Effeciency

I thought it was really interesting listening to my classmates and I talk both after and during class. I think this bears further discussion. In truth, I doubt I will have any class contribute less to my education than this class, a constant barrage of writing briefly about what's going on with a few principles from each chapter in a half dozen different case studies and a go narrow go deep focus seems like an ERP implementation where the goal is simply to do everything all at once. Personally I tend to learn best from what I read, writing papers on a case study becomes an exercise in the details, I got the general case on the first read through, but not the previous job of the new CIO (which has no impact on the principles we should learn as potential management staff), as I result I spend most of my time on the least useful details of a case, because they have to be memorized, no understanding is possible. Hopefully I understood how the textbook would apply to my job, but I may not have remembered which things go to which list after doing thousands of lists through my education. Most other classes I know where to go, but here I reread lists and gain almost nothing from the major focus of a chapter.
Back to the ERP analogy. Looking at our cases, are we focused on the information most relevant to management in a case? often as students this would be a short discussion of a specific principle, but in writing it out and quizzes, trivia and minutiae are the order of the day. Rather than the highest order of needs first, we are assuming that memorizing the lowest details implies learning the highest. None of my peers reflect this back to me, they talk of picking what not to read or do to get done other pieces. Blogs, often only vaguely relevant and case study papers, drawing into marathon session of research and rewrite information that could be legitimately discussed and covered in half an hour are the most visible and guaranteed points. How would we handle a good ERP implementation? Allow groups to focus on the most visible work? Are we assessing the impact on actually teaching students of any of these assignments? Is there a well thought out lesson I should learn from my blog that can't be taught in a tenth the time? Would anyone recommend their jobs build a system around all the separate parts prioritizing work based on visibility without measuring contribution to the company?