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A master teaching approach was used during a session of introductory finance to provide high impact teaching practices for a large class of 190 freshman business students. To teach financial markets, an active-based learning activity was used, and the students participated in a simulated New York Stock Exchange trading floor. Using volunteers as market specialists, students traded fictional shares and submitted a portfolio assignment after the trading session. Active-based learning generated excitement toward meaningful student engagement about financial markets.
INTRODUCTION
Substantial prerequisite requirements present a challenge in financial education programs, because most finance coursework does not begin until the junior year. By the end of the sophomore year, students majoring in business have typically taken one semester of business law, two semesters of accounting, one semester of management, and one semester of marketing. The lack of early exposure to finance topics threatens the retention of finance majors and becomes an obstacle toward the recruitment of students from related business disciplines, because switching majors can result in loss of time toward degree completion. The objective of this work is to describe an innovative teaching exercise that increased student engagement in finance business education and to enumerate ways the teaching exercise can be adapted to a variety of other teaching situations. The ability to attract and retain freshmen finance majors is a significant factor for using engaging activities to excite students about finance early in their business programs.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Critical to the retention of business students is the ability of instructors to engage students with course content in meaningful ways. Engaging students in meaningful learning objectives is one of the seven principles of good undergraduate education (Chickering & Gamson, 1999). Careful instructional design is important to ensure learning outcomes are mastered. Fink (2003) illustrated that the learning process is cyclic in nature and involves three key components: learning goals, teaching/learning activities, and feedback/assessment. Effective learning relies on learning objectives being conveyed to students through well-designed teaching and learning activities that are purposefully aligned with timely and formative feedback and summative assessments.
To ensure students have an opportunity to demonstrate their competency with specific learning goals, researchers have recommended a variety of active learning strategies. For example, Bonwell (1996) found enhanced lectures that intersperse mini-lectures with...
