Self-Regulation of Learning

Self-regulated learning refers to one’s ability to understand and control one’s learning environment. Self-regulation abilities include goal setting, self-monitoring, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement (Harris & Graham, 1999; Schraw, Crippen, & Hartley, 2006; Shunk, 1996). Self-regulation should not be confused with a mental ability or an academic performance skill. Instead, self-regulation is a self-directive process and set of behaviors whereby learners transform their mental abilities into skills (Zimmerman, Bonnor, & Kovach, 2002) and habits through a developmental process (Butler, 1995, 1998, 2002) that emerges from guided practice and feedback (Paris & Paris, 2001).

Paris and Paris (2001) consider that effective learners are self-regulating; they used to analyze task requirements, set productive goals; and select, adapt, or invent strategies to achieve their objectives. These kinds of learners also monitor progress as they work through the task, managing intrusive emotions and waning motivation as well as adjusting strategies processed to foster success. In my experience these are the students who usually ask questions, take notes and allocate their time and their resources in ways that help them to be in charge of their own learning.

The importance of teaching self-regulated learning at the university is rooted in the evidence that good self-regulators have developed the skills and habits to be effective learners, exhibiting effective learning strategies, effort, and persistence. The key for instructors is to understand how to foster and train these skills in all students.

Self-regulated learning strategies help to prepare learners for lifelong learning and the important capacity to transfer skills, knowledge, and abilities from one domain or setting to another. Suggestions for developing self-regulation in the adult education classroom follow:

• Cognitive strategies include learning strategies that can be specific to a domain or content. Problem solving strategies and critical thinking skills are also important. Critical thinking involves a variety of skills such as identifying a particular source of information and reflecting on whether or not that information is consistent with one’s prior knowledge. Activities to help adults articulate and practice critical thinking include comprehension activities such as student-generated questions before or during reading to focus the learner’s attention, constructing graphs and tables of real-world issues, and engaging in classroom debate to articulate arguments for writing a persuasive essay.
• The metacognitive component is comprised of declarative knowledge (knowledge about oneself as a learner—the factors that influence performance), procedural knowledge (knowledge about strategies and other procedures), and conditional knowledge (knowledge of why and when to use a particular strategy). Adults often struggle to articulate their knowledge or to transfer domain-specific knowledge to a new setting. The goal of self-regulated learning is for these strategies to first become visible and eventually automated for the adult learner. One way to make the three types of knowledge visible in the classroom is to have learners do a demonstration. When demonstrating (such as cooking a particular dish), it is easier to find the specific words needed to articulate what one is doing and how one knows to do it. Questions will draw out more language. Debriefing after the demonstration can make visible the difference between declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge so that one can make explicit points about how to transfer that knowledge to an academic task.
• The motivation component includes both self-efficacy (degree to which one is confident that one can perform a task or accomplish a goal) and epistemological beliefs (beliefs about the origin and nature of knowledge). Working with adults who have failed in school or with specific academic tasks necessitates deliberate discussion of their sense of self-efficacy. Many adult learners have shared with teachers and researchers how difficult it can be to overcome ingrained, virulent, negative self-talk. Making self-regulated strategy development (SRSD), including goal setting, monitoring and displaying of progress, an everyday feature of instruction can assist these learners to replace negative self-talk with positive self-instruction and a sense of self as an effective learner. Building new habits reinforces adults’ persistence and motivation.

Adult educators work diligently to help adults become successful, independent learners. Self-regulated learning strategies are research-based instructional techniques to help learners monitor and manage their own learning skills and habits. When paired with strategy instruction and metacognitive processes, instructors have a powerful learning toolkit to share with learners.

Teaching Students with Varying Levels of Competency

In competency based learning students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs, because educators’ commitment is to prepare students for the next level and work place. As a consequence educators have to effectively meet the needs of students of all races, classes, and cultures. It also demands their vigilance in challenging inequity.

