Extra credits for synchronous lecture attendance:

I strongly encourage students to attend lectures in person or watch the live stream of the lecture each week because the regular study may help their learning (i.e., avoiding the unstudied contents from accumulating).

To record lecture attendance, I will use the "Attendance Module" on Moodle (see the "Lecture Attendance" Section on Moodle for the details). Students may receive a bonus point (0.5 mark) for each week's lecture attendance, and these bonus points will be added to Final Test. The maximum mark for Final Test is 100. Students may still receive 100 marks for their tests without these extra credits if they answer all the test questions perfectly.

NOTE: Students who can not attend scheduled lectures synchronously but still want to receive extra credits:

Unlike our standard assessment components, we may have some “flexibility” on extra credits. If you are unable to attend the lectures as scheduled (either in person or online) and still want to receive extra credits, you may request special consideration. The criteria for determining if the request is reasonable will be based on supporting evidence or documentation. After your request is approved, you will be further required to complete summary notes to reflect on what you have learned from the most recent topic in FINAN508 and submit that to the lecturer within one week. The summary notes are expected to include the following components:

• Comment on what you thought was the most important aspect of the week’s topic;
• Comment on what surprised you or excited you from the week’s topic;
• Describe how some aspects of the week’s topic apply in the real world or in your daily life;
• Present and discuss some puzzles that the week’s topic has helped you to understand better.

Content/Foundational Skill

Both critical-thinking and problem-solving questions will be included in Final Test.

The critical-thinking questions (i.e., short essay questions) will be evaluated by Communication Skills, Professionalism and Innovation. There is an expectation that students demonstrate academic integrity when they attempt the assignments in this paper. Moreover, referencing academic research articles to answer the questions will be rewarded in terms of marks (But referencing non-academic websites, such as Investopedia, will not have a reward). The design is to motivate students to achieve effective academic reading. The critical-thinking questions also allow for the evaluation of effective academic reading by students, as their answers will demonstrate their understanding of the concepts explored in the paper. And the short essay questions require students to demonstrate their business writing ability.

For the problem-solving questions (i.e., calculation questions), students are required to show all their workings. These questions require students to perform calculations on data and then demonstrate their understanding of the numbers calculated, thus equipping students with numeracy skills/using data.