the renewable assignment - part 2

The fall semester is officially behind us - the students have left for break, and I have submitted my grades.

In my course HMP 721, Management of a Healthcare Organization, I tried to continue my experiment with open pedagogy. I was not able to go to full open ped in this course, but I did introduce some elements of open ped, in particular the renewable assignment. 

What is a "renewable assignment"?

“A Disposable Assignment is any assignment about which students and faculty understand the following:

• Students will do the work

• Faculty will grade the work

• Students will throw away the work

A Renewable Assignment is any assignment where:

• Students will do the work

• Faculty will grade the work

• The work is inherently valuable to someone beyond the class

• The work is openly published so those other people can find and use (5R) it”

One form that renewable assignments might take is in the form of books and textbooks.

More here.

I first learned about this concept from Robin DeRosa at UNH's sister school at Plymouth State University.

I call this "the renewable assignment - part 2" because I first tried this concept with my students last semester in HMP 722, an organizational behavior and leadership in healthcare organizations course. The students wrote a primer on organizational behavior. More about that effort here.

This semester the students wrote a primer on the management of healthcare organizations. In line with the course, the primer is more about functional divisions within healthcare organizations, rather than management and leadership, though there is some of that. This first iteration consists of 13 chapters on different topics. Next year's class will inherit their text book and develop it further - revising and adding to the original - thus making it both a resource for the next class as well as a baseline for the next class's assignment.

You can view the primer here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d008oMRP5X0P46lkHwRNkxYGFDG1e5oito-0Ne2JdUU/edit?usp=sharing

I think what they have done is quite impressive, remembering this was a self-managed group of almost 50 students (juniors and seniors) who put this product together. What will be exciting is seeing what happens next year.

I would be pleased to share more about this process if you are interested. Just leave me a comment or message me directly.

RWL Newsletter #75

Greetings from the now-empty University of New Hampshire! All the students are gone and I still can't find parking. What's up with that? Sigh. Luckily I live close enough that I can walk to work. Technically today is the second day of winter, but winter seemed to have officially settled in about two weeks ago with our first two storms of the season. I took the above picture after the first storm on my walk to work. This is the Oyster River running through the back side of campus - you can see the UNH water pumping station through the branches on the right. 

Here's this week's links. No theme, but I think they are all super cool. What do you think?

PS - Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate. Happy week to the rest!

Read

What: Wired Magazine, WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE LET TECH CARE FOR OUR AGING PARENTS, by Grant Cornett

https://www.wired.com/story/digital-puppy-seniors-nursing-homes/

Why: Reading this article yesterday at the breakfast table hit me for three reasons. First, over the course of this semester, many of my students came to realize they had an interest in long term care. They are drawn to it for the opportunity to have high-touch interactions with residents and really make a difference in their lives. Their interest has piqued my own - trying to get them more exposure to what they want to learn about. Second, I just did an interview with the administrative director for telehealth services for Dartmouth-Hitchcock on Wednesday for the Health Leader Forge (look for it in January). What they do at D-H is fundamentally the same as what is being done here - except they provide a much higher level of skill. And third, this exposes more of the evolution described by Tyler Cowen in "Average is Over" - the future is not robots taking our jobs, but humans working with robots in a complementary capacity. I have to say, I really loved this article. A little bit of a tear jerker at the end.

Watch

What: Insider, Here's how prosthetic eyes are made (2 min)

http://www.thisisinsider.com/prosthetic-eyes-are-made-2017-10

Why: This video definitely belongs in the "this is so cool" bucket. As in, we do some really cool stuff in health care. It's fun to take a step back and look at the small miracles that we as leaders help enable.

Listen

What: The Art of Manliness Podcast, The Art of Mingling (40 minutes)

https://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/12/07/how-to-mingle-at-a-party/

Why: Last week I sent out a few links having to do with networking. This podcast goes very well with those links. In this podcast, the host interviews Jeanne Martinet, author of the book The Art of Mingling. Martinet realized at one point that most people were uncomfortable striking up casual conversations at public events like parties, or even networking events, but she was not. So she wrote a book about her techniques. I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list now. She gives some great advice about how to read a room, start a conversation, and withdraw from a conversation to make the most of your mingling (networking) opportunities.
 

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last day of classes - advice

I always try to leave my students with a little advice on the last day of classes. I taught an introductory finance class and an introductory management class this semester. Most of the students were enrolled in both classes, so I tried not to overlap.

Here's is a transpose of the slides from each.

Finance

1.

Bonica’s rules of personal finance

Max out your retirement the day you are hired

• You’ll get used to living on less. 
• Do it. Even if it means taking longer to pay off your school loans.

Create a cushion savings account –

• start with 1 month’s pay --> eventually want 3 months

Pay yourself 10% of your take home

• Pay down your debt as fast as you can
• Debt is a chain and will hamper your freedom

Buy a used car – 2-3 years old, 30-50K miles

• High value/dollar

Don’t rush to buy a house – transaction costs, asset concentration

2.

What do you really value? What is important? Ask this all the time.

Don’t let your beautiful things become a prison.

Find joy in the simple and the non-material.

3.

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Management

1. 

“You are, in fact, a mashup of what who you choose to let into your life.”

― Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

2.

“Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less.”

- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince

3.

“The love of praise is the desire of obtaining favourable sentiments of our brethren. The love of praiseworthiness is the desire of rendering ourselves the proper objects of those sentiments.”

- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

4. 

“The many speak highly of you, but have you any grounds for satisfaction with yourself if you are the kind of person the many understand? Your merits should not be outward facing.”

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

5.

Focus on improving what is inside you, because what is inside you eventually becomes what everyone sees and experiences. If you are better on the inside, you will naturally become a better leader.