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Multiple Intelligences in Online, Hybrid, and Traditional Business Statistics Courses

According to Howard Garner, Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University, intelligence of humans cannot be measured with a single factor such as the IQ level. Instead, he and others have suggested that humans have different types of intelligence. This paper examines whether students registered in online or mostly online courses have a different type of intelligence from students registered in traditional face-to-face courses. At the beginning of the fall semester of 2011, a group of 128 students from four different courses in Business Statistics completed a survey to determine their types of intelligence. Our findings reveal surprising results with important consequences in terms of teaching styles that better fit our students.

Mark-to-market and its effects on community banking during the financial crisis: An examination of perceived risks

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the relaxation of mark-to-market (MTM) standards on community banks’ share prices. Mark-to-market valuation of securities became increasingly common in the late 1990s and 2000s, as regulators sought to create more transparent and more current depictions of bank financial positions. However, MTM accounting may be sub-optimal in the presence of severe market frictions, such as those experienced during the financial crisis of the late 2000s. To comply with capital requirements associated with MTM accounting, banks of the late 2000s dramatically liquidated portfolios with potentially solvent assets in illiquid markets, taking huge losses. During the financial crisis, mortgage-backed securities held by banks began to plummet in value. Banks were forced to either liquidate these assets even though there were no buyers or dramatically reduce the values of their portfolios based on fire-sale prices. On a cash-flow basis, these securities had value, as many mortgages bundled in these securities continued to be paid on time; however, with markets frozen, market prices did not reflect this value. Design/methodology/approach - – This study shows that, for a sample of 134 community banks, share prices increased after the MTM relaxation, even after accounting for a variety of other economic factors. Findings - – This paper shows that, perhaps counterintuitively, the steps taken by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to relax MTM accounting standards may have acted as a stabilizing factor on the market price of community bank shares by allowing banks to selectively liquidate assets, boosting asset prices until uncertainty was resolved. Originality/value - – This paper examines the impact of recent changes in accounting standards on the perceived risks associated with the banking sector. It specifically focuses attention on the impacts these changes had on community-based banks within the USA.

Implications of Fail-forward in an Online Environment under Alternative Grading Schemes

The concept of fail-forward can be used as a teaching technique to motivate students to learn from their mistakes. For example, when students are allowed to re-work incorrect responses on a test for a partial grade they are failing-forward. In this paper we look at the effects of failingforward on student effort in online learning environments. We consider two alternative grading schemes with different levels of penalties for failure. Under the first grading scheme students are allowed to submit their work up to three times without being penalized. Under the alternative grading scheme students are penalized every time that they answer questions incorrectly. We find that instructors may be able to use the “average of all scores” grading scheme to increase the level of preparation of students even with differences in students’ innate ability. However, the benefits are less pronounced in fully online classes where there is no face-to-face instruction time.