Managing the Workload: An Experiment on Individual Decision Making and Performance

Abstract

The present research investigates individual decision making regarding jobs scheduling, by means of a laboratory experiment based on the "Admission Test" of the University of Bologna, in which students have to allocate effort among several tasks in a limited timespan. The experiment includes three treatments that differ in the way the test is administered to participants: either with a fixed sequence of questions, or with a fixed time per task, or with no constraints. Results show large and significant heterogeneity in treatment effects. Constraints on the answering sequence or on the time allocation for each task improved the performance of those subjects who failed to efficiently allocate their effort among the tasks, whereas negative effects were found for students who were already good in self-organizing. The study has relevant policy implications for the organization of the workload in the labor force, when different types of workers are employed. Furthermore, important intuitions on the design of the university student-selection mechanisms are also discussed.

Making Good of a Pandemic: A Long-Distance Remedial Summer Course in Calculus

“…Istituzioni di matematiche for Natural Sciences students at the University of Milan is a standard first-term 8 ETCS credit introductory course in calculus. Since the threeyear bachelor program removed limits on admissions in the 2018/2019 academic year, enrollment has been skyrocketing, and the level of incoming students, as measured by the non-selective national standardized test, TOLC-C ( [1]), has been dropping. In 2019, 621 students enrolled, of whom 72.3% had a failing mark in mathematics (defined as a score less than 10 out of 20); some of them even had a negative score ( [2]).…”