Overall the design of the course is good, in my opinion better for the younger generations as it is very similar to social media. I learned a lot in this class, however, I felt like there could be a ton more teacher feedback. I went the entire semester wondering whether or not the quality of my post’s were good. Overall though the entire class was great. I loved the flexibility and that this was a different way of learning.
I find it interesting that as smoothly as the TPP went for lawmakers and corporate interests the TTIP agreement with the EU is decidedly less friendly. Is it that the popular sentiment means more in Europe than it does in the US or is it that the lawmakers are just less corrupt? I feel that in many ways EU countries seen the protest that went on in the US as well as locally and decided to take a deeper look into the agreement negotiated than US politicians did. Though with the rhetoric that is coming out of Germany and France of late one would think that it was a raw deal.
I think I’ve grown throughout this experience. I mentioned in a previous post that i was slightly nervous before making any posts of any kind, but it’s helped me grow just a bit. The readings and the information we have learned throughout this course have been insightful and interesting. For example, I would not have known that there was going to be a social security fund around when I was older, I just always thought it would be gone. The insight this course has given into some of the problems that we face as a nation has been fantastic and eye-opening, This course has been a nice break from the usual learning methods used in a classroom and if I could I would take this course again.
I Wanted to put up one last post thanking all of you. It was a pleasure taking this class and in the end it helped me to grow as a person. It was quite nice to be able to talk economics with all of you and if I noticed you on the street I would be happy to say hello. I wish all of you the best of luck for the future.
This class was different from any class I’ve ever taken, but it’s format was great. It allowed me to focus on other courses that required more of my time during certain weeks and less of my time during others, so I was able to better schedule my studying habits. The ability to access this website and use almost every function of it from even a mobile phone is pretty fantastic (though I was behind a computer for all of my posts). It let me take a look at the general discussions that were taking place while i was on long car rides or sitting in between classes with no computer in front of me.
That being said, openly posting ideas and thought and opinions online scared me a bit. This is new for me, and with every post came the fear that I would sound like a jerk or leave me open for criticism in a bad way. What I found was that my classmates were pretty decent people and luckily that never happened.
I liked the way you taught this course and I would recommend it to a friend.
I believe my three best posts were:
CEO Pay Soars, Average Worker Pay Stagnates: I put a lot of thought into this post as well as generated a response from the community.
Unit 3: The New Second World: Once again, lots of thought was put into this post, but It sparked debate among the community with generally large responses which actually made me think that what I was trying to communicate was worth saying. I think there were around three responses total that weren’t me, and almost an essay in response from myself.
Unit 3- Development, Imperialism, and the Debt Bombs: I believe that this was one of my best posts as well, because once again it got someone outside of myself engaged and talking.
All of my posts required a lot of time thought and erasing and rewriting, but these three seemed to generate the most talk from the community and that;s why i think they were my best posts of the semester.
After finding an article on Reddit about Russia trying to increase it’s influence in Siberia by giving away free land (2.5 acres a person). Although this appears like a modern day land grab similar to what the United States did in the 1800’s 90,000 Chinese already live in the area. Are the Russians really that afraid of their Chinese neighbors annexing swathes of Siberia in a similar manner to what t is doing in the china sea?
Looking back on the semester, crazy that it is already over, to me it was one of surprises. Before this course when I thought of economics I would think of the two sides of Communism and Capitalism thinking only in terms of absolutism; ie. one had a Capitalist country or a Communist one. I now understand just how much I don’t understand about the shades of grey that make up the economic systems of the world. I found your look at the present both depressing in that the gap between “rich” and “poor” only seems to be growing, and yet uplifting in that the wage gap between the sexes is slowly shrinking, even if it does not come fast enough.
I enjoyed the format of the class where students were bringing posts to the blog about not only what was going on in the world, but events that were relative to the unit that we were in. I also thought that the relative aspect of the due dates was an interesting shift from the hard deadlines one normally finds in education. I thought the book report was not as helpful as it could have been because essentially everyone was doing their own thing with no interaction between us unlike with the posts everyone was making.
I would say my 3 best posts are:
Basic Income: Where I used other articles to support a position that everyone should have a basic income.
Election Cycle: Where my post sparked a discussion on what it really means to be a service based economy and how government policies affect this.
Shifting Economies of a Digital age: My thoughts about where patents and copyrighted information is headed with the change in how information is spread.