Designing Learning Activity (OTL301 Post 3)

Posted on by Raja

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.

Teaching Presence (OTL301 Post 2)

Posted on by Raja

After reading about teaching presence, I have learned that my Professor actually included all the key ingredients of teaching presence in the activity which I have mentioned in the first post (https://zraja.trubox.ca/2020/06/17/past-experience-otl301-post-1/). He first designed the learning activity, then he acted as the facilitator, ensuring every one must participate in that activity and finally he was also the subject matter expert. Therefore, all the characteristics of the teaching presence were fulfilled in that activity. My views though not changed much but now I can specifically identify that which element or characteristic of teaching presence I have advised to improve in my previous post.

My suggestion, in the first post of this course, to improve my professor’s learning activity actually related to the design element of the teaching presence. After learning about teaching presence, in future, while designing any learning activity I will ascertain to include all three elements of teaching presence. Definitely this lesson on teaching presence has broadened my horizon when it comes to effective teaching.

Past Experience (OTL301 Post 1)

Posted on by Raja

I remember when I was doing MBA from the Texas A & M International, I took an online course on Financial Institutions. One task which was assigned to us by the professor was to read the chapter from the book and post any question on a topic of choice on the discussion forum and then rest of the student needs to answer that question. Even though it turned out to be a lot of discussion but this approach helped students to get answers of some challenging questions. I learned a lot with this activity as students raised up many questions. Key ingredient of this exercise was manifested in the fact that students may have different perspectives about a topic and they can come up with different questions, sometimes very challenging as well. This laid the foundation for healthy debate and open discussion. Not only such discussions were insightful but also helped us to master the key concepts and to think out of box. If I will be replicating this exercise again, I will create groups and ask them to post the questions from every chapter on the forum rather assigning this task at the individual level. This way I will limit the discussion to manageable size so that as an instructor I can also effectively contribute in the discussion.

Sample Video Lecture

Posted on by Raja

Hello,

One of the activity I post in my regular Thompson Rivers University classes -not yet posted in the open learning class though as it is not designed by me- includes my online lectures on important topics. Here is my sample lecture on Time Value of Money which I have recorded for the Introduction to Financial Management (FNCE 2120) class.

Integration (OTL201 Post 5)

Posted on by Raja

This course has helped to understand that why social presence is important. The concept of introducing yourself in a way that can reduce the power distance between teacher and student is very important. This can make students communicate freely with the faculty member and help the instructor to understand the student which is a challenging task in online environment. As an instructor it is our duty to have our presence felt throughout the course. Another concept which has impacted my thoughts is that instructor should effectively facilitate the communication among the students so that they engage in a learning process through one another. Instructor should ensure that they engage in discussion and reply to one another.

Courses which I teach usually need up-to-date information on current affairs e.g., news related to economy while evaluating stock prices are very important. Therefore, I think discussion forum on news related to the economy can help me to retain my students and keep them engaged. Indeed, my experience from face-to-face classes suggests me that it is a very popular strategy among students as they actively participate in such discussions.

Moving forward my plans are to create a series of videos on important finance topics, may be 6 to 8 mins long and share it with my students. This task is getting mandatory due to pandemic as face-to-face classes are going online and students need videos to learn the topics. I have already started making video but at this time I am struggling with the duration of my videos as most of them are on complex topics and need detailed explanations. Another goal I have is to arrange meetup among students, especially in post Covid-19 era, where they can meet each other given they are living in the same city and have their pictures posted on the Moodle. This way even in an online environment student will feel as a part of the community and actively participate on the post of fellow students whom they have met. This second goal seems to be bit ambitious but very much possible.

Finally, there are so many questions on top of my head when it comes to teaching students in an online setting. I really want to experience that how much efforts are really needed to engage students in an online environment? Are they mostly self-motivated to study with deep learning approach? How seriously they pay attention to academic integrity? Etc. The only way to find the answers of these question is to get experience through online teaching. Also, instructors need to use the tools to ensure students are forced to perform the desired behavior. For example, students should be forces to use Top Hat if they are taking synchronous exams in an online class. It is a software which ensures that students must not open any other tab in the browser when they are taking synchronous exams.

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.

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.