Better Introduction (OTL2 Post 2)

Posted on by Raja

Compare to my post-1 in this course, I need to do a lot of changes in my introduction to enhance my social presence. In my last post I have simply written one line and most of the introduction I have intentionally given in my video to have more views. Now in an actual course I will enhance my social presence in following ways:
• I will talk about my background for example, education, experience, country of origin and
• I will also talk about my hobbies, games I like, any of my adventures, my achievements and future goals.

Further, there are many ways through which I can improve my social presence. In every module, I will post an announcement about the weekly course activities. I will also use informal language to reduce the power distance between me and my students. Now these ideas clearly are not mentioned in my post-1 and suggests a significant change in my thinking to increase my social presence.

Integration (OTL101 Post 5)

Posted on by Raja

I appreciate the efforts of TRU open learning division for making their OLFMs taking these courses as they have provided a lot of insight about how online teaching should be done. I believe that the the most important idea which I am learning from this course is keeping in mind the difference between students’ approaches of deep and surface learning. When designing my course in future I will ensure that every student must take the deep learning approach as the assessments will be designed to meet learning out comes. This is also a very specific smart goal and my strategy will be to assign individual assignments and a class paper so that every student has to think and analyze the problem in hand in my courses.

The concept of teaching styles is also very important and I think that this course made me realize that I am a level 2 teacher who blames himself when students do not perform well. I believed in transmitting the knowledge from my brain to the student’s brain. Now in future my efforts will mostly be in the direction where class activities will be designed in such a way that course outcomes must be achieved in more efficient way. Even though I have been paying emphasize on this but now I will be much more focused on class activities.

Overall this course has made me think that how I can make my course better which was the main aim of taking the “Think” course. In the end I am leaving with curiosity. Whether we can really force a student with surface learning approach to adopt the deep learning approach? Can class activities really forces him to use high level cognitive skills? Obliviously, I will use class activities to do so but will such students really appreciate the efforts or will they overwhelm with higher level cognitive demands of the course.

Feedback (OTL101 Post 4)

Posted on by Raja

First, Hattie’s article provides valuable insight to me as it has given me a new perspective to think about this important construct, the feedback. Undoubtedly, I agree with Hattie that feedback significantly influences the achievement of a student in attaining the learning outcomes.

I believe that to some extend I am actually following Hattie’s recommendations but was not aware exactly what he proposed. The learning gap, where a student is right now and where he meant to be, can be addressed using three question which Hattie suggested was unknown to me. In online teaching environment sometimes, it is sometimes difficult to understand student’s goals, his expertise in the pre-requisite course material, his level of motivation etc. This leads to the situation where customized feedback is very difficult to provide. However, there is always room for improvement and Hattie’s recommendation will help me to improve my feedback in my future online course. I will ensure to provide feedback by keeping in mind the proposed questions like, where students are heading? How are they going? And where they go ahead to achieve the course objectives?

Further, I believe that I need to seek some more introduction from students like what is the purpose of taking the course and what are their expectations from the course. This will help me to provide constructive and more importantly customized feedback to the students.

Constructive Alignment (OTL101 Post 3)

Posted on by Raja

Following are the “Learning Outcomes” of my “Portfolio and Equity Analysis” course and requires high-level of cognitive skills to achieve them.

  1. Evaluate the effect of risk and diversification on investment decisions.
  2. Discuss the characteristics of the various types of investments and the ways in which they are sold.
  3. Defend the use of mutual funds versus investing in individual assets.
  4. Explain the functioning of financial markets and their role in pricing investments.
  5. Compare the efficient market hypothesis with behavioral finance.
  6. Value equities using fundamental analysis and technical analysis.
  7. Analyze a company’s prospects in relation to its industry and peers.
  8. Use the Capital Asset Pricing Model and Asset Pricing Theory to estimate investment returns.
  9. Develop a portfolio management plan reflecting the goals, risk tolerance, and circumstances of individual and institutional investors.

 Students are assessed based on quizzes, exams, class project and presentation. I try to align my assessments with the intended outcome of the course so that their activities should remain inline with my course objectives. For example, the class project is based on the investment in real stocks and other financial instrumented on a platform, StockTrak, which simulates the real-time investment. Likewise, my assessments are based on the student ability to analyze a particular security using available information on the internet and based on security’s characteristics and security’s contribution on his overall investment portfolio.

