Two key governance decisions that were made
were optional attendance and soft deadlines. These decisions make this course
unique from other courses since most classes are on the opposite end of the
scale in these respects, including most other 400 level economics courses. These
rules had a huge impact on my behaviour as well as the class as a whole, but I
think there was one modification I would recommend which I will look at and explain
at the end of this post.
I think not requiring attendance is what
caused students to not show up for class. I personally prefer optional
attendance for this class since I am not a morning person can find course
materials through the course website but I think if attendance was required, it
would encourage students to come to class and when more students come to such a
class, it makes the class better since we can learn more about different
perspectives. I think a good example of this is voting procedures: In most
countries, voting for elections is not mandatory which means that people do not
have any inclination to vote if they are not bothered about politics or don’t
feel like they have to vote. However, as an Australian citizen, I know that
voting is mandatory and if I do not vote for elections, I will be given a fine
for not doing so. I know that some of my friends have still tried to remain informed
about politics despite not being interested in it, so that they can vote for
future elections.
However, since this class did not require
attendance and had soft deadlines, I did not feel as much stress due this
course compared to most other courses, especially major courses. Although students
should not feel extremely stressed, I think a bit of stress is always useful
since it encourages students to not procrastinate due to the consequences. I think
for the class as a whole, not requiring attendance is not necessarily a bad thing
since students can always go to class if they are struggling.
The second rule was that assignments had
soft deadlines. When I first realized that this class had this rule I was taken
aback because I had never heard of this, which is something that makes this
class unique. I think this rule had an advantage of giving students extra time
to work on their blog posts if they want to improve their posts. The soft
deadlines definitely impacted my behaviour since some of my posts were posted
after the deadline, but this usually was to improve my posts instead of due to procrastination.
While I don’t know how this affects the class as a whole, I doubt it is positive,
since it could encourage some students to procrastinate on deadlines and in
general be lethargic about meeting deadlines.
I think one thing I would change about this
course if I was the professor is to do with the soft deadlines. I think instead
of allowing students to submit late and still be graded throughout the course,
I would allow them a few chances, to avoid consistent late submissions. This
would also mean that as the professor, you would not have to keep wasting time
to check posts at multiple different times. Another way to combat this problem
could be by only allowing late submissions till a certain point, for example 24-36
hours after the initial due date. I think doing both of these would better
(than doing only one) since if you only integrated the second one, it would still
encourage students to submit it late every week which does not help them or the
professor. Implementing both would encourage students to not leave their posts to
the last minute whilst still giving them a bit of leniency and allowing them to
learn to be more a mature and responsible person.
