Personally, I would use illinibucks if it meant that I could choose classes earlier. It would be beneficial for me in that i could choose classes that fit my schedule and perhaps review teachers or select a teacher that I have had in the past. For example, Professor Vazquez teaches econ 102 and 302. I had him for econ 102, did well in the class, and hoped to have him as my professor for econ 302. Students in the college of business had priority in choosing classes, so by the time i was able to, his classes were full and i took the class with a different professor.
My question would then be, if i purchase a spot in line, can someone else purchase on ahead of me or would the first spot be the most expensive and the price declines relative to the place in line. If the price were too low, then students would take advantage of them and the market would become much more competitive for each class selection. I don't think that the price could be too high. As far as I'm concerned, I could only have benefitted from having the voucher whether i was able to use it for just econ 302 or if i could use it for every class selection.
You may be the first student to comment about a preferred instructor when there are multiple lecture sections. Others have talked about getting closed out of a course entirely. The question is whether the outcome you describe (taking 302 from a different instructor) should be considered an inefficiency of the system or not. Let's imagine that your preference is in fact shared by every student who is to take 302, but that some must be assigned to the other section because there is more demand than capacity for the Vazquez section. One might administer a common final to see if performance on it varied by instructor. If not, then perhaps nothing should be done to accommodate this sort of preference.
ReplyDeleteI last taught 302 in spring 2011 and then before that I taught it 10 years earlier. The department has changed its model on how that course is taught. It used to be taught in sections of 50 or 60 students and then one large overflow section for students who couldn't get into those other sections. There is now large lecture only. Because it is such a fundamental course, personally I don't think the large lecture approach is good. But it clearly is cheaper to teach that way, which explains what we are doing now.
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This post came in Sunday night and was rather short. These posts are supposed to be a minimum of 600 words. I hope you can produce that in the future and get them done in a more timely fashion.