaluations that students would receive 5 points for completing. There were closed ended questions that were required and an optional paragraph question for comments, meaning students didn't have to comment to receive the 5 points. Yet many students did, in fact, post a comment, some with high frequency. In the language of the class, those comments were gifts (to me). You would know better than I would about the motivation for writing such a comment.
Since we ended the class session evaluations, students have had the option of posting a comment on the Feedback Tab at the class site. This is one click away from the homepage. So, regarding effort, I would interpret that as pretty minimal. It would seem that if you were inclined to give a gift in the form of a comment, you'd still be doing that. Yet nobody has submitted such a comment. It's as if by going from session evaluations to this other method, I shut down the comment pipeline.
That observation offers a puzzle. You might explain things by outside factors, such as where we are in the semester. (The number of people completing the class session evaluations had been declining.) Another possibility, however, is that you have to initiate the activity before you get into gift giving mode and the 5 points bonus as incentive was needed to get you to initiate. This is one where students reflecting on their own motivation might shed some light on what explains things. You know what drives you better than I do.
If the need to initiate offers the better explanation, then you might take this finding and ask what it tells a manager. How often must the manager provide some carrot for employees so they reinitiate? Also, what carrots make sense here? We talked about employees on a salary not bearing income risk. Are there other carrots that might be used if such an employee seems stuck in rut and needs to resume working at a high level?
Early on there were class session evaluations that students would receive 5 points for completing. There were closed ended questions that were required and an optional paragraph question for comments, meaning students didn't have to comment to receive the 5 points. Yet many students did, in fact, post a comment, some with high frequency. In the language of the class, those comments were gifts (to me). You would know better than I would about the motivation for writing such a comment.
Since we ended the class session evaluations, students have had the option of posting a comment on the Feedback Tab at the class site. This is one click away from the homepage. So, regarding effort, I would interpret that as pretty minimal. It would seem that if you were inclined to give a gift in the form of a comment, you'd still be doing that. Yet nobody has submitted such a comment. It's as if by going from session evaluations to this other method, I shut down the comment pipeline.
That observation offers a puzzle. You might explain things by outside factors, such as where we are in the semester. (The number of people completing the class session evaluations had been declining.) Another possibility, however, is that you have to initiate the activity before you get into gift giving mode and the 5 points bonus as incentive was needed to get you to initiate. This is one where students reflecting on their own motivation might shed some light on what explains things. You know what drives you better than I do.
If the need to initiate offers the better explanation, then you might take this finding and ask what it tells a manager. How often must the manager provide some carrot for employees so they reinitiate? Also, what carrots make sense here? We talked about employees on a salary not bearing income risk. Are there other carrots that might be used if such an employee seems stuck in rut and needs to resume working at a high level?
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