Student Selection of Articles

What do you do when a student selects a weak article? Since I allow my students to select articles, sometime the choice is not a strong one. Recently in my law and ethics class, a student selected an article about schools being set up for hurricane evacuees. While it was a fine article and important topic, she was attempting to use the article to apply business ethics tools and analysis methods we were learning in class. The article raised the issue of whether schools set up specifically for the evacuees violated laws against separate but equal education. The article absolutely did not work for what we were learning in class at that time. I initially allowed the discussion to continue, but the discourse was going in all different directions. Some were getting caught up in whether the laws were ethical or not; others discussed whether a school was a business - all at the same time! A discussion about this topic could be very interesting indeed, but was not an appropriate vehicle for our particular material. I halted the discussion and moved to another article, explaining that we needed to spend our time with a more appropriate article.

Not every tangent is so drastic. I often have students select an article to present just because they like the topic. Examples would include cars, fashion, television shows, and technology. Certainly I want to encourage my students to read what interests them, but I also have to make good use of valuable class time. On the first day of the semester, I tell them that for any article they select, they must show connection to the course topic. And I ask each time for that connection if it is not obvious or first offered.

I am amazed at the creativity of some students in the ways they apply course material to all types of situations. In accounting class, they often do a great job of relating the article to a financial statement or managerial accounting concepts, such as segmenting for example. But sometimes they have no connection, so they earn no points for that presentation. Such are the rules of the assignment. I gracefully move on to the next article or to the class material if time is running short.

I am more lenient with the required connection to the course material at the beginning of the semester. To help the students, I model the analysis I want my students to develop, by fleshing out the article more for them with articles early in the semester. But I warn them that the bar gets higher as the semester progresses. And they almost always rise to the occasion!