Editor’s note: This missive is part one of two on using Minyanville in financially oriented classrooms.  Here is part two. Those new to financial markets can find more content with an educational bent at Minyanville’s Education page.


Back to life
Back to reality
Back to the here and now
--Soul II Soul

Increasingly, I’ve been getting inquiries from college faculty on how Minyanville might be incorporated into financial programs of study.  Instructors are particularly interested in how Minyanville can be woven into personal finance and investment-related classes.

Such inquiries are welcome because, for some time now, we’ve been positioning Minyanville to assist instructors looking for resources that can help students learn about financial markets in a real time fashion.

Based on our developmental experiences to date, which have included research projects leading to papers published in academic journals (e.g., Ford, Devoto, Kent, & Harrison, 2007; Ford, Kent, & Devoto, 2007), I’d like to share some thoughts on Minyanville’s classroom application.  In this missive, we’ll focus on the conceptual underpinnings that drive the pedagogical attractiveness of Minyanville’s learning model.  In a future missive, we’ll share some ideas on specific classroom applications.

Reality Based Supplements

Financial markets are complex social phenomena with many moving parts.  Learning about such phenomena via conventional classroom approaches is difficult due to lack of context.  Instead, instructional approaches that immerse students in real life environments are more likely to convey tacit knowledge and skills necessary to build deep-seated intelligence (Leonard & Swap, 2005).

Early attempts to inject reality into finance classrooms involved having students read financial publications such the Wall Street Journal or Barron’s during the term.  The idea was to supplement classroom concepts with a dose of current events to provide a flavor of how markets worked.

I believe (and our research suggests) that this ‘reality-based supplement’ approach remains a winning pedagogical strategy.  However, the stale nature of content published in daily or weekly periodicals has driven interest in modern media that convey financial information more dynamically.  The challenge for instructors is to identify those venues that possess high potential for adding value in the classroom.

Vicarious Learning Platform

This brings us to Minyanville.  Long time Minyans realize that the ‘Ville’s genesis was influenced by an educational mission.  Todd Harrison clearly saw value in a franchise oriented towards helping people learn about financial markets in an entertaining, real time fashion.  During the venture’s nascency, however, I’m not sure Toddo fully grasped the remarkable potential of the learning platform under assembly.

From a theoretical perspective, Minyanville’s primary learning mechanism can be viewed as a vicarious, or observational, one.  Central to social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), vicarious learning occurs when students observe individuals modeling behavior in real life situations.  Students learn from the experiences of the instructional models by, over time, adapting patterns of behavior based on what they observe.  If you’ve ever ‘shadowed’ someone around while learning a new job, then you have engaged in observational learning.

Learning by watching others is as old as civilized man.  Until recently, however, observational approaches have been largely limited to study of physical behavior.  Apprentice pipe fitters, for example, learn by watching master plumbers ply their trades.  Skills grounded in tacit thought processes, such as financial decision-making, have been much more difficult to convey via vicarious approaches.

Today’s web-based technologies enable vicarious transfer of tacit thought processes and skills.  When reading Minyanville content about market context surrounding financial firms such as Fannie Mae (FNM), Merrill Lynch (MER), or National City (NCC), or about rationale driving long and short positions in securities such as General Motors (GM), Lowe’s (LOW), or U.S. Oil Trust (USO), students effectively peer into the minds of professionals modeling exemplary thought processes for market assessment and financial-decision-making.  Research suggests that learners are likely to improve their financial market awareness as a function of exposure to this collective stream of consciousness (Ford, Kent, & Devoto, 2007).

As such, Minyanville offers an attractive option for instructors seeking to connect students to markets in motion.  Next time, we’ll offer some specific thoughts on how Minyanville can be employed as a reality-based supplement in finance classrooms.

References

Bandura, A. 1986. Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Ford, M.W., Devoto, S., Kent D.W. & Harrison T. 2007. Threat, intimidation, and student financial market knowledge: An empirical study. Journal of Education for Business, 82(3): 131-139.

Ford, M.W., Kent, D.W. & Devoto, S. 2007. Learning from the pros: Influence of web-based expert commentary on vicarious learning about financial markets. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 5(1): 43-63.

Leonard, D. & Swap, W. 2005. Deep smarts: How to cultivate and transfer enduring business wisdom. Boston, Harvard Business School Press.