tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1547970616267354336.post8161546022863178736..comments2016-12-05T13:59:51.368-08:00Comments on Alan Krueger Econ 490 Blog: Williamson-like critiqueAlan Kruegerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10178779859662076381noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1547970616267354336.post-63930332042398555082016-12-05T13:59:51.368-08:002016-12-05T13:59:51.368-08:00If class had started later attendance would most c...If class had started later attendance would most certainly be higher, I believe many students chose to sleep rather then go to class. It is really shocking that this is the first year that attendance shocked, I wonder why this year people chose to not come? Maybe this year is just an outlier and next year attendance will revert back to the norm. <br /><br />I think it comes from students being lazy, bored, or having another obligation in class. The lazy students don't want to think about the information, therefore, they do everything they can to distract themselves. The bored students dont find the information interesting so they do something else that amuses them. The students with a different obligation that must be completed will get a higher reward for acting myopic and completing that assignment for a different class. However, all of these students will be hurting there learning for the class they are in at the time of disinterest. Alan Kruegerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10178779859662076381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1547970616267354336.post-78058679190769620672016-12-03T17:11:45.870-08:002016-12-03T17:11:45.870-08:00I feel that banning technology from the class woul...I feel that banning technology from the class would not be a good choice because although some people might get distracted by it and not utilize it accordingly, it is certainly beneficial for a lot of other people. Technology is a growing market and cannot be ignored indefinitely by professors because as technology advances so does the potential for the amount of information a professor could convert to the students during class if the professor adapts to it accordingly. For example, I took a class in econ last semester and the professor urged us to bring our laptops to class because he would post all of the class notes online during class and instead of writing the notes down during class and having the professor wait for everybody to finish writing we could just focus on the material taught. If we needed to add additional notes we used Onenote which is like microsoft word except easier when taking notes. Also we used a software which went along with the book we had and it would make it very easy to analyze graphs and different equations. Dale Mortensenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12293502798093988339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1547970616267354336.post-6583846419450318462016-12-03T09:58:54.999-08:002016-12-03T09:58:54.999-08:00You are the first one who talked about the alterna...You are the first one who talked about the alternative of sleeping in. Do you think attendance would have been higher had we started class at 2PM? <br /><br />I thought your comments about different types of coercion to increase attendance interesting. Would it surprise you to learn that as recently as 2014 attendance was quite good in the class with essentially the same approach as the one we took this semester? <br /><br />There is an expression called "enlightened self-interest" which I think relevant here. Students the way you view them do things that may be "myopically optimal" meaning they give some immediate reward but may be detrimental over the long term. An enlightened student wouldn't do that. So the question is why students are so myopic and, quite apart from the electronic devices issue, whether anything can be done about it. Professor Arvanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15256000730474030475noreply@blogger.com