“We’re going to have to take the very best lessons we can get from this and see how we can incorporate that into our lives. The funny thing about being in finance is there will be so many lessons to learn from this crisis. That’s another reason why I teach. I’m concerned about the future, changing the future and figure out what I can do to make the future better.”

Damion McIntosh was relaxing, watching television on the couch and enjoying Spring Break in Jamaica when his cell phone chimed on March 12. It wasn’t a text message. It wasn’t a reminder notification. It was an e-mail … from Auburn University.

“Auburn University to transition to remote instruction March 16-April 10.”

COVID-19 was rapidly spreading across the United States, and Jamaica, McIntosh’s home country, just reported its first case. He had to return to the United States -- and Auburn -- quickly before re-entry was declined. “I was worried,” said McIntosh, a lecturer in Finance in the Harbert College of Business. “Two questions came to my mind: How will I administer my exam online and would I conduct my classes synchronously or asynchronously?”

McIntosh is one of dozens of lecturers and professors throughout the Harbert College making the classroom transition to online. His graduate-level classes, he said, were already online. But the 400-level undergraduate classes, Management of Financial Institutions, and Financial Sector Regulation and Supervision, were not.

A former banking and finance professional from Bank of Jamaica (the country’s Central Bank), McIntosh has taught students for 25 years. “But how can I do this (online) and maintain academic integrity for an exam?” he asked. “My exams are rigorous and technical and they prepare students for the real world of work. That was actually the first thing that came to my mind: testing. As my scheduled exams were the next week.  The second thing was instructing.”

The solution: asynchronous classes, where students have the option to watch pre-recorded lectures via Panopto, a popular online video platform among education and industry, visit McIntosh for one-on-one sessions via Zoom – a very popular online meeting tool many businesses have employed during the coronavirus outbreak, and Honorlock, an on-demand proctoring service that keeps students honest during exams.

“I’m also using my Surface screen to write on as if I were writing on a white board. That allows my students to follow through with me how to use the physical calculator. Soon, I realized that this was also an opportunity for me to incorporate simple Microsoft Excel financial modeling in my class using the online platform when otherwise I would not have had the  opportunity to do so.”

“Honorlock is such an interesting tool,” McIntosh said. “Students are required to sit in front of their computer or laptop. They are required to take a picture of their face with their web camera, take a picture of their ID, use their web camera to show their surroundings, ensure that they have the microphone on, and then what the computer does is it records the entirety of the examination session and identifies anomalies within the environment.”

McIntosh was concerned about changing classroom learning habits, but has adjusted well, using Panopto and introducing students to an asynchronous classroom where lectures can be viewed on their schedules.

“Since these are finance courses, you’re working with quantitative questions and you have to be able to anticipate students’ questions,” he said. “How did you get from A to B? How do you transpose an equation to get to the final solution? You always have to bear that in mind because there are times that I can skip a step because I assume the student knows the step. If I’m in class and a student doesn’t know the step, the student will ask a question. But that might not happen in the online environment.”

One way McIntosh helped alleviate potential questions is allowing students to follow along as he works through financial models on Microsoft Excel.

“I’m also using my Surface screen to write on as if I were writing on a white board,” he noted. “That allows my students to follow through with me how to use the physical calculator. Soon, I realized that this was also an opportunity for me to incorporate simple Microsoft Excel financial modeling in my class using the online platform when otherwise I would not have had the  opportunity to do so.

“We teach so many of our students with a financial calculator, but when they are in their jobs, they aren’t always using a financial calculator. They’re more likely using Microsoft Excel. Sometimes because of how much you have to cover in a semester, we don’t get to incorporate computer lab classes, or the use of financial models using Microsoft Excel in class. Using this mechanism online allows me to do both.”

McIntosh said colleagues are fortunate to have a number of veteran online instructors from whom to learn.

“There are individuals who are recognized experts in Panopto, Honorlock, Canvas and Zoom and they’ve made themselves available for questions,” he said. “Particularly for Honorlock where there has been a significant exchange of ideas and information. One of the things that I was able to obtain because of peer discussions was how to treat students with accommodations. Where I may set my time limit for one hour, a particular student might require double time. Our network has been able to determine in Canvas how to individually accommodate such students.”

“We’ve evolved into everything being so digitized. Many of these technology advanced platforms are doing activities that humans are accustomed to doing, and they are faster, more efficient and cheaper. Within that context, when I teach I have to prepare my students who may be concerned that one day their jobs are going to be taken over by Artificial Intelligence. But … nothing beats the human capacity to analyze.”

McIntosh’s storied career in finance within industry and in the classroom will soon land him as the feature story in AB USA business magazine. The theme: the future of finance and how it will change. Just like technology is changing the classroom, technology is changing finance, too.

“We’ve evolved into everything being so digitized,” he said. “Many of these technology advanced platforms are doing activities that humans are accustomed to doing, and they are faster, more efficient and cheaper. Within that context, when I teach I have to prepare my students who may be concerned that one day their jobs are going to be taken over by Artificial Intelligence. But … nothing beats the human capacity to analyze. Nothing beats that our brain works in such a unique way that it’s difficult for any machine to compete with the level of intuition that we have, or the experiences that we have had that tells us to take another path.”

Logic might not calculate for lessons learned as society adjusted to deal with the coronavirus on business platforms, either.

“We’re going to have to take the very best lessons we can get from this and see how we can incorporate that into our lives,” McIntosh added. “The funny thing about being in finance is there will be so many lessons to learn from this crisis. That’s another reason why I teach. I’m concerned about the future, changing the future and then figuring out what I can do to make the future better. I’m a crisis expert, and if I can share that knowledge now with my students so they can change the future for the better, then that is my responsibility. It’s the decisions you make today that shape your future. So when your future becomes your present, it’s because of the decisions you made in the past that brought you to this point.”

McIntosh’s future involves teaching finance students for the upcoming Summer 2020 semester. All classes will be online.

“Believe me, I’m better prepared now,” he quipped.