We sat down with Dr. Megan Ramsey, Assistant Professor of Finance at Missouri State University, to hear about her experience trying out Blended Teaching in her classes. Megan is a member of Blended Teaching’s Finance Advisory Committee, and is one of the first professors to use Blended Teaching’s Financial Management digital textbook.
It all started with a conversation at a conference between Brandon Cline and me. He mentioned meeting with a startup about a textbook that he was getting involved in. Fast forward to several months later. He had already recorded several videos, and he sent a message asking if I'd be interested in becoming more involved.
I agreed that if the content was a good fit for me to incorporate it into my MBA or Intermediate class in some way, I'd be willing to test it out and get some feedback from my students.
The classes are Intermediate and MBA Finance classes. In the MBA class, we have a range of students; some are continuing on from our undergraduate degree, doing a one-year accelerated Master’s. Others have completed their undergraduate degree and maybe taken some time off and worked before returning to study for an MBA in their spare time. These students typically take my classes online in between their other commitments.
In my Intermediate Financial Management class, I have an online and in-person section. These are undergraduate students who are still learning about Finance. They have taken a Finance class before and should know the basics, but some may not have paid as much attention as they should have for a Finance Major.
So far, I've Incorporated it mostly in the MBA class, just based on what material was available at the time.
We start the semester with a review of introductory financial management concepts. We then build upon that throughout the semester. I've included Blended Teaching as what I'm calling a ‘background refresher’ section of each module, where I ask the students to go through the videos.
Some feedback I've gotten about the videos is that they help students understand these concepts. One student stated that they read the textbook multiple times and couldn't make heads or tails of a certain concept. They then watched one short video from Blended Teaching and it was made extremely clear.
The students want more than reading about these difficult Concepts in an ebook. They are expressing a preference for having someone very knowledgeable in the field explain that concept to them.
The way that I studied as an undergrad is so different from the way students learn today. I remember spending time reading the textbook, highlighting sections and flagging pages with important Concepts and writing out notes.
Now, students often come to class without reading the textbook. I don't assume that they have any more, though I might assume that they've looked through any lecture slides I've posted.
I was excited by how the Financial Management book could be copied right into my Learning Management System. I wasn’t expecting it! Other book publishers tell me there are ways I can create links and set everything up myself, and I used to feel like it was just one of the parts of setting up a new class and adapting to a new textbook that you have to rethink your whole course.
With Blended Teaching, it seemed like the product sent over to me was organized in a way that I could just put it into my course, add a few specific things to my class, and go live.
When I saw that, I thought, ‘I wish I got this every time I taught a new course!’
I would just add that there's great support and communication. I always know where things are at and that's been great. It was also helpful to have a meeting with Blended Teaching to import everything and make sure it was in the right place. Finding a workaround for quizzing with my less commonly used Learning Management System helped too.
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