TVM, NPV, and IRR, Oh My! Creating an Inclusive Environment for Teaching the Potentially Intimidating Financial Concepts for Making a Real Estate Investment

Abstract

This is a pedagogical paper that highlights various techniques that can be used to teach basic real estate finance to a mixed-ability audience, including non-finance majors. We explore some creative ways to engage all levels of students and help them to master the fundamental financial techniques used to understand real estate valuation and investment. In addition, we try to provide instructors with varying levels of financial and real estate experience some alternative modes of delivery for successful teaching outcomes, specifically junior finance professors, instructors or clinical professors who have been hired from the industry, and adjunct professors. We will focus on alternative ways to make the financial analysis portion of an introductory real estate class more relevant and less intimidating to the average student, while endeavoring to retain the interest of finance veterans familiar with these concepts. By using local market information and experiential learning techniques we will demonstrate ways to get students more engaged and excited about these important techniques for analyzing real estate investments, while working to increase confidence in faculty and student alike. Finally, we will examine the choice of tools associated with teaching finance, such as time value of money tables, formulas, financial calculators, and Excel, along with ideas to potentially enhance their effectiveness.

Keywords:

• Finance pedagogy
• excel
• time value of money
• experiential learning
• problem-based learning
• real estate

As with the real estate market, real estate educational programs seem to ebb and flow with market conditions. Over the last twenty years, there has been a growing number of new programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels driven by both the increased role that real estate is playing in the global economy as well as the rise in student expectations regarding obtaining skills that are easily translatable within the job market. As detailed in a recent report published by Saville’s, the value of all the world’s real estate reached $326.5 trillion in 2020, a 5% increase on 2019 levels and a record high. The world’s most significant store of wealth, real estate is more valuable than all global equities and debt securities combined, and almost four times that of global GDP. The value of all gold ever mined pales by comparison at $12.1 trillion, at just 4% the value of global property (Tostevin, 2021).

Some of these programs have been recently established or expanded, such as programs recently funded and started at Purdue University and the University of Virginia by successful alumni in the real estate industry while others, such as the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, NYU, and MIT are long established programs. Additionally, there has been an increase in the number of schools that offer a real estate minor, certificate, or concentration/emphasis at either or both the graduate and undergraduate levels. These programs are most commonly offered within a business school (often within the finance curriculum) though alternatively they could be housed in a design or planning school (McFarland & Nguyen, 2010; McGrath et al., 2020; Weinstein & Worzala, 2008; Worzala et al., 2013). Regardless of location, it is traditional that programs offer an introductory real estate course that teaches the fundamentals or the principles of real estate. This course is typically open to all students within the university regardless of major or school and serves as a prerequisite for all future real estate courses. Because of this unique position, there is often a mixture of student abilities found within one class. That is, some of the students are more experienced, with several other finance courses already under their belt, and other students will never have been exposed to the concepts of time value of money and have no understanding regarding what creates real estate value or goes into making a real estate investment decision.

Given the interdisciplinary nature of real estate, the fundamentals course is typically designed as a survey course offered without prerequisites. The intention of the course is to increase student interest in this area, and to provide a solid foundation for more intensive real estate courses to follow, such as real estate finance, valuation, development, or feasibility. Ideally, everyone going on to the next level of classes will have a common understanding of the basics, regardless of previous academic experience. The course often moves very rapidly in order to cover all of the different disciplines that make up the real estate industry, providing a lot of breadth but limited depth. Though the majority of information covered will be new to the students, the basic tenants of finance and valuation are the same as those taught in most introductory finance or business school core curriculums.

This paper offers some suggestions on ways to balance this problem of varying degrees of expertise in the classroom. Across student abilities, we identify strategies that productively involve the advanced finance students while simultaneously engaging those who are experiencing the material for the first time. For instructors, as noted in McGrath et al. (2020), given the interdisciplinary nature of the study of real estate, there are challenges associated with hiring and maintaining faculty in these programs. Accordingly, it is often the role of adjunct faculty teaching one class a term, clinical/practitioner/instructor faculty with a full-time one or multiple year contract or new tenure-track faculty to teach these courses. Ultimately, the person chosen to teach the class heavily influences the degree to which certain topics are covered in the class.

