MV4 Background

Round Four (Updated 01/22/2007 02:12 PM)

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

--Morpheus (The Matrix)

MV4 Project Background

I have a working hypothesis that decision makers will be more effective (however that's defined) if they possess high levels of 'financial market awareness.' Financial market awareness means being able to make sense of the market environment--kind of like being able to interpret that streaming computer code in The Matrix! This 'sensemaking skill' should be an important precedent to making sound decisions.

It is also my view that most college students, although curious about financial markets and aware that successful investing will be important to their future financial security, are ill-equipped to handle financial decisions in both their personal and professional lives. If students like you have a better grasp of the financial market environment and how markets work, then we've upped our chances of a better tomorrow (since you represent tomorrow's key decision-makers).

A few years ago my Wall Street friend Todd Harrison created a website, Minyanville, as a platform for helping people develop better financial market awareness and decision-making capability. Because Toddo has a keen interest in developing strong ties between business schools like ours and Minyanville, he's graciously opened the Minyanville website for some research projects here at NKU. In fact, Todd and fellow Minyanville professor John Succo held court at here NKU last fall in a 'town hall' meeting. Some of you were there; your feedback suggested this was one of the better speaking events we've had on campus.

The current Spring 2006 project builds on research in previous semesters. Findings from the spring '05 project indicated a significant relationship between exposure to the website commentary and financial market knowledge. The results suggested that students may be able to develop financial market awareness through 'vicarious learning.' Vicarious learning basically means learning by observing others (if you've ever 'shadowed' someone around while training for a new job, you were learning vicariously). In our MV research, vicarious learning is proposed to occur when students, while reading Minyanville content, observe the thought processes of financial market experts who contribute commentary on the site. Over time, the hypothesis goes, students should adapt similar thought processes and gain capability for making sense of financial market environments.

The fall '05 (MV2) project extended the initial study by evaluating the effects of 'learning structure' to better focus student attention when trying to learn from the Minyanville website. This structure was also meant to translate the difficult-to-understand jargon that financial professionals often use when discussing markets. Findings from MV2 indeed suggested that there is added benefit from 'learning structure'. In spring '06 we conducted the MV3 project. In many ways, MV3 replicated MV2 in that the primary idea was to expose students to the Minyanville website content via the use of 'learning structure'. A new twist to MV3 was that it lasted longer and covered most of the semester (the previous projects were shorter). We also more closely tracked student use of the learning structure during the project. Results on this project aren't in yet, but from what I've seen so far it appears that students improve their 'learning rate' by being guided through the Minyanville content by way of the learning tools.

The current MV4 project seeks to collect additional data on the usefulness of the learning tools (I'll be clueing you in on just what the learning tools are soon). The learning tools for MV4 will be expanded from those used in previous projects. We will also use questions extracted from the learning tools as the primary measure of market knowledge and awareness.

MV3 Research Questions

Our research questions for MV4 are as follows:

Is there a significant relationship between student financial market awareness and degree of exposure to web-based financial expert commentary?
Can we improve student learning by employing a broader set of learning tools posted on the Minyanville website to guide students through the content?
What are the merits of using questions extracted from the learning tools in the instrument that assesses student market awareness?

Here's the Deal...

The time period of this project will be from mid September until the last week of the term. If you'd like to participate in this project, here are the basic terms. Participants will receive:

10 points of extra credit to be applied to the final exam.
Fee exposure to a novel financial education and learning technology (your account will last into mid August 2007).
Guidance and help with understanding how markets work.

In exchange, you'll be expected to do the following:

Avail yourselves to two questionnaires designed to measure your 'financial market awareness' at various points during the experimental period.
A 'good faith' attempt to commit to at least 1 hr/week over the period of the experiment.
Complete a log of your activities to be submitted end of project.

If you initially participate but decide at some point during the semester to bow out, that's ok. However, you'll receive the extra credit only if you 'make it thru to the other side' and satisfy the entire commitment outlined above.

Please contact me with any questions...thx!