There are many strategies educators might use to engage and support learning of students at varying competency levels. The main of those strategies are described as follow:

1. Build an environment rooted in a growth mindset that supports risk taking and help seeking, in order to increase students’ enthusiasm for challenging tasks with the knowledge that if learning is occurring, support will be necessary. For this condition I used to create routines and a shared language to build competencies that foster and reward support seeking and personalized learning with support that mirrors the learning of students’ needs.
2. Utilize Assessments that are transparent, ongoing, and provide meaningful feedback to support student learning and agency with the purpose of each assessment is transparent and useful to students and teachers. I used multiple assessments to gain a deeper understanding of the students’ progress, and regularly reflect on the outcomes and implications of assessments, as they relate to student learning goals and competency progression.
3. Develop embedded, tiered, and timely interventions for just-in-time support that leads to successfully meeting or exceeding the learning targets. For example: students’ interventions are grounded in assessments, in order to shorter learning cycles with fewer, more integrated learning targets are developed to allow for immediate intervention and feedback. At the same time, adaptive partnerships are created for necessary student services that are beyond the scope of the university with blended learning and adaptive digital tools expand options and provide choices for ways students can practice, apply skills, and demonstrate evidence of learning.
4. Develop extended opportunities to learn within and beyond traditional school times and settings, including internships, online learning, project-based learning, summer classes, and more. I used to provide students different means for contact in order to increase their opportunities to learn and to receive support extend beyond the university day and academic time. I give them opportunities to schedule and use of time supports the integration of learning outside of university in order students can demonstrate mastery of competency through anywhere/anytime learning experiences. As a teacher, I know how to access a network of learning experiences inside and outside of university to support students at various stages of learning.
5. Know the whole student and seek to understand their life and their learning studying their background with information in university data base. In competency based learning is important students and teachers work together to make sense of assessments, learning strengths, and learning needs.

Experiences in Learning and Assessment

As I explained in previous blogs, I am very used to competency based learning, and as a consequence, to competency assessment.

I teach three majors at Universidad Privada del Norte, each of them with different kinds of competencies, which represent, at the same time, different kinds of assessment:

• For Microeconomics, which is located in the second year, and is a basic level course, I use case studies, because it enables students’ problem-solving techniques and underlying knowledge as they respond to real-world scenarios or situations.
• For Corporate Finance, which is located in the third year, and Investment Finance, which is located in the four year, I use journals to assess intermediate competency, because students reflect on and draw conclusions about their learning activities, skills, and knowledge gained through a series of targeted writing prompts, at the same time I use simulations because they replicate field and/or workplace performances by giving students the opportunity to demonstrate competencies in simulated real-world experiences; and for the final competency I use essay writing because it allow students to demonstrate knowledge of competencies, communication skills, and analytical skills through writing, combined with oral presentations in order to assess students’ abilities to synthesize information and present it in a manner that is clear and understandable to others.

My experience in learning and assessment through the past five year improve my understanding of the methodologies for teaching in-deep courses, and to innovate in the continuous development of assessment instruments in order to keep students interest in they own learning process. At the same time, I had improved the rubrics and check list for every assessment instrument I designed.

What I found interested is when I review the competency assessment literature, I was able to find examples that generates new ideas for designing rubrics, checklist and observation guides for new assessment instruments that I would like to introduce in my courses.

Development of Competency’s Assessment

In one of my previous blog entitled “How to Design Learning Competencies”, I described the fifth learning session for Unit 2 as following: “At the end of the learning session the student prepares a report based in his results analysis of an MS Excel book in which applies the value at risk methodology for individual assets and a portfolio of at least 5 assets”.

For the assessment of this competency I used to ask students to write down an essay, do to this kind of tool help me ensure that students are able to demonstrate knowledge of competencies based in the analysis of information they obtained from public sources of assets prices information. At the same time, they have to develop communication skills in order to explain their data treatment and results; and, at the same time, analytical skills through writing the report in order systematize their main ideas.

From my point of view, the potential benefits and challenges of the assessment method I selected are: 1) Students have to master data analysis for assets’ pricing in order to obtain a first input for essay writing. 2) They have to comprehend the methodology used for analysing assets’ pricing and the result interpretation, as a second input for essay writing. 3) The essay writing skill is a demonstrative result because students has to explain their procedures and results interpretation in a simple and understandable form, in order any non-familiarized person will be able to capture what the students want to communicate.

