blog post 4
On-campus there are various things that the administration could incentivize students to use their “Illinibucks” on, if they were to implement them in a variety of different ways. For example, as stated in the prompt, I believe that students would be willing to pay for and use Illinibucks to register for classes earlier than their time assigned. Most students have value towards what classes they want to take, and at a school the size of the University of Illinois, it is sometimes harder to get into a particular class that an individual would prefer to take. I also think students would utilize this function of Illinibucks to change their schedules. During the first ten days of the semester, currently, students are allowed to add or drop classes freely and I think during this time students would attempt to utilize Illinibucks as by this time many classes are full, and only a few spots will potentially open up. With this type of system, there would several issues if the pricing was not set at the right place. If the price of these Illinibucks was too low, than everyone could potentially be buying them excessively, and they would lose value as it would turn into the “norm” or “status quo” to obtain these Illinibucks, and with everyone buying them in large amounts their function would be diminished if they were not a more exclusive product. However, if the administration set the price of Illinibucks too high students may potentially be discouraged from buying them, as many college students are already on tight budgets and don’t have extra money to spend on something like this.
I think that the administration could utilize the Illinibucks for other functions on campus. For example, during busy study times like midterms or finals, many libraries around campus fill up and it is often harder to study somewhere that throughout the year is open. I think students would take advantage of a system that would allow them to use Illinibucks to reserve various study places around campus. I think that the market for this service would be pretty slow throughout the year, but during prime study times like midterms or finals, students would utilize this function of Illinibucks a lot more. I think that the University could implement a system that uses Illinibucks to distribute on-campus parking for students. While there is public transportation on campus, many students still choose to bring a car to school and use it to drive to and from class. There is limited parking on campus, and I think that if it was offered students would utilize Illinibucks to reserve parking spaces on campus daily for a specified time slot. I think that students would also potentially utilize the Illinibucks system for private, or semi-private office hours with professors and TAs. In some classes, that may be more challenging or have more students in them, office hours can be crowded and even if a student were to go they may not get that much one-on-one assistance. I think students would utilize Illinibucks in a system that allowed them to use them towards a private or semi-private opportunity to work with their professors or TAs, rather than attending an all opened office hours session. I would choose to utilize Illinibucks on these services, but I would not utilize them if the price were too high.
I think that the administration could utilize the Illinibucks for other functions on campus. For example, during busy study times like midterms or finals, many libraries around campus fill up and it is often harder to study somewhere that throughout the year is open. I think students would take advantage of a system that would allow them to use Illinibucks to reserve various study places around campus. I think that the market for this service would be pretty slow throughout the year, but during prime study times like midterms or finals, students would utilize this function of Illinibucks a lot more. I think that the University could implement a system that uses Illinibucks to distribute on-campus parking for students. While there is public transportation on campus, many students still choose to bring a car to school and use it to drive to and from class. There is limited parking on campus, and I think that if it was offered students would utilize Illinibucks to reserve parking spaces on campus daily for a specified time slot. I think that students would also potentially utilize the Illinibucks system for private, or semi-private office hours with professors and TAs. In some classes, that may be more challenging or have more students in them, office hours can be crowded and even if a student were to go they may not get that much one-on-one assistance. I think students would utilize Illinibucks in a system that allowed them to use them towards a private or semi-private opportunity to work with their professors or TAs, rather than attending an all opened office hours session. I would choose to utilize Illinibucks on these services, but I would not utilize them if the price were too high.
You gave a long list of possible examples. It would be good to narrow it, so you might think through the full situation. In particular, the Illinibucks are a way to manage demand in situation where demand exceeds supply. You might ask whether it make sense to move some of the demand to a time when the excess demand is not so acute. Or you might ask whether there can be some supply response to increase capacity and indeed, if Illinibucks were spent on the demand side of the particular service, if that would be an indicator that the supply side should adjust if it can.
ReplyDeleteSo, for example, let's talk about study space for students around exam times. At least for courses in the major, departments could collect exam preliminary exam schedules and then suggest some reallocation of times so they don't overlap as much. Of course, in final exam week this is done officially. What I'm suggesting is it is possible to do something similar, if informally, for midterms. As it is now, instructors act independently in their choices for when to have midterm exams.
If such an adjustment were possible, what would encourage departments to do that. Might the Illinibucks usage for study space offer such encourage.
In my most recent post to the class site - Some links for class session on 10/3 - I linked to a blog post of mine where it suggests that maybe we should self-paced scheduling options for some courses, so students can take the exams when they want to rather than at a pre-scheduled time. That would be novel, wouldn't it? Again you might ask what would encourage departments to move to such an approach. Would the Illinibucks system provide such encouragement.
In other words, while the prompt asked you to think through Illinibucks for reallocating demand, I was really hoping for students to consider possible supply responses longer term as part of the answer. You might try to do that for the course registration system.
I think it could be possible to use Illinibucks to help motivate both students and departments to schedule midterms, as they do finals, to ensure that a student has no more than 2 or 3 finals in one day. I think this would benefit students, for obvious reasons, students would be able to allocate for undivided time to each course exam, and not have to "cram study" for multiple exams at once.
DeleteI think departments could be motivated to implement this type of this system for scheduling midterms with the idea that it could improve student scores on the exams. I don’t think this would realistically happen with the amount of courses within a given department, along with the flexibility professors have to reschedule exams throughout the semester.