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.