Greg Pierce, Smeal College of Business

Podcasts, vodcasts allow students to review concepts on the go

Greg Pierce in the Smeal College of Business reinforces concepts in his Finance 100 course by augmenting class meetings and textbook readings with podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts). This allows students to review course material on an MP3 player or computer at any time or place.

Pierce said he decided to create podcasts of his lectures out of a “a sense that students are always on the go and could use supplemental material to enhance their learning.” In summer 2006, he signed up for the Podcasts at Penn State pilot and easily learned to use ProfCast software, allowing him to record narration and synch it with his class PowerPoint slides to create “enhanced” podcasts. He posted his podcasts at Penn State on iTunes U.

Pierce said, “These lecture podcasts are designed to enhance and embellish what’s in the book, and if students have to miss a class for an employment interview, for example, they have the lectures at their fingertips. It gives them great flexibility.”

This past summer, Pierce said, he had just returned from watching his son’s baseball game when he had a fresh inspiration for providing finance problem solutions to his active students. “I had the hat on, the jacket on, the whistle, and I just went up to the whiteboard in my office and started writing out the givens, the equations, and the solutions for assigned problems,” he said. As he did so, he videotaped himself. Thus the “Finance Coach” series was born. He created videos showing how to solve the problems from each textbook chapter.

As fall approached, Pierce said, he ran out of time to edit the videos into a useable format. He asked his Schreyer Honors College students whether any of them who knew iMovie software would like to earn honors credit by assisting with the editing. As a result, he obtained the help of sophomore Kylie Nellis, who spent about one hour editing each video in iMovie.

In each Finance Coach installment, Pierce works the same problem assigned to the students, who must then submit the solution in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. He said that way, “they can see how to do the math behind the problem and not worry about it so much. Someone might argue that we’re just giving them everything. My response is that I’m teaching them the mathematics on the board, then they have to take it up one level and figure out how to solve the problem by entering it into Excel.”

Nellis said, “If you’re not familiar with math or financial concepts, it’s not really daunting to sit down with your book and the Finance Coach. You know if there’s a problem, you have a resource right away.” She added, “I feel better if someone explains something to me as opposed to reading it in a textbook. I respond a lot better to that type of audiovisual interaction.”

“Coaching—that’s really what it’s all about,” said Pierce. “Some students I encounter had a bad experience with mathematics in the past, so they just avoid math at all costs. The Finance Coach vodcasts makes it a little easier to at least approach the problem and say ‘This isn’t so bad after all. If you can do it on the board I can at least try to solve it in Excel.’”