In the case of introductory real estate, it could be a lawyer, broker, architect, or a recent PhD specializing in finance, economics, housing, or urban planning. All understand the importance of finance within the overall curriculum. However, both research-oriented PhDs and professionals alike would likely be highly specialized, and unlikely to use basic financial concepts on a daily, weekly, or even annual basis. These faculty will have a graduate degree (as it is often required by the university), but they are likely not generalists but specialists in a certain sector of the real estate process. Thus, they will know some of the material cold, but in other subject areas they are likely to be less confident. For example, most introductory real estate courses allocate weeks dedicated to Time Value of Money (TVM) and discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis for making real estate investment decisions. Faculty are typically expected to cover the use of calculators or excel, despite the fact that they may not actively use them in their practice or research. The old saying, “use it or lose it” applies to these financial tools, and their required application and in-class demonstration can create an additional level of stress for the faculty member. This is particularly hard for adjuncts or instructors that have temporary appointments and junior faculty working towards tenure as positive end-of-semester, anonymous teaching evaluations are critical for reappointment or promotion.

In this pedagogical paper, we consider different ways for a non-finance trained or new teaching faculty to approach the finance portion of this introductory course. In addition, we explore different ways to work with the mixed ability student population that is relatively unique to an introductory real estate class. While finance is an essential part of any real estate fundamentals course given its role as one of the primary building blocks for more advanced study, it is also only a subset of the necessary information that is typically covered.

This paper is organized as follows. First, we look briefly at the past literature in teaching financial concepts. Then, we explore some techniques that the authors applied to their classes during the 2021–2022 academic year, with student feedback provided whenever possible in the appendix. Finally, we address some areas for future research.

Literature Review

The majority of academic work in this area has focused on finance specific courses rather than real estate, with the primary emphasis being ways to teach financial skills through means such as the use of Excel for financial modeling (Arellano et al., 2012; MacDougall & Follows, 2006; Mangiero et al., 2010; Payne & Tanner, 2011; Stretcher & McLain, 2010; Zhang, 2014). Linchevski and Kutscher (1998) examine the outcomes of both mixed-ability and similar-ability groups studying mathematics. These researchers found evidence that average and less-able students put in a mixed-ability groups performed better than those that were put in similar-ability groups, with no difference found for the higher performing students.

Research in the real estate area focuses predominantly on trying to ascertain the skills expected to be in a real estate professional’s toolbox. Most of these studies are survey based and ask current employers and program alumni what should or should not be focused on in real estate programs to increase the chances of a successful career in real estate (Chambers et al., 2009; Galuppo & Worzala, 2004; Shi-Ming, 2001; Tu et al., 2009; Weinstein & Worzala, 2008; Worzala, 2002). A few studies have surveyed the educators/program directors to see what is changing in the various programs to adapt to the changing needs of the industry (McGrath et al., 2020; Saginor et al., 2014, 2020). In all of the studies, financial modeling skills (particularly in Excel) were regularly highlighted as essential tools for a student to master if they want to succeed in commercial real estate. So, introducing these concepts to real estate students is important.

A few studies have focused on other elements besides teaching the financial skill sets, including Zhang et al. (2015) which focused on teaching behavioral concepts related to real estate while Hopkins (2021) focused on creating experiential learning opportunities for real estate students, including field trips and live class projects. Further, Robert and Hanton (2021) looked at enhancing student learning and achievement through the engagement of professional industry member guest speakers. Accordingly, it would seem that the ability to successfully introduce these concepts in the introductory course is essential as that course is typically designed to set up the foundations of understanding the value of real estate. However, we were unable to find any research focused directly on ways to teach basic financial concepts effectively, particularly to a diverse set of students with mixed backgrounds and levels of expertise

Given the dearth of literature related to mixed-ability classrooms and teaching basic financial concepts, this paper identifies some potential techniques that could be used, particularly by the less quantitatively trained faculty member, to provide students with a solid base knowledge in these key concepts. These concepts are critical for a student heading for a career in the commercial real estate sector, but they are also used by most business professionals. On a personal level, they are also of value as all individuals will face real estate related financial decisions at some point in their lives, such as when to buy a house or rent an apartment, and the costs and benefits of each. These may not be complicated and technical decisions, but they are financial decisions and given that they use TVM, those weeks spent teaching these concepts are even more important. The more that faculty can do to help ensure that the students master these skills early, the better the outcome for all.