Challenges in Learning Competency Design

The competency based training is a learning-oriented competency process therefore focused on the student, what this actually succeed in making thus changing the ways of planning and conducting teaching processes, which are aimed at achieving verifiable performance and change evaluation systems which are organized and developed to effectively record the performance.

Therefore, a different sequence in curriculum design is adopted, the graduate profile is determined based on the competencies valued from the world of work; and all educational processes are geared towards achieving the competencies identified in the graduate profile.

In designing learning competencies I identify the following challenges:

• How to present a competency? An active verb that identifies an action that generates a displayable result. It should include the description of the object of the action and the context in which it applies, and, at the same time, the quality indicators.
• How to present competencies in terms of learning outcomes? They must be clear and precise about what is expected the student can do and prove once the learning process is completed. They must express student’s verifiable actions or performances.
• How to develop competencies? Competencies are developed progressively, so it is necessary to consider different points on the achievements the student is reaching.

In order to overcome with the challenges described above, I consider the following recommendations:

• Establish clear learning outcomes and performance indicators as well as the time and tools to verify them, depending on whether generic or specific skills.
• Use tools to assess mastery of content at the highest level: items ordered result, development testing, cases or problems to be solved etc.
• Develop a team and validate various tools to assess performance: checklists, rating scales, rubrics.

How To Design Learning Competencies

The design of learning competencies is relevant for successful competency based learning implementation and, at the same time, it can often be a challenging task.

After checking the Best Practices for Designing Learning Competencies provided in this major, I agree with the statement that stands for competencies should be aligned to learning objectives and assessments, and as an example I propose the following explanation:

• The corporate finance course I teach has the following final competency: After completing the course, the student writes down and presents a final report on a group basis, based on the development of individual cases of financial planning, applying financial theory to a real situation, taking into account the financial principles and scenario analysis proposing recommendations aimed at maximizing the value of the firm and compare the results with empirical the course’s theory.
• Unit 2, which is entitle Risk, cost of capital and capital structure has the following competency: At the end of the unit the student writes an essay arguing his point of view on methodologies to value risk, estimates the cost of capital of the firm and structure of optimal capital, as input, based on financial information for the period 2010 - 2016 of a firm with operations in the Cajamarca region, applying different methodologies to estimate the cost of current and future capital, the structure of current and optimal capital and indicators of return and risk for the purpose of establishing action plans to maximize the value of the firm.
• Learning session number five of this unit has the following competency: At the end of the learning session the student prepares a report based in his results analysis of an MS Excel book in which applies the value at risk methodology for individual assets and a portfolio of at least 5 assets.

In the proposed example, the competencies are aligned to ensure the desired learning outcomes for my students when the practice of writing down report is require at three levels: learning session, learning unit and the course. At the same time, objectives are linked from the lowest level to the highs as the learning session is designed to build one basic competency for the whole unit; the unit is the summary of a group of competencies required for the whole of the course outcome.

Finally, the assessments are properly aligned ensure that you are measuring the desired learning outcomes of your students for each level in order to not impact negatively on student’s motivation and achievement.

CBL Learnings from Previous Challenges

Since 2010 Universidad Privada del Norte (UPN) educative model is based on competencies and it considers three perspectives, which are interrelated:

• The educator as a facilitator of the students learning: He or she guides students in order to develop their potential and provides tools for their learning.
• The student as manager of their own learning: He or she explores, experiments, builds, re-builds and re-learns.
• The curriculum as an interactive map which allows to reach the graduate profile, depending on the achievement of competencies.

My experience at UPN was implementing Competency Based-Learning (CBL) at Business School co-leading a team in two campuses: Cajamarca and Trujillo. The key points of the implementation were:

• UPN provided training to academic directors in order to understand and adopt the philosophy and methodology of BCL in the following subjects: 1) What is a CBL curriculum, 2) How to develop competencies at CBL for careers, 3) How to develop competencies for majors and how to make the inter-relationships between them and with general competencies for careers; and 4) How to develop competencies for learning sessions and how to make the inter-relationships between them and with the majors’ competencies.
• As team co-leader, I was in charge to replicate the training with my team (teachers and administrates).
• In parallel with training we implemented a plan preparing documentation for each level of CBL curriculum: 1) Career general competencies, 2) Majors’ competencies; and 3) Sessions learning’ competencies.
• After that, we make peer review of every level of CBL curriculum we developed, and make the necessary adjustments that feedback identified.
• We prepared an academic plan which systematized the proposal for changing curriculum in order to make presentations applying for approval of Faculty Dean and Academic Vice President.
• After approval, the main challenge was implementing CBL curriculum at the whole, and make follow up based on objective result indicators.

