Final Post

I attempt to answer parts of both questions here. I very much liked the nature of the online blogging- I felt that your replies were often like a dialogue, and it helped me feel more engaged when writing the blog posts. When preparing to write my own blog post, I first read some of your comments on others works, and it helps me get ideas and a better understanding of the question being asked. Your comments on others posts also help me answer questions that you bring up that further my engagement. The excel homework probably takes the longest for me to do. It is not something that you can just freehand and go about without understanding the underlying material. Often times I spent quite a bit of time on one or two parts, and realized I was only off by one or two numbers. I feel like a bit more guidance in the homework would have been helpful. I did end up figuring out all the excel homework, but I feel as though I spent a lot of time correcting small mistakes on it. For example, I would understand the concept, and put in the formula, but leave out a single value or divide the wrong two numbers. Overall it was not extremely difficult but still took a lot of working the problems to get the correct answer. I think one of the main things that would have helped is a more clear daily schedule. For example, looking for a blog post due the next day would often require looking back on the calendar a week or two- I think late submissions would be lessened if each day had the assignments due that day listed on the calendar.

As I spoke about in some of my previous blog posts, I think that the blog posts were the most enriching parts of the course, because of the personal examples required. I began to think about my past experiences with companies I have worked for, and the structures inside them, in a unique light. I know that some of these ideas will come with me- I will look at the organizational structures more deeply next time I come across them. My internships and work experience went by without me ever focusing on those sorts of things, but I know that will not be true in the future.

I know that the soft deadlines were definitely a plus for me. I believe I still got the assignments all done, however it was because I held myself to a deadline. I usually left some time on the weekend to sit down and make sure I get the posts done. For me personally, the soft deadlines worked well and I preferred them. From what I saw, the class as a whole made their posts as well- at any time after the weekend I saw many blog posts written and posted. I personally would not modify this unless there was a large amount of students not submitting posts at all, or if the variance in submission times was a problem for the professor to view and comment on. Soft deadlines still require some sort of an idea of when a post should be submitted, and for me it comes down to making a hard deadline in my head.

I think that the class attendance policy should have been more strict for the reason that students will often take the path of least resistance in a class. I believe that I did not attend class as much as I would have if it was mandatory attendance. I studied a lot to complete the excel homework, however there were often times where I should have attended a class rather than not coming- it would have made my work a lot easier. Thus I think my behavior may not have been optimal, and perhaps I made it harder on myself to complete some of the assignments.
Perhaps the self regulation should have been limited, in the sense that those who did not come to class were able to do so because they achieved a certain grade or test score. Thus proving that if a student was able to adequately and responsibly perform and show their skill at learning material, they could take on the responsibility of choosing whether to come to class or not.