Post 5: Reflection
1) Looking at all of my old posts as a whole, I don't see many connections, apart from the obvious. Of course they all center around economic theories, specifically about organizations. One connection that really popped out at me though was efficiency. All of my posts address scenarios where groups are considered and factors are analyzed that show why a groups is more or less efficient or theoretical ways to make an organization more or less efficient. I think this is both interesting and encouraging, because it shows a very valuable real world application to each of the topics that we have discussed. As someone who wants to possibly own their own business in the future, I find this very encouraging. The second similar connection would be analysis from an upper management position. In many of these scenarios, we are looking from a bosses perspective at how best to manage a company or organization. Again, showing a real application for future management. As a side note, I found the mediator and good citizen class discussion topics to be insightful perspectives on what makes a good leader.
2) I think that there are definitely ways that I could have connected personal experience to class material for each week that I have posted, however, I think that it makes posting more difficult. For one, I run into the trap of straying down the path of one topic and finding that I can only write 200 or 300 words on it, then I have to restart from scratch. Another problem is that I can no longer compare my work to other student's posts. I find that if I look through other student's posts before crafting my own, I find common connections and it helps me to organize my thoughts and the outline of the post. Without this help, it becomes much harder to write a quality post. For example, instead of my first post being about organizations, I considered writing about the transaction costs involved in getting a drink at a bar. Specifically, two weeks ago before, I had solicited some assistance from an acquaintance who had a 21 wrist band at Kams, where as I did not. I was then going to go into the tips for the bar tender, and the fact that I had actually tipped him by telling him to order a drink for himself from my money. While this is an interesting example, I found myself rambling and running out of ideas after only 300 words. After restarting the post, I found other student's posts very helpful in outlining my own.
3) My strategy for writing these posts has changed significantly. When I wrote my first post, I started with a single idea, a sort of vague direction, and started writing. After that I continued until I had hit the minimum word limit. Whenever I got stuck, I would just think until I came up with a fresh example or perspective. I now try to come up with a main idea, then to break it down into 3-5 sections that I can make into paragraphs. Sometimes I end up combining paragraphs, or cutting some out if they only yield one or two sentences, but it has made my overall post much more cohesive. It has also simplified my posts significantly. Instead of letting my mind run wild with a post and trying to put all of my thoughts into a post, I instead focus on one specific idea or aspect and limit myself to writing about that. I also have taken to proof reading my work once I finish each paragraph and then once again as whole after I have finished the entire post.
4) First of all, I like the theme that the posts have taken so far. They all have a few key elements. First, they draw from our own personal experience, so they each have an individuality and interesting story that goes with each. This makes it much more fun to read other student's posts. Second, they usually tie into a key element that we have discussed in class (with the exception of the third one). This allows us a quick review and gives us plenty of inspiration and prior understanding of the topic, because we have already discussed it at length. Third, they usually give us the chance to critique and analyze our personal experiences, so instead of just regurgitating what we have seen or done, we get to use our new knowledge to improve upon it. This gives perspective for future situations and shows real world application. With all of this in mind, I think it would be interesting to have the students interact with each other's posts for one of the prompts. I got this idea from one of my gen ed classes that I took this summer. For one of our weekly forum posts, we had to describe our past experiences with religion in our own original post. Then, we were assigned another student's post and for the second half of our assignment, we had to read their post and then comment our analysis of the aspects of religion that we had discussed that week that we found in their post. A similar concept would be having each student in this class write their relevant experiences with a topic by Thursday night, then having the analysis of the experience in relation to the weeks topic due as a comment by Friday night (or noon). While this is an interesting idea, there are definitely complications. For example, I remember having to double up because the person's post that I was supposed to analyze didn't get theirs done on time, so I had to analyze another student's post.
2) I think that there are definitely ways that I could have connected personal experience to class material for each week that I have posted, however, I think that it makes posting more difficult. For one, I run into the trap of straying down the path of one topic and finding that I can only write 200 or 300 words on it, then I have to restart from scratch. Another problem is that I can no longer compare my work to other student's posts. I find that if I look through other student's posts before crafting my own, I find common connections and it helps me to organize my thoughts and the outline of the post. Without this help, it becomes much harder to write a quality post. For example, instead of my first post being about organizations, I considered writing about the transaction costs involved in getting a drink at a bar. Specifically, two weeks ago before, I had solicited some assistance from an acquaintance who had a 21 wrist band at Kams, where as I did not. I was then going to go into the tips for the bar tender, and the fact that I had actually tipped him by telling him to order a drink for himself from my money. While this is an interesting example, I found myself rambling and running out of ideas after only 300 words. After restarting the post, I found other student's posts very helpful in outlining my own.