Tools for Effectively Teaching Financial Concepts as They Apply to Real Estate

For junior or adjunct faculty, which may never have taught a real estate course before, we feel that these tools might increase their effectiveness in the classroom. Too often, it is assumed that if the individual knows corporate finance, they can teach any finance subject. However, the nuances relative to student ability and engagement may be completely different across the many finance specialties. In addition, not all schools require a basic finance course as a pre-requisite for a fundamentals of real estate course so it could literally be the first time the students are seeing this material. As such, although the techniques discussed in our paper may seem obvious to those already experienced in the area of teaching finance to mixed-ability students, having these techniques compiled and distilled in one paper may be of value to the new faculty member or adjunct, and alleviate any potential problems in content delivery and maximizing student outcomes.

Communicating Doable: Assuring the Students that the Concepts are Not Rocket Science

It is unfortunate, but many students come into the classroom with a preconception about finance, or a previous experience in this material, which is not always positive. The authors of this paper have found that they often have to work to undo students’ own mental barriers around the mathematical aspects of finance as applied to real estate. Introducing the material from the outset in a manner that is approachable and non-threatening is important. Assuring students that the basic tenants of TVM and IRR are simply applications of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Establishing the ‘do-able-ness’ of finance at the introductory level is a key component to shift mental barriers for those that are new to the subject matter. For the students who have familiarity with TVM concepts, effectively conveying that there are still skills to learn regarding the application of these tools to real estate helps to appease and attract those who will be seeing these concepts for the second or third time.

Relating the Material to Real Life Examples

Even if students realize that the math used is basic in nature, if the professor or practitioner is unable to bring the financial concepts to life for students with examples that affect them, it can still be a challenge for them to grasp the concepts and create pathways to deeper learning. Showing students practical applications is important to increase student engagement.

We suggest that faculty use a real estate example with each concept, tying the examples directly to the students’ lives and real estate whenever possible. “How many Starbucks visits do I need to skip each week to have the rent for next month?” Or, if it seems unlikely that many of your students have ever paid rent, providing examples of real-life examples or investments can also be effective. For instance, as illustrated in Figure 1 below a guest lecturer presented an introductory slide for a TVM lecture by using a Levittown home advertised for sale in 1972. They compared it to the “same” home found on Zillow today and used that new price to illustrate TVM concepts. The different variables can then be quantified and discussed with the example. Such as, “How much would a home bought X years ago be worth today?”. Or “What would a house bought today be worth in the future?” This also provides students with context and fundamental knowledge that can be applied to future personal financial decisions. From there we can move into a more complex commercial real estate investment, such as the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC.

Figure 1. Expert Finance Guest Speaker Real World Examples.

Bring in Expert Guest Lecturers

One approach that we tried was to bring in an “expert” on real estate finance. This is particularly useful for a faculty member without a finance background or who is less comfortable with teaching financial concepts. As detailed in Figure 2, this “expert finance professor guest speaker” brought the concepts down to a personal level and then built on the basic concepts to illustrate the more complex. As in the above section on real life examples, the guest lecturer began with relevant examples that reflected the concepts of TVM, as illustrated above in Figure 1, and was able to quickly build up to showing students how to analyze a potential personal real estate investment using DCF using the information provided in Figure 2. Both of these examples involved properties in close proximity to the university in order to further relate the material to student experience. Similar to Robert and Hanton (2021), students were surveyed and asked to choose their favorite guest speaker out of the ten guest speakers over the semester. Despite being the only speaker outside of the traditionally popular, colorful industry brokers and developers, and the only one to deliver classroom instruction, the students ranked the expert finance professor as the second most favorite guest speaker. The students’ appreciation of the expert resulted in both increased student engagement with the material, but also reflects positively on the primary instructor. A sampling of the student’s comments can be found in Appendix A. An additional benefit of inviting guest professors who are more specialized in teaching finance is they can also provide a research seminar for the department, and also work on a research paper as we did to complete this publication.

Figure 2. Expert Finance Guest Speaker Example: Using TVM in Investing Decisions.