My co-leader and team successfully implemented CBL curriculum, and as a result, we were recognized but UPN. Nevertheless, the main recognition came from the students, who were able to demonstrate their learning advance based on objective assessment from educators.

An Overview to Competency Based Learning

In 2010-2011 I had the opportunity to lead a team in charge to implement Competency Based Learning (CBL) at the Business School of Universidad Privada del Norte (UPN). From this experience, I understand CBL as an educational model which purpose is developing competencies in students that are objectively measured and demonstrated in applying knowledge in real environments.

My definition of CBL has the following coincidences with CBL Introduction Resource definition: 1) it is an educational model; 2) the purpose is to develop specific knowledge in students; and 3) the students’ competencies have to be objectively demonstrated. In addition, the CBL Introduction Resource definition considers makes emphasis on: 4) the process, where teachers provide active learning opportunities so students can create their own transferrable knowledge.

The literature on CBL model identifies the following common characteristics:

• In curricula, syllabus and learning lessons, competencies are clearly defined and include not only what students should know, but also what they should be able to demonstrate in measureable terms.
• What the educator pretends in a CBL course is make the measureable demonstration of competencies, rather than the measure of the amount of time spent learning them.
• Students participate in authentic learning by applying and demonstrating knowledge in real or simulated context.
• Competencies are met or achieved when students demonstrate mastery of content through a valid and reliable assessment.
• Educators recognize that all students enter with various levels of prior knowledge and skills and all students acquire new knowledge at different rates.
• Educators act as facilitators and guides in learning experiences.

By contrast, the traditional model focuses on the following characteristics:

• Students graduate upon completion of a mandated number of hours in a required set of courses.
• Courses are designed to align with national standards or career standards.
• Course credit is received by meeting seat-time requirements.
• Course completion is assessed with a culminating grade composed of weighted averages of completed assignments (such as tests, homework, quizzes, labs), “effort” (organization, preparedness, and “attitude” are typically included in this component) and timeliness (students are typically penalized for turning in work late, arriving to class late, or missing school).
• Students complete coursework together.
• Students are placed in courses based on their age, grade-level and/or prior performance.
• Assessments are aligned with course calendars, and are taken when units of study are complete.

UPN made the transition to CBL model in 2010, and developed its own adaptation of CBL as follow – The model consists of general competencies, educational principles that guide the student's work and the principles that guide the action of the pedagogical model, and its interrelation with aspects of philosophical character (based on values), psychological (depending on student), educational (depending on the teacher) and sociocultural (depending on the company) – The general skills are transferable skills that UPN is looking to print on each of the academic actions taken. In the UPN we have declared seven general competencies: teamwork, leadership, problem solving, critical thinking, independent learning and social responsibility.

UPN pedagogical model gives guidelines on how to interrelate the three protagonists of the educational process: teacher, student and curriculum (knowledge and/or learning experiences). This interaction arises "how to learn", "what to learn" and "when to learn". This is the pattern for the design methodology of teaching and learning.

Ethics in Research

In the present journal activity report I will summarize my learning on keeping high ethical standards throughout all parts of a study in order to manage the integrity of any researcher involved, as plagiarism is a common ethical issue when conducting research.

Deciding on authorship is a complex task that requires mutual agreement from all researchers involved in a study. The following types of authorships are considered unacceptable in research: (1) Ghost authors contribute substantially to the research and writing of the study, but are not acknowledged. (2) Guest authors do not significantly contribute to the study, but are listed to help increase the chances of publication. (3) Gift authorship is co-authorship given as a gift or award to an individual who has not contributed significantly to a study. As a consequence I recommend the following criteria for best practices for deciding authorship: (1) They must contribute substantially to the study’s design, data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation. (2) They must participate in the drafting or revising of the article. (3) They must approve and accept full responsibility of the final article.

