Finance Faculty Adapt to Remote Teaching & Learning

This semester, the Yale finance faculty had to suddenly adapt to online teaching because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Each faculty member with a spring course acted quickly to learn how to effectively use the Zoom application for every day teaching. Professor Nicholas Barberis turned to the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning for additional resources pertaining to online teaching that complemented the training provided by the Yale School of Management IT Department.

At the end of the semester, the Yale School of Management communications department reached out to various faculty members to find out about some of their challenges and lessons learned in the virtual classroom. Professor Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham noted that he missed having several large whiteboards at his disposal but found ways to easily share his in-class notes and sketches with students. He also found new ways to gauge student understanding with polling and has found that he can use this technique when students return to the classroom.

In addition to their teaching obligations, the finance PhD students and faculty also needed to continue their own learning opportunities. Therefore, the weekly finance seminars were converted into virtual presentations and discussions. The finance PhD students and faculty were able to resume presenting their new research internally to solicit feedback from colleagues. And lastly, with a virtual format, the finance group was able to carry on with presentations by finance faculty from other universities to learn from their latest work.