Blogs for Reflective Lifelong Purposeful Learning in Financial Advice and Sustainable Investing
Associate Professor Kingsley Fong , Ms Emily Weng , Mr Brendon Zheng
Finance is a quantitative discipline that abstracts the consequences of financial decisions on people and businesses to investment risk and returns . However , applying finance knowledge in the real world needs to consider institutional details . Social skills such as taking the client ’ s perspective are essential . The market also demands the evaluation of the environmental and social impacts of investment and financing decisions .
My learning-by-doing practice is to use structured weekly personal blogs and online forum to provide explicit contexts for students to integrate real-life complexity in applying finance knowledge . It also develops student communication skills and cultivate intrinsic motivation for the profession . The introductory lectures explains how the finance profession serves society and the purpose and marking criteria [ 1 ] of the blogs and forum . In Wealth Management and Client Engagement weekly blogs students create a financial plan with themselves being the client . The professional financial advice process is scaffolded over the term and weekly questions guide students to thoughtful , personal response and research . There are practitioner interviews that to discuss nuance in practice beyond lecture content and video demonstrations illustrating exemplary and taboo communication in client meeting scenarios . Students reflect on the communication dynamics and techniques that they observe in the videos . The final blog includes an executive summary of a personalised financial plan and a client engagement strategy summary for their chosen career . The individual blogs is leveraged to build the learning community where the instructor initially posts in the online forum and encourages students to lead in subsequent weeks . The instructor also provides comments to demonstrate teacher and cognitive presence [ 2 ] and promote student replying to other students ’ posts and praise effort [ 3 , 4 ] to reinforce community development .
An exemplary MyExperience comment : “ the interviews / adviser meetings were a great use of original learning content that was very helpful in understanding the purposes and application of our studies .” Another course that adopts this practice is Sustainable and Responsible Investing . A reason that it won the 2021 Ideas Worth Teaching Awards is its “ creative finance pedagogy that invites personal reflections by students and helps to integrate environmental and social impact perspectives into their worldview .”
References : 1 . Biggs , J ., Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment . Higher Education , 1996 . 32 ( 3 ): p . 347-364 .
2 . Garrison , D . R ., M . Cleveland-Innes , and T . S . Fung , Exploring causal relationships among teaching , cognitive and social presence : Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework . Internet and Higher Education , 2010 . 13 ( 1-2 ): p . 31-36 .
3 . Mueller , C . M . and C . S . Dweck , Praise for intelligence can undermine children ’ s motivation and performance . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 1998 . 75 ( 1 ): p . 33-52 . 4 . Yeager , D . S . and C . S . Dweck , Mindsets That Promote Resilience : When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can Be Developed . Educational Psychologist , 2012 . 47 ( 4 ): p . 302-314 .
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