Conflicts of interest arise when a researcher’s obligations to a research project conflict with their personal interests or obligations to another person or organization, as a consequences a researcher should attempt to identify all potential conflicts of interest to other researchers in order to prevent harm or damage to the study. At the same time, find a methodology to resolve the conflicts in a transparent way.

Data management implies the results of a research study must be carefully interpreted, analysed, and presented in order to prevent allegations of research errors and fraud. In Economics there are methodologies developed in order to prevent fabrication and falsification. Some of those methodologies deal with (1) The structure of the data that is used for the research. (2) The way the researchers conducts causality in order to build a model. (3) The definition of units of measure and determination of functional for modelling, which implied resolving problems of model miss specification or over specification. (4) The adequate use of binary variables and instrumental (proxy) variables. (5) The use of the adequate methodology for problems in data: Heteroskedaticity, cointegration, unit ruts, among others.

Finally, plagiarism is an important issue in research and can severely impact a researcher’s credibility and career, as plagiarism is an act of stealing another’s work, the use of an adequate reference system is highly recommended for authors.

Most Appropriate Methods for My Research Question

At my last journal I formulate my research question as “What is the influence of firm’s reputation in it financial structure and its market value?”  This kind of research involves the relationship of a quantitative independent variable (firm’s reputation) with dependent quantitative variables (firm’s financial structure and firm’s market value). Many inexperience researchers may think that this is a very difficult task to do, but econometrics has the solution for this.

First of all you must think of the kind of data that have to be collected. As the research question implies that the firm’s reputation is a new variable to be tested for financial structure and market value, most of the data is quantitative and is reported in firms’ financial statements.

In order to formulate a complete model to test the new variable, we have to take on accont that the Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores, in Peru, publishes every three months the financial statements of approximately 600 hundred firms which operate in Bolsa de Valores de Lima, the kind of data that is need is:

• Adjusted debt and adjusted investment in order to calculate the firms’ financial structure (FINSTRU).
• The firms’ equity market value (MARVAL).
• The firms’ EBITDA and interest in order to estimate the interest coverage ratio (INTCOV).
• The firms’ debt cost (KD).
• The firm’s equity cost, survey from the return of equity (KE-RoE) and return of capital (KE-RoC) indicators.
• The liquidity of the firm (FIRLIQ), estimated by the ratio cash and equivalents over firms’ market value.
• For firms’ reputation (FIRREP) I will use a binary variable that takes the value of 1 when the firm is incorporate at the Good Corporate Government Index (IBGC) by Bolsa de Valores de Lima; which changes every year.
• As the IBGC index is reported since 2010, I will use a balanced panel data.

Knowing the kind of data to be collected, for deduction, quantitative methods must be used to test the hypothesis that firm’s reputation is a new variable to be considered as a determinant of firm’s financial structure and firm’s market value. As a second face, I have identified the models to be tested in terms of the following equations:

As one can deduct, ordinary least squares (OLS) is the main method to be applied in order to estimate the parameters of every model, and parameters’ statistical test will be run in order to reject or accept the hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that every parameter of FIRREP is zero.

Some Ideas about Research Questions

I have been teaching Finance courses at bachelor level at Universidad Privada del Norte (UPN) in northern Peru. The orientation UPN had until 2012 was more technical rather than scientific. After that and in order to implement the changes in Peruvian Universities Law regarding to accreditation requisites, UPN incorporate improvements in the curricula in order to handle with research courses.

I was challenge by my college Jeaneth Sanchez to implement research competence in the Investment Finance course I teach. As a consequence, since last year I redesigned the course in order to complement the main subject with research activities. My reflection after three semesters of trial and testing are summarize as follow:

1. In order to help students to develop good research questions at bachelor level it is important to start with helping them to interpret and understand literature, as many of them, have not been close to any research field before my course. In order to do this, I design five questions: What is the purpose of the authors? What is the theory frame in which the authors based their research? What are the methodologic processes applied in the study? What are the main results? What implications have the authors’ results for my local context?
2. From the literature review, students are ready to start drawing research questions. UPN recommends a research plan format in order to writing dawn ideas like: the research question, hypothesis and research objectives, the justification of the research question, additional literature that need to be reviewed, resources required for the research project, databases or information to be reveled, among other administrative information required.
3. We make follow up of research plans using a Gantt Chart in order to make sure students finish their research on time.

