After writing several of these posts, it is clear the intention is for much of the content in the blog posts to connect with the other posts. One clear example of this is with the experience in organizations post, and the team structure post. In the experience with organizations post, we essentially gave our personal definitions of internal structure within organizations, while in the team structure blog post, we build on our own personal definitions of organizational structure by attaching them to whatever official definition exists for organizational structure in the textbook. We also looked at the efficiencies and inefficiencies of working in our specific organization, and what may be the underlying causes, in the experience in organizations blog post. In the team structure blog post, we built off of our analysis of efficiencies and inefficiencies by looking at the textbook's definition of traits of successful organizations.
Addressing course themes by connecting them to subject matter in our blog post is a semi-new way for me to pick up on course material in an econ class. Without, your suggestions of what course themes to connect to the blog subject material, I would find it particularly difficult to find other course themes to weave into my response to blog post prompt. Your suggestions of what to connect the information to, help me better understand what to look for in the prompt, from the perspective of the course.
At the beginning of the course, I wrote the blog posts the day of the due date, or sometimes after, with little to no planning. I now plan my response a day or so before the due date in order to give myself time to mull over my ideas and make sure they can form an adequate response. Then the morning before the due date I write the blog post using the outline I had crafted the day before. This allows me to better articulate my ideas without completely rambling on, as I did in some of the earlier blog posts. I developed this process due to the feeling of being slightly overwhelmed with trying to collect my thoughts in the right way, when articulating my blog posts early on.
As far as writing the prompt, what I enjoy more than anything is clarity. I understand that many of these posts are intended for us to answer the prompt, but then expand on the ideas suggested in the prompt. I feel that this is best done by having a clear prompt, that asks a specific set of questions, and then suggests the best course themes that the blog post should relate too. This would allow students to not get caught up about the specifics of what the prompt is asking for, and focus more on expanding their subject matter to cover the course themes. A good example of this is by the prompt for this specific blog posts. This prompt asks specific questions, but allows for students to expand on any other concerns they may have with the class going forward.
Let me give two specific response. First - you should distinguish teams, as they are written about in Bolman and Deal, from organizations. A team is typically a smaller group constituted for a specific purpose. For example, in my last years in the Campus IT Organization, I was part of a small group that was tasked to come up with recommendations specifically in regard to mobile computing and what the campus might do in that space. The team lasted for less than a year. And since after it was done with its work my boss, the then CIO, left the university none of its suggestions were implemented. Nevertheless, you should understand the large organizations sometimes make small teams for specific purposes. And when that happens there needs to be some communication between the team and the rest of the organization. That is usually done by the team leader and may explain the hierarchy where the is both a director and an assistant director. The director then spend some effort on communicating with the rest of the organization.
ReplyDeleteYou have expressed a demand for clarity before. I believe I understand where that is coming from. However, let me ask in return if you've considered that providing such clarity actually betrays one of the core themes in the course. In particular, when we covered the Nobel Lecture of Herbert Simon, the core driving idea was decision making in the the presence of complexity. How does one have clarity when it isn't obvious what is going on? Simon argues that managers make subgoals that are easier to achieve and bears some relationship with what is going on.
From my perspective as the teacher - you should be the one who makes those subgoals in your posts. That is one way how you can make sense of a situation where there is ambiguity. If I do it for you, then you don't have to reckon with it. I believe there is less learning in that for you.
That is an interesting point you brought up regarding the Nobel Lecture of Herbert Simon, and I do feel that decision making in the presence of complexity is an essential tool for us, as students, to develop. It is a skill that can be, and will be, used by all of us in whatever career path we choose. I had previously not been exposed to this in a classroom environment, so that may be why I had an alternate expectation originally.
DeleteI actually had the exact same connection as you. The connection with our organizational experience and team structure posts came pretty quickly when reading through my previous posts. I'm glad we both picked up on that and can use this information to help ourselves when we work with organizations in the future.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you've made a very mature adjustment in writing your posts. It's always beneficial to take time and think about what to write as well as how you are going to write. I'd like to think that you've seen improvements in your blog posts once you made this adjustment.