An MBA Professor of Finance Finds Blogging to Be an Excellent Teaching Tool
It's not easy teaching finance. But more business school professors are finding blogs make great supplementary tools and help keep students focused and engaged. Dr. Richard S. Warr, Associate Prof. of Finance at the NC State University Poole College of Management's Jenkins Graduate School of Management, found his blog helps enhance his investments courses. This is his collection of financial media articles which the professor then critiques in his special, British way.
The inspiration for the blog
If you’re teaching finance and investments to MBA students, it's essential to stay current with the financial markets. Warr should know — he's been teaching investments to MBA students and undergraduate business students for 12 years. “You can't sit back and let the investments class teach itself," he says. "Investment is not like algebra. You must bring real-world, fresh examples into class.” Initially, Warr used hard copies of newspaper articles and magazines to illustrate the theory he taught in class, but organizing, copying and transporting the material was tough.
Warr had already designed a personal blog on fixing his MG sports car. So making his investments course blog on Google Blogger took only a few hours to create. His three to four weekly updates take less than an hour each.
How blogs help MBA students
Warr sees his blog help generate lively class discussion. Also, by showing his students financial writing doesn’t always make sense, his investments students learn to critique, rather than accept everything they read, he says.
For instance, around the Super Bowl a large global newspaper reported that stock prices flourish right after the Super Bowl. Warr just didn’t believe it. He reasoned any reasonably smart hedge manager could discover who was advertising in the Super Bowl before the game and buy those stocks. His blog let him share the article with the students and show the basic story didn’t hold up in the context of how markets actually work.
For true blogging success, the professor suggests:
- Having a pipeline of articles
- Posting frequently and regularly
- Resist posting just for the sake of it — only post quality content
- Avoid spending too much time blogging, especially if you're a professor (it can be a real time drain)
In closing, Warr urges more MBA professors to use blogs as a way to offer academic perspective on the theory behind what is happening in the financial markets. “Through blogging MBA professors can explain why things change in the way they do,” he says. “Blogging may even help demystify finance to the public.”