Halfway Through the Semester: Progress and Classroom Community

Now that midterms are completed and graded, I am taking a moment to reflect upon my students' progress. We should be seeing some of the fruits of your labor and patience at this point in the semester. Your students should be increasing in comfort, poise, and proficiency when discussing current events and seeing connections to the course material.

This semester has been a great one my classes. My classes, both graduate and undergraduate, have excelled in this real-life application to the course material. A couple of days ago, one of the students in my undergraduate accounting class selected an article about the price of gas, noting that supply is up and demand is down resulting in lower prices - clearly the classic supply/demand/price relationship he learned in economics. He then related to how it could impact financial statements and offered ripple effects of the changes in price, supply, and demand. Many students added observations from other related article they had read. How exciting that he and other students were able to see the relationship between what they are studying in economics and accounting. They are connecting a series of articles to see the evolution of a situation. They are successfully integrating course material between classes and applying the information in the analysis of an article!

Another recent exciting connection involved an article I used for the midterm exam in my business law and ethics class this semester. The article topic discussed specific instances of eminent domain conflicts. (Article) In yesterday’s class, a student brought to our attention that the developer featured in the article has written a letter to the editor. (Letter) We briefly discussed his comments, and in the process ‘closed the loop’ on the exam topic. We asked: Did his letter affect the analysis in exam answer? Why would he write that letter? It was a nice addition to the class.

The discussion is becoming very active and several of the more quiet students are jumping in to add comments. This exercise is building a classroom community. Students are gaining confidence in themselves and a comfort level in offering input. Many are already far more poised that when we began.