This experience was interesting, as new personal research questions come up in helping students with theirs. At the moment I am interesting in researching “What is the influence of firms’ reputation in their finance structure and their market value?”

The importance of this question is: There are few researches in Peruvian literature about this subject, there is a lack of stakeholders’ misinterpretation about firm’s reputation and data available has not been properly explored.

Online Learning – How to manage your time when you are working

I have already finished two interesting weeks of my Student Readiness online course. As this is not my first experience in blended learning, the kind of reflection the course invited was a plus.

As many people considers me as an organized person, I was able to review my methodology for keeping thinks going in a good pace, that I want to share in this post:

• Make a to-do-list of important things and keep it visual in order to have them always in your mind. No matter the subjects of your to-do-list, make priorities. In my case this priorities are categorized in family, personal and work.
• Check regularly the subjects in your to-do-list in order to review the priorities you made. If priorities change, make the needed adjustments. In my case I do this every week.
• As most of us live in a digital world, many things must be attended in a digital environment, so if stakeholders' representatives are not interested in writing down what they need from you, it is able to suppose it is not important for them, and as a consequence those subjects not need your attention.
• The majority of decisions I used to make can be made by responding or writing an e-mail, so I try to make as many decisions in this way and avoid meetings.
• Meetings are important, when those are well prepare, involve deep thinking and there is need for a broad scope in problem solving. These are the kind of meetings I must include in my agenda.
• Pettit committees with colleges is a way to past by important issues arising during the day. So I used to be open to these kinds of meetings any time of the day. If we are not able to solve matter in five minutes time, it means that more in-deep thinking is needed, and as a consequence we need to involve more people and prepare a meeting.
• There used to be people that love (consciously or unconsciously) to press with an urgent need of response. From my experience in 90% of cases they have the response, so I used to return the “pressure” with a question, when my peers are able to prioritize their need I understand that my response must be urgent.
• There are things that cannot be solved, so if this is true, why should you have to solve it? I prefer to let them solved but themselves.

In the field of managing projects, the Gantt Chart is a very useful as a visual tool which is helpful at planning and scheduling tasks in a long a period of time. As it is visual, it is easy for making following of the completion of every task. This tool also identifies the responsible for every task and shows the interrelationship of every task when there are prerequisites. As a planner anyone is able to manage the complexity of the tool. For example, you are able to manage it in a spreadsheet or use more complex software like MS Project or Primavera.

If you are interested in using the Gantt Chart, in the following link you will be able to watch a video for a basic version of this tool in MS Excel.

Being an Online Learner and Online Communication

During the last week I have the opportunity to share experiences with about twenty colleges around the world. All of them linked to Laureate International Universities Network.

What I value most of this opportunity is that we share an online classroom as a global community, where we express our own points of view while learning a specific subject: In this case being online learners and online communicator.

Due to most of the online classroom communication takes place in the online classroom in a written format and without the benefit of seeing a person’s body language or hearing a person’s voice, it is easy to misjudge or misinterpret the intent or tone of a communication or the motivation for an action. As I had previous experience in online learning environments, my expectations were correct:  people in the online classroom are different from me, even if I am able to speak the same language.

