Teaching in English 1: Changes in My Class

Takuya Kaneko (Associate Professor of Management)

*This article was written in 2017

[日本語]

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In 2016, we saw many unexpected “Changes” all over the world. Some of the biggest “Changes” were China's economic slowdown, a drop in oil prices, the BREXIT referendum in the U.K. and the U.S. presidential election. Due to these events, we had drastic price “Changes” in the financial markets. Also, it was the final year for President Obama and his slogan was “Change” as many people remember. I joined the English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) program at Oxford University in 2016. I also had a positive “Change” in my classes after this program by utilizing what I had learnt there. In this document, I introduce my “Change” in classes while listening to the music small “Change” sung by Tom Waits.

Outline

Self-introduction

Let me start with my brief self-introduction. I joined ICU in 2013 after having some professional experience in global financial institutions. I give classes about finance such as Corporate Finance, Capital Markets, and Risk Management. I share my experiences with students and enjoy teaching. In 2015, I converted my teaching language from Japanese to English. There are a lot of merits of teaching these courses in English because the financial world is borderless. We need to keep up with current worldwide financial situations by reading newspapers like the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. Because my class was taught in English, I could utilize these articles directly without translating. But I felt some difficulties in having active learning even though I prepared a lot. Fortunately, I had the chance to participate in the EMI program at Oxford University where I had the chance to improve as a teacher using English in the classroom for the first time.

I have been utilizing techniques that I learned in the EMI program in my class since September 2016 and I strongly believe that I have improved the effectiveness of my classes. Through the program, I understood that teaching subjects in English is not just giving a speech in English but also communicating with all of the students. For better communication in English, we need to create a good atmosphere or environment in our classes. Up until then, I hadn't cared much about those points. I prepared as much as I could to finish what I planned in my syllabus and I didn’t want to derail from the schedule. For example, when we discussed financial situations about many companies in Corporate Finance classes I prepared a combination of firms by ignoring students’ interests. Also, I requested students to notice points from their investigation like a test. Then there might be meaningless nervousness between us and we could not create a positive atmosphere with trust. I did not grasp students’ curiosity and interests due to my putting first priority on my end. Because of this, my extra preparation might not be effective and useful for students. In this document, I explain the following points: firstly I mention why I teach Finance classes in English, secondly I mention what I learned from Oxford’s EMI program and how I’ve changed my class and thirdly I mention useful technology for active learning. As a conclusion, I introduce the importance of collective intelligence arising from the active learning process.

Why do I teach my classes in English?

One of the important merits of having finance related courses in English is our being able to utilize articles in the newspaper in a timely and effective manner. The financial world is borderless and we need to check worldwide important events/cases without any delay; we can’t wait for articles to be translated. Events occurring in the U.S. impact not only on the American financial market but also on markets all over the world, including Japan. For example, Mr. Trump won the U.S. presidential election against general predictions and the Nikkei stock index (Nikkei 225) dropped sharply due to this surprising result. We are experiencing effects on our financial markets from all over the world without any delay due to translation. If we need to wait for breaking news to appear in a Japanese newspaper, it will be too late especially for companies to take action. In this sense, I am recommending students to check news all over the world and I decided to teach Finance courses in English.

Oxford’s EMI program

The EMI program, which I joined in 2016, ran from 15th August to 26th, and was almost two full weeks in length. The program was composed of three parts. In the first part, we studied the basic theory of education focusing especially on the brain system. In the next part, we learned from many case studies. We sometimes watched actual lectures in Oxford University. In the third part, we gave several short presentations while being observed by program lecturers and other participants. We exchanged/received many comments and suggestions about our presentations toward quality improvement.

Here, I introduce a little bit about the first part, the theory of education, as far as I remember. For students’ comprehension, it is very important to understand their memory system inside the brain. In our brain, where we memorize information can be classified into two parts, roughly speaking. They are the short-term memory (thereafter STM) and the long-term memory (thereafter LTM). This classification is called the dual store model (Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968). When we receive information, we put it in our STM tentatively and we transfer information from STM to LTM automatically, when we unconsciously regard it as strong memory which is hard to forget. This information transferring system is the key factor for our effective lecturing.

