learning - Academic Conferences Limited

8. Finance resources
Glenn Duckworth
The finance resources have been deployed on two iterations of the Managing Decisions module. For
the first iteration an early version of the interactive exercises was used.
The students found the exercises to be generally useful, but did highlight some issues. Many of them
found the exercises to be very difficult and demanding. They suggested some alterations to the
exercises.
“Great resource - thanks. A little tweaking to improve but key ingredients in place.”
“Good and useful.”
“Thanks - a great resource.”
“ Time consuming. Some useful prompts would be good.”
“Got stuck and couldn't move on to next stage. Would be helpful to get answers/hints/tips
after certain number of attempts.”
“Needed additional hints/help as unable to finish and didn't know where I was going
wrong.”
“Get answers, or hints after a certain number of attempts in order to move on to next
step.”
Having discussed the exercises with the students, the module leader also believed that the exercises
were too difficult as first exposure to the subject matter:
“The original group is where we only did the exercises without any introduction and I
think those students really struggled with that. The feedback was that it took a long time
for them to do and they got to a point where they got stuck and couldn’t go forward.”
Based on feedback, the exercises were amended for the next iteration of the module. Extra prompts
were added and hints were incorporated. These appeared when the student provided an incorrect
answer on multiple occasions. Extra resources were provided in the form of online lectures and extra
background information which covered the main points.
The second version of the resources received very positive feedback. They were seen as being very
useful, interesting and engaging, and provided a useful introduction to the module.
Recurring themes from open ended questions were that students liked the fact that the lectures and
exercises were provided online and would like more resources like this.
All respondents indicated that they felt better prepared for the classroom based sessions and that
they found the resources useful.
The quotes below relate to aspects that they particularly liked about the resources:
“Work through of statements was a particularly useful and applicable exercise.”
“Relevance to programme.”
“That they were online and I could access any time.”
“Well structured, good framework.”
“Opportunity to retry.”
“The ability to stop & start.”
“Provided much needed ‘face’ contact.”
“Very useful. Excellent context setter and good insight into what to expect.”
“Make more of them!”
“Generally a very good use of Blackboard.”
The module leader also believed that the second iteration of the finance resources/exercises worked
well and that their incorporation into the pre-workshop component was very useful:
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