Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 11:55:35 -0700 From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu> Subject: M-TH: Email class about *Capital* Report about my Email Class about Marx's *Capital*, by Hans Ehrbar. I have taught classes about Marx's *Capital* at the University of Utah for about ten years now. These classes were always fairly well attendend. In 1994, when the administration of the University encouraged their faculty to design courses which use high technology, I jumped on the bandwagon and converted the course into an email course. The course has the following format: Every week, the students must answer specific study questions about the assigned readings in *Capital*. These answers are sent to all class participants in an email list which does not disclose the true identity of the student but in which every student is represented by a pseudonym. I make careful comments about these answers, and send those to all class participants as well. The students are also encouraged to comment on each other's homeworks. I will first give my reasons for teaching *Capital* today, and then argue why an email class is a good venue for this, and then describe my experiences with the current class format. *Capital* is a notoriously difficult text for anybody who is used to the methodological individualism and positivism in modern social sciences. Someone brought up in this tradition has a very hard time understanding how Marx is arguing if one reads it on one's own. It must be explained to you. But why is it worth the trouble? Because the obstacles to understanding *Capital* are also obstacles to understanding capitalism. Modern capitalist ideology is extremely effective because it does not only rely on feeding distorted facts to the masses, but it systematically deprives the masses of the scientific categories which would enable them to learn from their own experiences and to understand the society they live in. A careful reading of *Capital*, which pays as much attention to Marx's method as to what he says, gives the reader these missing castegories. An excellent way of teaching *Capital* is to have the students first read Marx's text and then give written reports about what they think they have read. There are, of necessity, many misunderstandings, because Marx's way of thinking about society are so different from the methods in common use nowadays. If I carefully correct these misunderstandings the students will not only understand Marx but also develop the tools enabing them to understand their own exoeriences in capitalist society. But such a close interaction between student and teacher raises the issue: how can I as a teacher use my time most effectively? Going through the students' reports and figuring out what is right and what is wrong in them takes a lot of my time. If I were to do this only on an individual basis, it would simply not be feasible; I might spend hours on a student's submissions and perhaps this particular student would not even read my comments. But in an email setting each student gets to read each other's homework and my comments on everybody's homework. Therefore instead of one student reading my comments, several students do. Also the students can help each other by commenting on each other's homeworks. Therefore an email class allows me to give a much more thorough feedback to the students' homeworks than the usual classroom setting. Instead of me lecturing in class I am writing detailed Annotations which take the reader through the most important chapters in Marx's *Capital* paragraph by paragraph. I am refining and updating these Annotations continuously, and the feedback of the students gives me valuable input here. I know how much time and thought is put into the usual textbook about Principles of Economics. Having a carefully written text guiding the reader through Marx's *Capital* is in my view a worth while project, and I am planning to eventually publish my Annotations. I am also getting a very good sense of my students' spontaneous understanding of capitalism. The convenience of taking the course by email on one's own schedule makes this course available to those students who are working etc., which leads to an increase in enrollment for the course. Recently the course has always been fully booked (enrollment is capped at 50 students, since otherwise the email traffic for every student would become too heavy, not to speak of my own time.) I have also always invited outside observers who can listen in and participate in the discussion from around the world. This makes a more interesting discussion with more diverse points of view. Now here are some experiences gained by teaching the course. One of the basic "tricks" in this course is that I am using the new and interesting email format with lots of individual feedback as an incentive to get more people to read Marx. This basic trick has worked as expected; I am getting students to read Marx who would otherwise not have done it. Some of those are from the business school (one student wrote me afterwards he was going to be a fairer capitalist since he took my course), and many others are members of the working class who take classes in their spare time. At the beginning the course was very leniently graded, it was easy to get an A. I was trying to give positive feedback and I discovered and encouraged several very smart but poorly schooled working class intellectuals in the process. However the good grades raised eyebrows in the Adminstration and now I am required to grade at such a level that the average grade is comparable to other Economics courses, i.e., is around a B. Although I consider this a violation of my academic freedom, I went along with it. The flexibility of the email format leads many students to underestimate the amount of time it takes to do the course assignments. Often I get homework submissions where I have the impression that the student has barely read the assigned readings, and has picked a question which he thinks is easy to answer. Since I have to deliver a low grade point average to the Administration, I am on the lookout for those and I am trying to make sure that someone who does not read the text also does not get good grades. To some extent I have become a grade hunter. This is a bad situation to be in because one is notoriously too suspicious of the students, and I am trying to remind myself of this. On the other hand it has also beneficial effects. If I allow some students to get by without working, this makes those doing the work resentful. The overall level of the class has improved since I started to grade more strictly. In my responses to the students I am often very critical. Sometimes a wrong way to think about the issues shows up in the students' submissions only in subtle details. I have learned to pick up on such details. I am trying to give feedback from which the students can learn without having to feel defensive. I often reassure the students that they should not feel offended if I am so critical, I do not mean it personally. it is really not their fault, they are the victims of a pervasive and very effective propaganda. One big challenge is to encourage the students to interact more with each other. There is a very strong implicit interaction. Students learn a lot from each other's homeworks, but unfortunately the things that are picked up most readily are the errors and misinterpretations of Marx. I have to remind the class participants again and again that that what other participants write is not necessarily reliable. I also tell them that they should not try to guess what I want them to write, but they should think through the problematic on their own terms, even if the results they come up with are not "politically correct." I am trying to grade accordingly. And I tell them that risk taking is more rewarded than a too cautious attitude. I wrote the software handling the mailing list myself and it is tailor-mode for the class. It insists that the homework answers are submitted on time, and answers to a question which is not currently assigned are automatically rejected. I am trying to get a coherent discussion on the internet, and this is not possible if late submissions to Chapter 1, for instance, interrupt a discussion about Chapter 4. I usually have a Monday midnight deadline for the answers assigned in the previous week, and most of the answers are sent in on Monday evenings. In order to get a better dispersion of the submissions over the week, I require that on the average the students have to make their submissions one day early. The computer also automatically presents the Questions to me for grading and writing replies, and at the end of the Semester it automatically tallies the grades. In this way it takes many administrative chores away from me and enables me to use my time for that what counts, namely, my feedback to the homework submissions. If you are interested in listening to the class discussion as an observer, email me at ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu, and I will take you down for the class that starts in January. (This list for the class homeworks is not the same as marxism-intro; the students are requiread to also subscribe to marxism-intro, but the main vehicle for this class is a list housed at the University of Utah.) -- Hans G. Ehrbar ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu Economics Department (801) 581 7797 1645 E. Central Campus Dr. Front (801) 581 7481 Salt Lake City UT 84112-9300 (801) 585 5649 (FAX) --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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