Month: January 2006

Today I updated the main stylesheet for my website, increasing the font size, narrowing the article width, and making a couple other tweaks. This is the first time I have changed the style in over a year. While some Internet research showed that usability studies have not identified a single, optimal column width for websites, I think the previous size was beyond the recommended norms. Also, I specified the font and column widths in ems, so changing your browser’s text size will scale both the text and the columns, similar to Yahoo’s home page. Now, I’m not sure what to do with the additional space in the right margin…. perhaps I could add a random image roll from my photo galleries. I’ll definitely consider lazy web suggestions.

Today I was browsing my website and noticed that somehow I never posted the pictures from my weekend in Amsterdam and Brussels back when I was studying abroad in Germany. Wow, that was nearly three years ago! Well, the problem is fixed now.

The syllabus for one of my new classes states in bold, “It is expected that each team member will contribute equally on each part of each assignment.” Apparently the professor did not read my recent post on group projects. I agree with some of the group requirements: the group size (2 students) should not be too large for the assignments, and teams last for the entire course. However, I disagree that individual contributions should be equal for every single subdivision of each assignment. If the goal is to enforce fairness, the professor could simply allow optional group feedback reports. If the goal is to ensure every student can perform everything taught in the course, why bother having groups at all?

I also resent when professors mandate a certain level of note-taking, but at least the class does not have a participation grade based on quantity of class questions.

Another blog entry that has been rattling around my head is the subject of fairness. In my leadership and teamwork class last semester, Professor Hollenbeck explained the concept of fairness in the simplest, most practical way. In the context of a relationship, someone considers what they put in versus what they get out. Then they compare this to a different relationship for reference. There are three possible outcomes:

• If the reference relationship matches, they consider it fair.
• If the comparison reveals that they get out more than put it, they feel guilt.
• If the comparison reveals that they put in more than they get out, they feel angry.

That should make sense immediately, as long as I explained it well.

Now, let’s apply this to human-corporation relationships, e.g. business transactions. A good example is buying a new car. If I pay the same price for a new car that my neighbor paid, I would consider it fair. If I pay more than my neighbor paid for a new car, I would feel angry. If I pay less than my neighbor paid for a new car, I would feel happy. This all matched up until that last part… while I might feel a tinge of guilt about gloating to my neighbor, it is a victorious feeling knowing that I “beat” the dealership.

I am not going to expand on this right now, but it seems the lack of guilt in business transactions is related to the many woes of globalization. The odd thing is that individual consumers are the source of the cruelty.