Lessons Learnt from Teaching Finance During COVID-19 Pandemic: My Two Cents

Abstract

This article aims to provide a descriptive account of the pros and cons of teaching finance online during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the insights gained from the author’s experience as an educator.

JEL Code: I2

Introduction

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, everyone was taken by surprise. No one had ever imagined or assumed the magnitude of the catastrophe that had fallen on every living being. Personal and professional life had been hit and everyone was in the process of adjusting to the abnormal lull that had occurred. The teaching profession was not spared either. Every educational institution faced the biggest challenge to date—how to provide quality education when neither the students nor teachers can meet face to face? Business schools faced an added concern—how to continue to mold future managers by imparting the skills and knowledge online? This challenge seemed insurmountable at the beginning for teachers like us as it is a known fact that it is not just classroom teaching that helps create future managers. Interactions that the students have outside the classroom with their peers, teachers and surroundings, over the coffee discussions and group studies have an undebatable value addition. With lots of doubts and a heart full of hope, every teacher jumped into the wagon of online teaching, intending to fill this gap to the maximum. This article aims to give a descriptive insight based on my experience with teaching finance online during the COVID-19 pandemic.

My Experiments with Online Teaching: Lessons Learned

One of the primary concerns that we finance teachers faced was how to ensure that finance education is not diluted with the online medium of teaching, given that the majority of the subjects were application-based, needed lengthy discussions of real-life case studies as well as were problem-solving in nature? While Zoom became our virtual classrooms, whiteboards became the new blackboards. The feel of sitting in a classroom can never be replaced and to replicate it to some level, scribbling while giving lectures on whiteboards, blank slides, tablets became the norm for jotting your thoughts while lecturing. Microsoft excel came to the rescue while problem-solving in the class, whereas annotations helped in recreating live classroom feel. One of the major benefits of having excel based exercise files was that it gave ample time to run through the problems and solve them. All that was needed was for the instructor to create shell files for the students to work on.

We also realized that while offline mode allowed one to cover a lot more concepts and topics without having to face mental fatigue, Zoom fatigue was indeed a reality and that the attention span of a student while attending an online lecture tends to wean off quicker than in an offline world. Therefore, unless a teacher mixes his/her lecture with ample discussions and two-way interactions, both attention and retention would go for a toss. But this also meant less time to cover all the topics. The first step taken in this regard was to redesign the curriculum to suit the online pedagogy. Only the most important concepts and topics were retained while remaining that can be easily looked up on the textbook/internet were kept for self-study. This eventually made sure that classroom sessions were utilized for discussing something more than what can be easily found in a book/internet.

How to discuss lengthy cases became another concern. Mandating pre-reading a case was to ensure that every student would have read the case at least once before coming to the class. The option of breakout rooms in Zoom was extensively used to divide the class into smaller groups during a session, wherein each group will discuss the case. The instructor oversees the discussions of each group and after a set time, one select representative from each group is asked to highlight the points discussed to the remaining class. Giving credits to these small group assignments motivates the students to diligently read, discuss and articulate their points.

Class participation was of utmost importance while teaching online as it was the only way to ensure that students did not only attend an online lecture but also actively listen and internalized. Technology once again became our savior. Polling, mini-quizzes on the course Learning Management System (LMS) and even cold calling a student to answer or participate in a classroom discussion came in handy. Once again, giving credits for answers incentivizes a student to take them seriously.

Course assessments needed to be redefined given that the pedagogy itself was going for revamping. Oral examinations, objective-based question papers, customized cases randomly allotted to students are some of the innovative techniques. The presence of a good course LMS such as Canvas, Moodle, blackboard and even Google Classroom facilitates these without any hassle.

Lastly, one of the core aspects while teaching finance at a business school is the scope to interact with business and industry leaders who will help the students understand the practical side of what is being taught in class. These interactions help bridge the gap between theory and practice. While at the offset it seemed that going online will be a hurdle in this, we soon discovered a hidden opportunity. Online lectures gave the flexibility to invite top academicians and business leaders to deliver lectures without having to worry about them having to visit the campus physically. This ensures that we had access to field experts around the world who otherwise may not have had the time given the logistical constraints.

Conclusion and Takeaways for the Future

COVID-19 pandemic is slowly becoming old news and very soon everyone hopes to go back to the ‘normal’. This has made me think if the ‘abnormal’ had any normalcy within it? None of the opportunities or the positive side of online teaching came easily. It was and is a result of continued trial and error. Teachers were forced to re-invent themselves and to come out of their comfort zones. Students had no longer the luxury to sit back and just listen. The new normal ensured that they put in their work and time to attend and participate and be accountable for their learning to an extent.

While classic classroom teaching can and should never be replaced by complete online teaching, there are a few takeaways one can take from their experiments with online teaching-learning. Some of them are as follows:

One needs to focus on quality and quantity. It is not necessary that an instructor spoon feeds every little detail. Students must take an interest to do self-reading to make the classroom sessions more productive.

When it comes to guest speakers and lectures, the online mode is godsent as it allows access to experts with minimal constraints.

To complement the synchronous classroom lectures, one can use asynchronous materials such as recordings, online materials and videos

It is time that we redefine what is ‘normal’, and one should not shy away from using online tools available that are meant to augment and complement classroom teaching. I will not be surprised if the hybrid teaching-learning model becomes a new normal going forward. Proper planning and innovative restructuring are all that are needed to make this happen.