Some Context:

As noted in the course syllabus, 44 percent of your course grade is allocated to participation. That unusually high percentage faithfully reflects my teaching philosophy -- learning by doing. From the family of Socratic pedagogy, I selected problem-based learning to facilitate my learning-by-doing philosophy. My first attempt at problem-based learning featured a collection of disconnected problem sets. Each problem set plumbed the murky depths of a given chapter and only accidently had anything to do with any other chapter. Then, during a Spring-1996 faculty internship with Crisp, Hughes, & Co., I discovered the obvious: each client's tax portfolio was a collection of interrelated issues whose ultimate expression depended upon my issue resolution skills. Invigorated by that challenge, I set for myself the ongoing task of bringing the learning environment of my faculty internship into each of my class sessions. As a practical matter, I have recreated that learning environment by giving you several cases to solve. Those cases evolve from the relatively simplistic tax issues faced by an academically gifted student to those highly complex tax issues associated with the life and times of a self-employed individual.

Your consistently applied good-faith efforts to solve those cases will enhance your issue resolution skills, the primary objective of this course. Issue resolution skills consist of identifying an issue, locating a conceptual framework that enables you to think intelligently about that issue, studying the content of that conceptual framework, applying that conceptual framework to the issue at hand, communicating your analysis to your peers, and stating where in the tax-formula solution framework your issue resides. As you refine those skills, you will find yourselves becoming equally adept at conducting the detailed analyses to solve a given issue and the placing of that resolved issue in its big-picture setting within the tax-formula solution framework. Properly done, problem-based learning, with its issue-resolution focus, puts into place the life-long learning and critical thinking skills demanded by today's highly fluid work environment. Thus, this class is not about learning tax per se, but rather using tax as a vehicle for developing skills that will allow you to intelligently access any body of knowledge.

Even in the first case, you will find yourselves accessing portions of several different text chapters in your search for relevant authority. Thus, the entire text becomes a reference volume for purposes of resolving the issues contained in each case (while the cases lend themselves nicely to any traditional text, they are especially well suited to a CD-ROM text because its search engine allows you to construct your own indexes for accessing the electronic text, thus opening up avenues of access that are often not available when using a traditional text's index). This approach frees us from the enslavement of the traditional one-chapter-after-another approach to classroom instruction, accurately replicates the practice of tax, and exposes you to nearly all of the major issues covered in the text. And, since each case builds on the issues appearing in its predecessor(s), ample reinforcement is afforded previously resolved issues.

Some Practical Details:

As a practical matter, during each class session, I will randomly select participants to solve the issues featured in the designated case. Since the class roster orders the alphabetical listing of your names numerically, I can easily randomize our class roster using a random number generator. I will then use the resulting randomized class roster to match a participant with one of the issues appearing in the designated case. This process will continue in an iterative fashion until all of the issues in that case have been addressed. Ideally, I hope to get through the class roster 1.5 times per class. To increase the likelihood that we move quickly from the resolution of one issue to the resolution of another issue, I have created a folder called "Cases" in my Mail Box directory on the local area network. In order to receive any credit at all for your participation, you must transfer the findings from each of your private issue-resolution searches into a WordPerfect file that is then saved with password protection into my Cases folder. The documentation for each of the resolved issues that are saved to that file must have this exemplary format:

• Issue: Wages
• KWP (Keyword Path): Wage; Chapter 4: Income Sources
• BWP (Binocular Word Path):

It is a well-established principle of taxation that income from personal services must be included in the gross income of the person who performs the services. This principle was first established in a Supreme Court decision, Lucas v. Earl (CHAPTER 4 Income Sources; Excerpt from page 78).

Please note that the keyword path began with the word "wages" and then incorporated "Chapter 4: Income Sources," one of the hits generated by the "wages" search. Anyone that chose to replicate that keyword path would arrive at the cited text. As your documentation file becomes larger, you will need to carefully index that file so that any of its subparts can be accessed rapidly. For example, in a very large file, the following index, located at the very beginning of the file, would prove very helpful:

• Issue 1: Tax Formula
• Issue 2: Wages
• Issue 3: Scholarships
• Issue 4: Tax withholdings
• Issue 5: Dependency exemptions
• Issue 6: Penalty

From the index, I can copy and paste the issue of my choice into WordPerfect's search routine.

In order to bring consistency to the task, please use the following scheme for naming your files:

KevinBa.Case1

Please note that my exemplary file name featured my first name followed immediately by the first two letters of my last name, the first of which was capitalized, a colon, and then the task being worked on. Please also notice that there were no spaces in my exemplary file name. Please use this file naming scheme for every project throughout the semester. Failing to follow this scheme will waste lots of my time and my annoyance will reflect adversely on your project's grade.

Again, in order to bring consistency to the task, please select a password that is strictly alphabetic in character and no longer than 8 characters. Please use that password for the entire semester and send me an e-mail message that reveals your password to me. With regards to group projects, given that groups will never have more than three members, select one member of the group as a referent for naming your file, then in alphabetic order based on your first names, use the first three letters of your individual passwords (use only the first two letters of the third person) to create a group password. Send me an e-mail message to let me know who is in your group. Do not tell me your password. Please note that once again, failing to follow this scheme will waste lots of my time and my annoyance will reflect adversely on your project's grade.

Part of your responsibility as a participant is to demonstrate a compelling working knowledge of the documentation for each of the resolved issues that appear in your file. Thus, the mere mindless copying of a classmate's file is never acceptable preparation nor is the mere reading of your documentation. You must be able to provide a working thumb-nail sketch of your issue-resolution discoveries so that all of your peers can track the conversation. Remember, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that you know what is going on.

I will evaluate the usefulness of each of your issue-resolution responses on a 100-percentage-point scale. My evaluation will reflect the difficulty of the issue that you were asked to resolve and your effectiveness in communicating your resolution of that issue. Since there are 30 participation days during the semester, I will use my percentage-point assessment and convert it to points on a daily basis in this fashion (assume that the participant of choice received 95 percentage points):

(400 points / 30 days) * .95) = 12.7

I strongly encourage you to listen to what your peers are saying. If, in your opinion, you feel that a particular participant has not correctly addressed an issue, then you are free to politely and graciously intervene (remember, if you are rude, that will affect your peer rankings) to try and collect some bonus participation points. No one can participate in bonus discussions (i.e., audit the process) unless he or she has the electronic documentation to back up his or her analysis. While I will also evaluate the usefulness of your bonus participation on a 100-point scale, your payoff for such participation will never exceed 20 percentage points. The lower payoff reflects the fact that randomly designated participation is far riskier than bonus participation. Thus, on the best of days you can actually earn 120 percent of the possible. Practically speaking, that means that you could earn as much as 16 participation points ((400 / 30) *1.2) a day or 480 points out of 400 over the course of the semester.

Back to:

Syllabus

Main Menu