Applying Internet-based Technologies to Teaching Corporate Finance and Investments

Finance faculty are increasingly encouraged to use internet-based technologies in teaching. This paper examines students’ perceptions of finance faculty who use internet-based technologies and the impact on their learning experiences in undergraduate introductory corporate finance, investments, and MBA investments courses. The results suggest that offering all course materials online may enhance students’ learning experiences, however, the technologies may be best thought of as teaching tools. A better methodology for a finance course delivery may be that of in-classroom interactions between an instructor and the students while all the pertinent course materials are available online throughout the semester. There is a statistically significant difference between MBA (Master of Business Administration) students and undergraduate business students in terms of their desire to use the internet for learning finance. Consistent with previous research, results indicate that it may not be common practice among faculty to use internet-based technologies, and that assistant professors tend to use technologies in teaching more often than their higher-ranked colleagues do. Thanks for helpful comments go to Ronald Bremer, Dean Crawford, Bill Dukes and two anonymous reviewers. All errors are my own. The Journal of Educators Online, Volume 3, Number 1, January 2006 Introduction The education literature supports the premise that computer-assisted instruction contributes positively to students’ learning experience and outcomes. Examples of such research include Zack (1995), Daniel (1999), Michelson and Smith (1999), Hein and Stalcup (2001), Saunders (2002), and Michelson and Smith (2004). However, the results from previous research also indicate that the integration of computer and software packages into finance curriculum is limited (Clinebell & Clinebell, 1995), notwithstanding the fact that finance faculty are increasingly being challenged to integrate internet-based technologies into their teaching. The author has not used any course management software, such as WebCT or Blackboard, in his teaching. All the courses are delivered through face-to-face classroom teaching, i.e., not one of them is either an online course or a hybrid course with reduced seat time. However, each course is taught with all the course materials online and with multifaceted applications of internet-based technologies. This paper contains an examination of students’ perceptions of finance faculty utilizing internet-based technologies and the impact on their learning experiences in undergraduate introductory corporate finance, investments, and MBA investments courses. Very few research papers in the education literature have included a discussion of this issue. The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of using internet-based technologies on students’ learning experiences. Author’s Course Delivery Methods All the course materials are internet-based. Previous research generally concludes that it is beneficial to students’ learning if they get immediate feedback on the learning during the course of a semester, (Kulik & Kulik, 1986). There is an online suggestion box available on the main web page for students to comment on any aspect of the course at any time. This online suggestion box is a web-interface contained in a web page, which can be accessed through any of the standard browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. A student’s learning should not be limited to three-hour class time each week. An online discussion forum has been set up for each class, and students’ participation has been active. The education literature generally indicates that an online forum allows for active and collaborative student learning (McKeachie, 1997). The topics being discussed in the forums include; The Journal of Educators Online, Volume 3, Number 1, January 2006 2 • Questions Pertaining to Current Financial Markets, • Questions Pertaining to Reading the Text, • Questions Pertaining to Case Discussions and Team-cases, • Questions Pertaining to Homework, and • Other Questions Pertaining to the Course. In addition, all the quizzes and exams are administered online. Each quiz is given out-of-class, and each exam is taken in-class at the regular class meeting time. For an online quiz, students need to complete it within a pre-announced quiz-taking window, and the length of the window is usually set as 30 hours. Each quiz is timed, and the allotted quiz-taking time is usually set as the length of one class period (80 minutes). Each student may take an online quiz or exam only once. The test generator program generates individualized versions of the same quiz or exam for each student randomly, i.e., Question 1 in Student A’s quiz could be Question 12 in Student B’s quiz. The professor has developed a web page for each class that he has taught. Students can download the syllabi, homework assignments, and solutions to the homework, cases, quizzes, and exams. Some of these materials are contained within a password-protected web page, and a student uses the password that he or she has chosen at the beginning of a semester to access the pages during the course of the semester. The password-protected materials include each quiz or exam that is to be taken online, homework solutions, and quiz or exam solutions. The website also contains pertinent announcements, i.e., information regarding internships and job opportunities. Students are given demonstrations in class regarding how to use Compustat’s Research Insight database and online financial information sources. PowerPoint lecture notes are used, and Excel spreadsheets are illustrated in class. Email communication is encouraged as one means of communication between the professor and the students. At the beginning of each semester, an emailing list is set up for the students in each class. Communication with students is facilitated using a single email address, e.g., [email protected], in lieu of simultaneously sending emails to between thirty and fifty individual email addresses. The advantage of this The Journal of Educators Online, Volume 3, Number 1, January 2006 3 simplicity appears to be more obvious when the faculty is away from the campus, i.e., at a conference or traveling overseas. It is documented that posting students’ grades online frequently allows them to receive feedback before the next class session and provides them the benefits of learning (Menges & Rando, 1996). At the beginning of a semester, each student picks a unique alphanumerical quiz-taking ID with exactly five characters used for web confidentiality and gives consent to having grades posted in a grade-book on the website. The online grade-books are regularly updated during the course of a semester and each update is sorted by three sets of 5-digit random numbers generated by an Excel spreadsheet. An online grade-book may include quiz scores, attendance records, exam scores, group project grades, individual class project grades, oral presentation grades, and the final course average. An updated grade-book is usually posted online along with the solution to a quiz or an exam within 24 hours after it is given. Students can also easily access information regarding current financial market conditions and the structure of the U.S. financial system through the constantly updated hyperlinks contained in the website. For example, a student can obtain a real-time stock price quote when he or she is either in or out of class, and the student can also access the latest economic data released by The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce or The Federal Reserve System through the hyperlinks collected by the professor. A student can also obtain the historical stock prices for his or her class project in the investments course by utilizing the online reputable sources that are provided such as the stock pricing information at http://www.marketwatch.com so that the student does not have to use a microfiche of The Wall Street Journal. Data Descriptions Data summarized below were collected in the fall semester of 2002, spring semester of 2003, and fall semester of 2003 by means of a survey administered to students enrolled in; 1. Corporate Finance, a junior level introductory finance course offered to all business majors, 2. Investments, a junior level finance course offered to finance and accounting majors, and 3. Investment Analysis, an MBA elective course offered to business graduate students. The Journal of Educators Online, Volume 3, Number 1, January 2006 4 The business school enrolls approximately 1,200 students as part of a comprehensive, primarily undergraduate, public university of approximately 8,000 students in the Northeast. The school’s undergraduate business program and the MBA program are both AACSB-accredited. At the end of each semester, the professor announced in class that there would be an online questionnaire available and encouraged students’ participation. A questionnaire containing eleven questions was posted online as a hypertext markup page so that it can be accessed through any of the standard web browsers. A student submitted his or her response by clicking the “Submit” button at the bottom of the survey page after the questionnaire had been filled out online. A total of 103 responses for the three semesters combined were obtained. The details regarding the number of responses are provided in Table 1. Table 1. Survey Sample Participants Undergraduate Business Students MBA Students Total Fall 2002 39 0 39 Spring 2003 19 7 26 Fall 2003 26 12 38 Total 84 19 103 Note: Since the professor did not teach an MBA course in Fall 2002, there is no response from MBA students in that semester. Survey Results As shown in Table 2, approximately 95 percent of the students use the website at least once a week during the course of a semester.