I found very useful during this first week the Laureate’s 10 best practices for online communication that I cited as follow:

1. Use formatting wisely in e-mail and discussion: TYPING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS EQUIVALENT TO SHOUTING. Shouting at your readers makes them more likely to skim over what you have to say, or ignore you altogether. I prefer to use bold and italics sparingly in e-mail to indicate urgency.
2. Include identifying information on all e-mails: I used to include a signature block with my formal name, my institution, and my contact information.
3. Pay attention to spelling and grammar: The quality of any writing makes a certain impression on others. Therefore, lend e-mails and discussion posts the same attention to detail you would devote to any published work.
4. Keep your responses concise: It is important for me to re-read and edit out anything that is not directly applicable to my response. While it is helpful, for me, to provide context for my readers by including the original e-mail in my reply. At the same time, it is important to avoid burying the response in layer-upon-layer of previous correspondence.
5. Use the subject line: For each e-mail and threaded discussion post, it is relevant to provide a clear subject line so that recipients immediately know the point of my message.
6. Be professional, respectful, and thoughtful in all communication: Laureate considers online courses to be a professional experience. As a result, students are expected to practice professional standards in all communications.
7. Think "Global Community": The Laureate Network is an international community. I recognize that I communicate with people from different countries, cultures, and who speak different languages. What may be acceptable in one culture may not be acceptable in another.
8. Exercise humor in moderation: Without the benefit of facial expressions, body language, and hearing tone of voice, any joke may be viewed as criticism. Subtler forms of humor, such as sarcasm and irony, are especially difficult to convey online.
9. Read your message carefully before sending it: Any communication online via e-mail or in discussion areas are recorded and archived. It is important for me that anything I say online can be easily forwarded, avoid making statements I would not want to become public knowledge.
10. Do not solicit: Soliciting is generally prohibited on university campuses, and online classrooms are no exception.

By keeping these simple rules, I have a marvelous experience with my colleges. We share points of view in several subjects like: keeping the motivation during blended learning, how to avoid cheating online, the remarks of some Laureate Universities in teaching online, the goals of teaching mathematics in blended environments, and many others more.

The Importance of Research in Economics

Economics Research is a subcategory of Social Sciences, and it is vital for undertaking more sound economic policies for boosting a stable and non-inflationary growth, for coping with various risks under a dynamic and rapid integration of our economies and for improving the wealth of people.  Economics research should aim at reaching an optimal balance between the significance to the economic policy or financial stability and their quality and timely availability. Academic economic research should manifest the same quality as research in physics, chemistry or medicine, but be positioned on assisting the decision-making process. Otherwise, their added value is overwhelmingly reduced.

Economics is the study of how people choose to use their scarce resources (including time and talent people have available, the land, buildings, equipment, and other tools on hand, and the knowledge of how to combine them) to create useful products and services in several alternative goals.  Important choices involve how much time to devote to work, to school, and to leisure, how many dollars to spend and how many to save, how to combine resources to produce goods, and how to vote and shape the level of taxes and the role of government.

The role of a researcher in economics is to facilitate input to the decision-making process, expand the knowledge of economic field, make a support for the understanding of how people make choices, interpret the tendencies in markets and develop new models to enhance the wealth of a society. In order to do this the economist must have have competences in comprehensive and multi-dimensional information, analyses and statistics.

In short, economics research fields include the study of labor, land, and investments, of money, income, and production, and of taxes and government expenditures.  Economists seek to measure well-being, to learn how well-being may increase overtime, and to evaluate the well-being of the rich and the poor.

The following is an adapted list of the fields within Economics from the Journal of Economic Literature.

• Econometricians develop methods to measure economic phenomena. They apply the scientific method by formulating hypotheses, gathering evidence, and judging whether the evidence is consistent with the hypotheses. For example game theory which analyzes how one player chooses strategies in light of knowledge of the possible strategies a rival might choose.

• International Economists study trade among nations and the flow of finance across international borders.Globalization and the deficit in the any country balance of payments with other countries are current concerns. 

• Health, Education, and Welfare: Economists focus on the markets and government policies that directly shape access to health care while others focus on schools and educational policies and still others consider the economic circumstances of the poor and evaluate alternative government programs to improve the well-being of the poor. 

• Business Administration and Business Economics, Marketing, Accounting: Business economists study decisions made by firms. How do firms maximize profit? What prices should they set and how much should they produce? What is the role of incentives within the firm, of entrepreneurship, and leadership? 

• Economic Systems: Analysts in this field compare the capital market system to the various forms of socialism and the transition from centrally planned to more market-based economic systems. Economists sometimes address issues in specific countries like Peru, China, Cuba, or Poland.