In line with SOLO taxonomy, I design my quizzes and exams to test that students have higher level of understandings e.g., relational or extended abstract. For example, in one of my quiz I ask my students to solve the following:

“Consider yourself a Wall street analyst. Today your supervisor has assigned you the task to find rate of return on Netflix stock. Consider Market return 9%, calculate Netflix stock beta using the weekly returns from 6 Feb 2017 to 3 Feb 2020. (use up to 2 decimal places to solve the question). Gather missing information from Yahoo finance or other related websites. Given the information the rate of return on Netflix stock is….”

Now if the student will able to solve the above question he will be able to show the highest level of understanding on the topic of “Capital Asset Pricing Model and Asset Pricing Theory to estimate investment returns”, which is the learning outcome number 8 of this course. Likewise, in order to attain the outcome number 7, I give them a detailed analysis of a company to each student and he needs to answer the following question about the company. Answering these questions involve high-level cognitive skills and students’ activity is aligned to attain learning outcome as.

Q1: What is the business, the products, the customers, what is the recent historic economic performance, what are the recent strategic decisions taken the company?

Q2: What are the key success factors and risks associated with the firm’s chosen competitive strategy?

Q3: Does the firm currently have the resources and capabilities to deal with the key success factors and risks?

Q4: Has the firm made irreversible commitments to bridge the gap between its current capabilities and the requirements to achieve its competitive advantage?

Q5: Has the firm structure its activities (such as research and development, design, manufacturing, marketing and distribution and support activities) in a way that is consistent with its competitive strategy?

Q6: Is the company’s competitive advantage sustainable? Are there any barriers that make imitation of the firm’s strategy difficult?

Q 7: Are there any potential changes in the firm’s industry structure (such as new economic conditions, new technologies, foreign competition, changes in regulation, change in customer requirements) that might dispute the firm’s competitive advantage? Is the company flexible enough to address the change?

My Take on Cognitive Presence (OTL101 Post 2)

Posted on by Raja

I have been in academia for more than 6 years. I was not aware about few jargon but I have been actually practicing most of the things mentioned in the lesson 1 in the “Think” course in my online classes. Still, this lesson is very insightful and brought the COI model to my attention. I totally agree that education should be applied in social setting, only that way we will make students realize how relevant are studies to their successful life and career. The most important thing which I have learned from the course are the learning theories of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. I really appreciate the concepts of Zone of Proximal Development and Potential Development. These theories has made me realize that how assistance plays key part in performance of  students beyond their capacity.

Over the topic of “Cognitive Presence”, I would like the feedback of my colleagues that how a successful sustained communication can be deployed? What they are doing in their online classes? How can we use different strategies in order to compel students to realize and explore key concepts and integrate their existing knowledge to resolve the problem in hand? Comments will be highly appreciated in this regard. In my case my usual trigger points are the mathematical problems related to the field of Finance and then I open forum discussions where students should participate actively so that they can realize how they are related to the real-life situations.

For example, in the online classes where I have the total control over the course design and execution, my students might be assigned, say, to assess the value of a stock and then use the existing knowledge of “Time value of money” along with newly acquired knowledge on “Dividend Growth Models” to calculate the prices. Then I ask them different questions so that they engage in an open discussion and realize why the prices are different in stock market compared to their calculated values. In doing so they will go through the process of explorations, integration, resolution and collaborative constructiveness to deeply understand the topic.

Introducing Zubair! (OTL101-Post 1)

Posted on by Raja

Hello World,

I am Zubair, I consider myself a very friendly person who try to stay happy!
After completing undergrad in Computer Science I ended up taking a finance position in a Bank. From there, my love with Finance actually get started and it has eventually led me to take the faculty position in the Department of Accounting and Finance at Thompson Rivers University. In August 2017, I completed my Ph.D. in Finance from Texas A&M International University and worked as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Western Oregon University for a year before moving to Canada.

I believe that sharing invaluable experience and knowledge with others is the ultimate service one can do to the humanity and this is what made me an educator. In my free time I love to play Cricket!

Here is the video of my introduction: