Designing Learning Activity (OTL301 Post 3)

Dear Colleagues,

In summer 2020 I am teaching an online course of Portfolio and Equity Analysis (FNCE3150). I used to teach this course in face-2-face setting and for the first time I am teaching it in an asynchronous setting. I record my videos each week and upload them so that students can see my videos on important topics. After that I expect them to go through the book chapter and attempt the homework questions in the back of each chapter. Because this is no longer a face-2-face class therefore I am concerned that students might not be able to put due efforts in the course and won’t be able to attempt homeworks. Therefore, I have designed an activity in which I have attempted to build a community of learners so that they help each other to attain the learning outcome through discussing difficult homework questions. This lesson has helped me to design this activity as I have tried to follow the principles and did not waste students’ time by engaging them in irrelevant work. My learning outcomes and a sample activity of the course are given below:

Learning outcomes:
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.

Sample learning activity designed under the guidance of principles taught in this lesson:
Graded Activity: 10 Marks (Read carefully)

“Dear students I have opened a discussion forum for all of you, under the name of “Student Cafe” so that you can post your questions here and learn from each other. Try to post your questions here and also participate to answer each others’ question once it is posted by any student. In the end I will consider your participation here as it is a graded activity.

If you are stuck with any homework question, kindly post your question here in “Student Cafe” discussion. I will keep monitoring this discussion forum and will help if I see students are getting off-track.

Marking for this activity is relative for example, if a student has participated actively and say engaged in 10 replies (helping other students) and therefore ending up getting full 10 marks, while another student just replied on 1 post then latter will get 10% (2/20 replies) of the former student i.e., 1 mark only. EVERY STUDENT MUST PARTICIPATE IN THIS DISCUSSION FORUM if a question is raised by your fellow student. Remember, purpose of this forum is to develop the community of learners so that you must learn from each other therefore you all need to help each other. Once the question is raised then discussion on that question will remain open for 1 week only and no one will be able to post reply to that question after 1 week, thus losing the opportunity to help other. If any student will not post any question then I will post a question on this discussion forum”.

Because this is a graded activity I can see active participation of students where they are trying to help each other on difficult questions thus ensuring learning outcomes are achieved. My colleagues, here at TRU can guide me that how can I further improve the design of this or similar activities. Please feel free to comment on this post and suggest me improvements.

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