I now want to move to the philosophy, and this to me is extremely important and personal, so I hope you bear with me if you'll get a sense of who I am. What's the philosophy of the courses, the specialization, it's fundamentally the same. How does learning happen? I've thought about this a lot, and my answer is usually very simple. I think learning happens when your mind is open, when you're happy, when you want to learn. It's not when I want to teach you, it's when you want to learn, and that's extremely important to understanding what's going on. I think here, digital education may have an upper hand to face to face. By that, I mean, supposing you're in my class for two hours, twice a week. I don't know who decided to do that, but we still do that. While I'm talking in class, you know where to go, of course you can mentally go wherever you want. But my point is that you are not in control, the learner's not necessarily in control. Whereas in digital education, one of the advantages is, you are in control, you want to learn when you want to learn, not when I'm talking so please remember that. Where does learning happen? I actually believe it or not, I believe learning should happen all the time. I literally mean all the time. I worry about the education system which has been set up to me two hours, twice a week, and everybody's supposed to be quiet while learning. To me that's not learning. That's listening to some person or each other without the noise of the real world. I think if you can learn with the noise of the real world, that's what learning is all about, but always be open. You don't want to learn from a boring person I never did. I used to look at the backside of the person teaching me. I mean, the person would be writing on the blackboard, and that's not learning, that's somebody just writing out what they think. What is the role of the teacher or the faculty? Faculty is a word used for teachers as well. I think the role of the teacher is very different than what has traditionally been done, and that's my view. My view is the role of a teacher is to facilitate your learning, not to give you, spoon-feed you, and so on. You'll see this, and you'll struggle with it a little bit. Because I do not want to spoon-feed you for one simple reason, actually two. One, I don't know everything, even in finance. I shouldn't be expected to. Why have all that burden? But the second is more important. I think if somebody tells you something, you're not learning, you're listening. It's like reading a textbook. You're learning when you are engaged. The role of the teacher faculty is a facilitator, a coach. If you watch sports, that's what a coach does. He doesn't go in and start playing. Coaches who start playing soccer with the soccer players are bad coaches because they can't, the team is playing. You are the learner, you are learning. Emphasis that I will put will be on why things work, and not how to calculate stuff. Now, this may sound really bizarre. In finance, we have lot of spreadsheets, lot of calculations, but fundamentally if you don't understand what you're doing, garbage in, garbage out. One way to think about it is all answers are wrong in life. Because if when you're making decisions you don't know what the future is. What I'm going to emphasize is why do you approach problem-solving? There'll be answers, there'll be execution, there'll be spreadsheets, but I'll frustrate you by asking why, that's how I teach, and I hope that helps you understand rather than makes you memorize stuff. What is your role as the student? I think your role as the student, is to learn, and when you want to learn, not when I want to teach you. But that means coming with a lot of responsibility, and ultimately simply who is responsible for learning? I think, you know by now, it's not me. I'm responsible for my own learning. You're responsible for your own learning. I think in some senses, learning is like love. It's a very personal experience to me. Yes, you learn from others, and all that is good, but eventually the thrill of learning comes when you take on responsibility and go for it. I hope I encourage you to do that by my style. How much time do you need to devote to a module? Now, remember module, many times you'll see in other courses is equated to a week. I don't want you to be confused because the confusion is coming simply because how much time do you need to spend on a module? Five to 10 hours should be plenty. Why am I giving you such a broad range? Is because I don't want to put constraints on you. Some constraints I will, but not too many as to what your background should be. If you have a lot of strong background and things that are important to finance, you can be done in five weeks, five hours a week, or module. But if you don't have a background, 10 hours may be needed so this gives you some sense. One final question before we leave the philosophy of this class. Let me ask you this. A MOOC is for free, in other words, yes, you could earn a certificate, but that's your choice, so the class is really for free. The question is, is it? Given what my philosophy is, I don't think it's for free. You may not be paying money, but you're putting in a lot of effort. The more you want to learn, the less free it is, because there's no such thing as free. Even if you're spending two hours watching a video, it's two hours of your time so think like that, because I think it's important to think about life as not just about money, but about effort.
