Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
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Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
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Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#2Don't the students just get together and do a lottery? And in RL tragedy of commons, it's rarely anonymous.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#3> I’ve been giving it to students since 2008, and only one class has successfully mastered the challenge.
That's a real surprise. The 2 points option is the safe one, so everyone should go with that. Sure, I could assume that all (or most) of the other students think so and just get the 6 points myself. But then again, chances are that the other students think the same. So let's just go with the safer 2 points.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#4"People conformed to the group’s positive behavior."
People are more likely to respond to social pressure, than to appeals to "do the right thing." Valuable lesson for startup marketing... and maybe even pricing.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#5> I’ve been giving it to students since 2008, and only one class has successfully mastered the challenge. That's a real surprise. The 2 points option is the safe one, so everyone should go with that. Sure, I could assume that all (or most) of the other students think so and just get the 6 points myself. But then again, chances are that the other students think the same. So let's just go with the safer 2 points.
No, the safe option is to get organized and plan out who is going to chose the 6 points. That way, you know if you secretly chose the 6 points when you were supposed to get 2, you will get nothing. Then it doesn't become tragedy of commons, but rather an experiment with vandalism.
The experiment, IMO, isn't valid. In RL tragedy of commons, the selfish don't really suffer that much .. it's usually everyone else that does.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#6> I’ve been giving it to students since 2008, and only one class has successfully mastered the challenge. That's a real surprise. The 2 points option is the safe one, so everyone should go with that. Sure, I could assume that all (or most) of the other students think so and just get the 6 points myself. But then again, chances are that the other students think the same. So let's just go with the safer 2 points.
No, the safe option is to get organized and plan out who is going to chose the 6 points. That way, you know if you secretly chose the 6 points when you were supposed to get 2, you will get nothing. Then it doesn't become tragedy of commons, but rather an experiment with vandalism. The experiment, IMO, isn't valid. In RL tragedy of commons, the selfish don't really suffer that much .. it's usually everyone else that d…
You could have an auction for the 6 point slots, with the proceeds being divided and distributed to the group.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#7> I’ve been giving it to students since 2008, and only one class has successfully mastered the challenge. That's a real surprise. The 2 points option is the safe one, so everyone should go with that. Sure, I could assume that all (or most) of the other students think so and just get the 6 points myself. But then again, chances are that the other students think the same. So let's just go with the safer 2 points.
No, the safe option is to get organized and plan out who is going to chose the 6 points. That way, you know if you secretly chose the 6 points when you were supposed to get 2, you will get nothing. Then it doesn't become tragedy of commons, but rather an experiment with vandalism. The experiment, IMO, isn't valid. In RL tragedy of commons, the selfish don't really suffer that much .. it's usually everyone else that d…
I'm sorry, I assumed you're not allowed to organize. You're right, of course, at least if everyone in the group is reliable.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the safe option is to get organized and plan out who is going to chose the 6 points. That way, you know if you secretly chose the 6 points when you were supposed to get 2, you will get nothing. Then it doesn't become tragedy of commons, but rather an experiment with vandalism. The experiment, IMO, isn't valid. In RL tragedy of commons, the selfish don't really suffer that much .. it's usually everyone else that d…
You could have an auction for the 6 point slots, with the proceeds being divided and distributed to the group.
I was going to respond to the GP that you'd likely have a spoiler who would either be upset at not getting the six points and so secretly blow it up, or demand to be one of the six-pointers by publicly threatening to do so, but if there's money involved than that "likely" turns into a "definitely".
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#9I think this would be more interesting if there was a way to explicitly declare the marks post-curve. In the event the distribution of marks is smoothed to any sort of typically college distribution it's entirely rational to just select 6 points and not care whether 10% of the others do or not. Selecting 2 leaves you open to a worse result on a curve, but selecting 6 is nearly risk free if the distribution of marks is precisely controlled anyway. 2 marks when the average pre-curve goes up more than 2 and the average needs to be fixed post-curve is a really crappy proposition.
Re: Why I give my students a ‘tragedy of the commons’ extra credit challenge
#10I suspect that professors aren't upset that the game theory is validated, but rather they're upset that the students haven't done the analysis and thus choose to change the game by introducing structural changes.