(Don’t faint; I’m posting again. I’ve been struck with a desire to write stuff, and I have time and ability to indulge it.)

This year, I’m taking 2 classes each term (we have 4 terms in a normal year, plus a 5th accelerated term that is optional in the summer), as follows:

• Term 1: Economics for Managers, Business Government & Democracy (1st half of term), Survey Methods (2nd half of term)
• Term 2: Financial Management, Innovation & Risk
• Term 3: Marketing, Project Management (online)
• Term 4: Global Business & Cultural Diversity, Negotiations & Conflict Management

I’m enjoying the curriculum for Economics, but I’m not enjoying the class itself. The instructor is a nice guy and very reasonable and friendly, but he doesn’t seem to prepare much for our class (he’s mentioned a few times that he teaches at several colleges in the area and gets confused as to which class he’s in at any given moment). So, he’ll get a problem wrong on the board sometimes and have to correct himself, or he’ll explain a concept using terms that aren’t used in our book, confusing the vast majority of the class that don’t know that he’s just using alternate terminology for the same concepts. I’m lucky in that I listen to Planet Money, an NPR show that is available freely via podcast feed (easy to find on iTunes, Zune, or your aggregator of choice). Planet Money keeps me knowledgeable and current, and they do a GREAT job of breaking down economic concepts in simple terms. I highly recommend it.

My other issue with the Economics class is that LFGSM decided to merge what used to be 2 classes into 1 class during the summer break. So, this used to be a 5-week class in MicroEcon and a 5-week class in MacroEcon. They decided after last year that it made more sense to teach them cohesively as one class. Problem is, they didn’t spend enough time revising the syllabus, so it’s VERY apparent that they just merged the two syllabuses’ grading. The result was that, in the version published to us, over 60% of the grade is group work. That’s against LFGSM policy, and, more importantly, it’s against *my* policy. It pisses me off that my work on a group project has, on more than one occasion, pulled up another student by a full letter grade. LFGSM offers no recourse for a group member that is slacking. On one hand, I appreciate that group projects approximate real-life project teams. However, in real life project teams, if you slack off, there are consequences from your management. In this approximation, the “management” is LFGSM, and they do *nothing* to penalize slackers. It has been a frequent complaint by many people at the Class Rep meetings. Suggestions to fix it have included implementing a 360 feedback program (with built-in process for handling both the highest and lowest rated students), providing the instructor the flexibility to adjust a person’s group grade if it’s clear that the person did not contribute adequately, and advising instructors to consider participation in the group project as part of the participation component of the overall class grade. (Currently, participation almost assuredly equals attendance, despite every instructor claiming it doesn’t.) Anyways, I complained to the appropriate channels about the grading scheme being against policy, and they’re working on fixing it…but the other big problem is that this class has two fairly large group projects (a result of the combination of the two classes), whereas most classes tend to have one individual project and one group project. Which means, in a term where I was already going to be overloaded, I’m more overloaded than will be normal going forward. Meh.

As for the Business, Government, & Democracy class, it’s a mixed bag. The class is a half credit, but it costs nearly as much as a full credit. There was one lecture session early in the term, and there’s a class trip to DC coming up next week. During the trip, we’ll be meeting with staffers and congresspeople and lobbyists…and talking to them about how business and government interact. So, that seems like loads of fun. But, here’s the downside: I really don’t get what I’m paying for. So far, it feels like this class could have been independent study with an equal level of success. The students are tasked with setting up all the meetings for the trip. The one lecture class was almost entirely spent discussing logistics of the trip. So, we’re getting almost no benefit from the instructor. It feels like it could have been run for a much lower budget by letting students schedule their own travel arrangements and DC meetings, at their leisure in the “acceptable” time period. The two papers that are assigned in the class could have been graded by peer review with a dean or assistant dean’s oversight. What’s more, the papers are basically just something for them to grade us on, as the real class content is this trip that’s coming up. It may be that the instructor starts shining during this trip…I hope so, because otherwise, I’ll be unimpressed with what is a really cool and innovative class concept. But, the fun part is that I got to write a briefing paper on an issue of importance to me. I chose the legalization of online poker, and as for my meeting, I’m setting it up with the Poker Players’ Alliance, an action group formed to combat the UIGEA (the midnight rider legislation that effectively prevents Americans from playing online poker for money, though it doesn’t ban it outright). Also, I arranged my flight to spend a little more time in the DC area for touristing and for visiting with friends in that area. Yay!