The forming of social capital skills

In the last class we talked about responsibility or ownership - what is necessary for a group to become an effective team.  I don't want to redo the entire argument, but as a quick reminder, there are many acts that will benefit the team but for which the individual performing the acts will get no recognition.  The question then is why the individual does this.

Here I'd like to step outside of economics and discuss learning - mostly outside of school that either encourages the development of this sense of responsibility or retards it.   These are a few things you might read at your leisure on the matter.  I think you'll find them quite interesting.  (None of this will be on the test.  Reading interesting stuff for its own sake is a different form of responsibility - to yourself.)

• The Overprotected Kid by Hanna Rosin - Today children in middle class families always seemingly have an adult around when they play.  The adult keeps an eye on the kids and might serve as referee when they have disputes.  Near term, this probably is a benefit.  Longer term, it likely serves to keep the kids from learning to negotiate these matters themselves and might make them overly fearful of taking reasonable risks.  
• Slapball from my blog - A nostalgic look at my own childhood where we played a variety of ball games right on the street.  (I lived in Bayside, a residential neighborhood in Queens, a borough in NYC.)  There were no adults present then. 
• Stop Googling. Let's talk. by Sherry Turkle - Conversation is the way we learn to have empathy for others.  Listening to what they have to say (and holding up your own end of the discussion) are crucial life skills.  If we have our heads always in our devices, thinking we can multi-process more than one conversation at a time, we are fooling ourselves.  We learn to be very impatient and want immediate reward.  We focus on that rather than on the struggles others are having. 
• Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam - The title is meant as an example of the issue.  There used to bowling leagues.  You were on a team that competed with other teams one or two nights a week.  It was mainly for good fun - friendly competition if you will.  Your teammates might socialize with you afterward.  People used to have many sorts of social connections of that sort.  It made everyone feel like their part of a community.  Campus may have some of those with RSOs.  Of that I'm less sure.  But the larger society is losing that sort of connection with others outside of work.  Putnam's book got a lot of attention.  It hit a nerve with quite a few people. 
• Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior by Judith Martin - Some of it is quite funny.  Much of it gets at the operative principle behind manners in awkward situations.  There usually is a larger goal one is trying to achieve by polite behavior or by scolding rude behavior.  Bringing out those larger goals makes manners seem like sensible social conventions rather than a bunch of arbitrary rules. 

Are we communicating?

The active party in any communication is the recipient. -----  Peter Drucker, business guru.

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For your amusement

Can you raed tihs? Tehre are mnay sepllnig erorrs but the fsirt and lsat ltteers of ecah wrod are crorcelty psotinoied. It truns out taht is waht is ipmrotnat in gettnig othres to udernsantd what you wrtie. Is trehe an alanog for taehcnig with tehcolngoy?

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The first day of class I spent a little time talking about the results of a search at Google Scholar on my name, "Lanny Arvan."  In that discussion I said that if you tried to read any of the papers there, you likely couldn't penetrate them, at least the ones in Econ journals.  Those papers are written for professional economists (meaning a PhD in economics is presumed).  It is an example of insiders writing for other insiders.

The skill we want students to develop is generalist writing.  This means the writer has specialty skills (is an insider) but the readers don't necessarily have those skills.  This is the sort of writing I expect in the blogging and it is the sort of skill that all students at the U of I need to develop.

There are two things to do to learn how to do this.  One is to read as a generalist - a lot.  Newspapers produce writing of this sort.  So do many magazines.  The more generalist sort of reading you do, the better.  One of the most important things you learn this way is the type of writing that appeals to you.  Developing a sense of taste as to what constitutes good generalist writing is very important.  When you write, you will do so in accord with your own sense of taste.  Reading a lot of generalist writing develops your own sense of taste.

The other thing is to write a lot of generalist writing.  The blogging we will do in class might be a good starting point on that.  I hope that after a while, you begin to enjoy it, even though it takes time and forethought.  If you do enjoy it, then you might do more of it on your own.  You need to do that to get better in crafting what you write.  That is a learned skill.  The learning is by doing.

Research on Motivation

How to motivate members of an organization to behave in accord with the organization's goals is a key issue for our class.  Economic incentives, when viewed from the psychology perspective, fall within the family of what they term extrinsic motivation.  The piece excerpted below followed by a backlink to the article, argues that for deep learning intrinsic motivation is better.  It's a useful thought to have in mind during our course.  Then the question becomes - when is extrinsic motivation necessary and when does it get in the way of intrinsic motivation?  I hope that by the course's conclusion members of the class will have some sense of a good answer to that question.

The Secret of Effective Motivation - NYTimes.com via kwout