3) My strategy for writing these posts has changed significantly. When I wrote my first post, I started with a single idea, a sort of vague direction, and started writing. After that I continued until I had hit the minimum word limit. Whenever I got stuck, I would just think until I came up with a fresh example or perspective. I now try to come up with a main idea, then to break it down into 3-5 sections that I can make into paragraphs. Sometimes I end up combining paragraphs, or cutting some out if they only yield one or two sentences, but it has made my overall post much more cohesive. It has also simplified my posts significantly. Instead of letting my mind run wild with a post and trying to put all of my thoughts into a post, I instead focus on one specific idea or aspect and limit myself to writing about that. I also have taken to proof reading my work once I finish each paragraph and then once again as whole after I have finished the entire post.
4) First of all, I like the theme that the posts have taken so far. They all have a few key elements. First, they draw from our own personal experience, so they each have an individuality and interesting story that goes with each. This makes it much more fun to read other student's posts. Second, they usually tie into a key element that we have discussed in class (with the exception of the third one). This allows us a quick review and gives us plenty of inspiration and prior understanding of the topic, because we have already discussed it at length. Third, they usually give us the chance to critique and analyze our personal experiences, so instead of just regurgitating what we have seen or done, we get to use our new knowledge to improve upon it. This gives perspective for future situations and shows real world application. With all of this in mind, I think it would be interesting to have the students interact with each other's posts for one of the prompts. I got this idea from one of my gen ed classes that I took this summer. For one of our weekly forum posts, we had to describe our past experiences with religion in our own original post. Then, we were assigned another student's post and for the second half of our assignment, we had to read their post and then comment our analysis of the aspects of religion that we had discussed that week that we found in their post. A similar concept would be having each student in this class write their relevant experiences with a topic by Thursday night, then having the analysis of the experience in relation to the weeks topic due as a comment by Friday night (or noon). While this is an interesting idea, there are definitely complications. For example, I remember having to double up because the person's post that I was supposed to analyze didn't get theirs done on time, so I had to analyze another student's post.
Some things occur to me as I read this. If you are reading other students posts before you write your own, this seems like a benefit flowing to you for which there isn't reciprocation. Have you considered ever being the first students in the class to write a post for that week so that other students could read your post before writing theirs?
ReplyDeleteI have been told by other students, the ones in that CHP class I mentioned on Thursday, that science and engineering students might have a particularly difficult time with writing blog posts for my class, because it is so different from the sort of writing one does in science. There the thinking precedes the writing and the writing is meant to write up the results. The blogging is much more formative. You might think of it as communication to a research collaborator during the process of conducting the experiment, where there are open questions as to how to proceed.
I have a sense from how you described things that you don't do enough pre-writing, which is why you sometimes struggle with generating enough prose. You didn't say when you initiate with the blogging, but that matters for all of this. Earlier initiation allows for more ample time to pre-write.
I agree with your first paragraph. I am definitely reaping some benefit, but I can tell from some of the posts that there are students who don't read other student's blogs before posting, so at the same time, I don't think that I am taking anything away from anybody, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point. For example, I struggled a lot in my advanced composition credit class that I took this summer. Not from the exams or quizzes, but on the term paper that we wrote. I hadn't done writing like that since early in high school. For similar reasons (my outline was lacking) I found myself constantly rewriting and reformatting the paper, wasting a lot of time.
I usually take between an hour and an hour and a half between reading the prompt, reading other student's questions and then writing my response. By pre-writing do you mean just contemplating the question and generating my own experiences? Or do you mean outlining my work into a specific format. As far as ideas, I usually generate between three and five possible topics, but that doesn't take more than five minutes or so after reading a few other posts. The formatting is usually a combination of exploring each idea, to find how well it relates to the prompt when really analyzed and then finding if I can generate five or so paragraphs. Sometimes I won't explore every possibility if I think that I have found one idea that fits well. This process usually takes most of my planning time, about half an hour to forty minutes.
I find it interesting that you try and apply the concepts in class we learn to your own aspirations. I too would like to own my own business some day and I think the fact that you focus on a management perspective in your blog posts will help you out later down the line in life. I think that proofreading paragraphs after you write them can also help you clarify ideas you may have not explained well enough.
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