To repeat an explanation is one of the most well-known methods for accelerating information transferring speed if we have enough time to repeat. We can have more effective education by combining other methodologies such as: paraphrasing, visualizing with figures, pictures, videos, experiencing, touching/watching actual products, and breaking down technical terms. I started to utilize these techniques from last autumn and sensed a feeling of positive changes in my classes.

My Experience

What did I learn from Oxford’s EMI program and how have I changed my class?

I learned a lot from the EMI program last summer; I’m utilizing what I learned in my classes on a daily basis and try to include the important points that I gained in every lesson at ICU. This has improved my relationship with students; when I request students to do something in class, I try to make them feel comfortable and not afraid to answer. If students think they shouldn’t make a mistake, they do not take risks by saying something. We should exchange comments/opinions not only between teacher and students but also within students. When I do not have any question or opinion from students, I gradually provide additional hints for active discussion/suggestion/opinion. I should not deny/against any comments from students in class. Also, I need to consider students’ situation as they also meet each other for the first time in each class. They can’t start deep and free discussion from the beginning - they need ice breaking activities like having free conversation to relax and share ideas. It doesn’t take long for students to become comfortable with each other. If we’ve removed the nervousness between us, they raise hands and say their opinion without any stress. I believe that we can create an ideal environment/atmosphere by considering these points.

Students want to know how to utilize the content of what they are learning in actual life. In financial class, we do not have visible products because financial institutions are not creators or producers. Thus, I am utilizing the terminal of Bloomberg and Reuters to show how the situation of current financial markets or historical indexes move. By showing actual market movements with professional tools, I can keep their interest in the contents of my classes. Students can’t use expensive tools individually so I introduced alternatives which they could use freely and available on their mobile phones.

Technology for active learning

Basically, many students are surrounded by communication with many people on social media. Message senders do not care about the message receivers’ situation. I didn’t want to request students to switch off mobiles as if class time were a formal examination. Nowadays, their conversations are seamless and timeless so I thought about how to utilize their mobiles effectively in class. As I mentioned above, I intentionally stopped excessive preparation and gave more choices to students. When we compare a company’s financial situation in Corporate Finance class, I requested students to decide on companies that they wanted to compare and download financial reports to their mobile by themselves. While they were deciding on companies, looking for financial reports and downloading, they couldn’t use their cell phones for private conversation and it was really effective.

So far, I downloaded and printed out financial reports for students and I chose top Japanese companies for comparison. They were, for example, Toyota motor, Honda, Nissan etc. in the auto sector or Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba etc. in the electronics sector. After the EMI program, I requested students to choose their own companies. They chose Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber etc. From their selection, I realized that they were not interested in my traditional and old-fashioned choices. They enjoyed investigating into more modern companies. This is one of the biggest “Changes” in my class. Additionally, when I checked students’ attendance, I stared to use Kahoot![1] To login to this system, they needed to use their mobile to indicate attendance. It was fun, so we used this system not only for attendance check but also for getting to know each other.

Concluding Remarks

Collective intelligence arises from the active learning process: stock prices can be regarded as an example of collective intelligence due to its having so many individual/institutional traders. I am utilizing this idea in my current research; firms’ network creation is based on their historical stock prices (Kaneko and Hisakado 2016). When the space shuttle Challenger exploded on 28^th January 1986, we could get the correct answer from the stock market within the day even though the official investigation reported its results six months later (Surowiecki 2005). This implies that we can know the truth if we collect opinions/ideas/suggestions from many people. When we think about BREXIT and the U.S. president election, the stock market index moved volatilely before the official announcement and implied that there was a high possibility of our having unexpected results. We had different predictions against the outcomes and might have been controlled by mass media. It collected questionnaires from people but it covered only a small portion and not enough to reflect all voters’ opinions. In classes, we have to welcome any opinion/question/comment especially those that are different/unexpected because they might advise us to proceed toward the right direction. For this point, we need to create good relationships and a safe atmosphere sometimes by allowing students to use their mobile phones.

References

Atkinson, R. C., and Shiffrin, R. M. 1968. Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 2, pp. 89-105). New York: Academic Press.

Kaneko, Takuya and Hisakado, Masato. 2016. Patent No.5953416 Japan.

Surowiecki, James. 2005. The wisdom of crowds. New York: Anchor Books.

[1] http://www.kahoot.it