Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Reflections on Finance: Basics of Finance; Profit and Loss; Finding Funding; Cash Flow; Sales Forecasting Brenda Beach

Hey, Everyone!

This first module in HP Life eLearning was the only education that I’ve had in finance since I took a general business course a million years ago in high school. Although I had a basic understanding of all of the materials that were covered, I did not know the key terms and was not really clear on the full meaning of the concepts. This module gave me a working knowledge of the very basic language of finance, and I think that will help me be more effective at integrating entrepreneurship into my sociology course. I think I’ll be able to speak with authority—with some practice.

In the Introduction to Sociology course, I teach a unit on work and the economy. I generally include a segment on actions that can boost a student’s professional image to make him or her more competitive in the job search.  I am working on an idea to integrate the information on profit and loss, funding, and cash flow to help students consider the full cost of finding their dream job. I am also going to develop an assignment that gets students to think about how long after they leave school it will be before they can expect to reach the break-even point.

One difficulty in integrating these topics into a sociology lesson plan is that students may be resistant to thinking about how finance and human behavior are related. A strategy to overcome that barrier is to talk about finances as a part of the larger institution of economy and work, which determine our behavior as adults who choose, train for, and work at careers.


Thanks for reading my post. I look forward to your ideas. 

5 comments:

  1. I think a lot of students are scared of finance because they think you have to be a whiz at math to understand it. It's really just basic arithmetic, and whether they realize it or not, they're making financial decisions every day in their personal lives. They have to learn to separate the emotional response from the business response in many situations. Learning to think critically is an important part of financial planning.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jackie, I think you are right that the real or imagined math/finance link is the source of a lot of student's hesitancy to embrace anything related to finance. I like your idea to separate the emotion from the approach so that their minds are free to engage in critical thinking. I believe I will just steal that idea from you when I bring up the topic of finance. Ha!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Brenda. Like you, I am new at the terminology used in the world of finance. I agree that the module did a good job on introducing the language and I also look forward to passing that information on to my students since many of them are like we are in that they haven't had much of a background in business courses.
    I also like your idea of implementing it into your course on work and economy. Students need to be able to market themselves in the job search and a lot of their marketability comes from understanding how businesses operate. We certainly need to all work together and share ideas on how we can incorporate these topics in our classes. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Brenda. Like you, I am new at the terminology used in the world of finance. I agree that the module did a good job on introducing the language and I also look forward to passing that information on to my students since many of them are like we are in that they haven't had much of a background in business courses.
    I also like your idea of implementing it into your course on work and economy. Students need to be able to market themselves in the job search and a lot of their marketability comes from understanding how businesses operate. We certainly need to all work together and share ideas on how we can incorporate these topics in our classes. Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I don't know why my replies post twice...lol. Sorry about that.

    ReplyDelete