Creating a Video Learning Resource

For both instructor and student alike, comfort can be found in making any mistakes in the comfort of our own living room. Providing students with an option to review or learn new material in small bites outside of the classroom can enhance in-class teaching, especially in a survey course where time is often limited and these concepts might require more time for mastery than can be allotted in class. Instructors can pre-record relevant material using resources such as the Zoom recording option, or through more sophisticated software such as Camtasia that allows for easy editing. Providing pre-recorded videos that walk students through problems allows for guided engagement, additional practice opportunities, and the potential to engage in a “flipped classroom.” Flipped classrooms originated in the 1980s and involve students doing work traditionally associated with classwork at home, and using class time for deeper or theoretical exploration of the concepts. The use of videos within the flipped format were popularized by Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy in 2004. It is a teaching technique that has grown in popularity as evidence has shown both increased effectiveness in learning and increased student satisfaction relative the more traditional lecture format (Låg & Sæle, 2019). Where the instructor might not be comfortable enough themselves with the material to work in that open lab format environment, or there might be in-class student questions that are outside of their comfort zone, engaging in a professional on-line learning platform in order to engage the students in “blended learning” which integrates traditional classroom methods with online activities has also been shown to promote student learning and satisfaction (López-Pérez et al., 2011). While there are numerous tutorials to be found online for these basic financial concepts, and some may be applied to real estate, an instructor might want to more efficiently integrate blended learning into their class using a customizable, real estate specific platform such Blended-Teaching.com. This program allows individualized solutions based on the instructor’s needs, and provides students with a library of professionally produced video modules and assessments related both directly to the course, as well as in more advanced or different areas that may be of interest to the more experienced student looking to build their skillset. This specific platform also accounts for language differences in the U.S. and the U.K., helping to minimize student confusion as they learn specific terminology associated with real estate finance which may differ in different markets.

Choosing Your Instructional Medium: Thoughts on the Use of Equations, Calculators, or Excel

This is a question frequently asked by faculty and student alike and the answer will depend on personal preference and available resources. Each tool has its own set of problems and benefits.

Equations and Tables: The Original Way to Understand Time Value of Money

Some professors and textbooks rely heavily on the use of equations and the time value of money tables to teach the basic concepts, citing the combination of theoretical and practical as students learn through their understanding of the components that make up each equation. The advantage of this approach is the cost of providing copies of the four TVM tables or the equations is negligible. However, the disadvantage is that the approach is cumbersome for students. It requires students to flip through tables or memorize the formulas, and it becomes very time consuming for the more difficult concepts such as IRR. Additionally, in the author’s experience, it is also one of the quickest ways to invoke widespread student ire and intimidate students who have previously had less than optimal experiences with math; both of which will likely be reflected in end of semester evaluations and can serve to dissuade some students from further real estate study.

Calculators: A Tried and True Tool for More than Half a Century

Calculators are somewhat of a middle ground. You can expect some pushback from students who feel that “nobody uses calculators anymore”, but they are a familiar tool even if not previously used for this purpose. They are relatively inexpensive to purchase and they provide the instructor with a means to systematically evaluate quantitative knowledge on exams. Another advantage to calculators is that they are less cumbersome than tables and can easily solve more difficult problems. A major disadvantage of teaching the calculator is this is the tool least likely to be used by a real estate professional or recently minted faculty and can be more difficult to effectively teach in a classroom setting than Excel. This is particularly true if students have not all purchased the same calculator.

There are various ways to address these difficulties. One is to include basic calculator functions in your video library. This can range from simple short videos made by the professor, such as how to change the number of interest payments per year to videos working through TVM and IRR example problems, demonstrating the relevant keystrokes through the use of an emulator.

Creating handouts with the same material can also be useful as students learn in different ways. Figure 3 was developed after students did not respond well to a posting of the calculator’s user manual as a reference. These diagrams that visually demonstrate the progression of keys needed to solve practice problems can be prepared in advance, used in subsequent semesters, and printed into packets as desired. If teaching with Excel, the same techniques can be applied. Videos that show the use of an excel spreadsheet to demonstrate how to solve any specific problems can be posted, and screenshots depicting each step of the creation of the excel formula or model can be created for physical reference.

If you are proficient and comfortable with using a calculator, you can also demonstrate its use in class. For those courses that require the BAiiPlus, Texas Instruments provides a USB emulator that appears on the computer screen and can be projected (Texas Instruments, 2022). However, the image is relatively small and cannot be re-sized, and the emulator is only compatible with PCs. Alternatively, there is also a free BAiiPlus emulator that can be accessed through the BlueStacks mobile gaming platform. This emulator is both PC and Apple compatible, and its size can be enlarged or reduced as needed. Both are useful tools that allows the instructor to demonstrate the respective keystrokes when illustrating example problems. Finally, as we discuss below, having students that are proven to be proficient in the use of Excel or the calculator act as tutors helps to provide much needed low stress, one-on-one help to all students who need it.

Figure 3. Sample Calculator Instructional Handout for Students.

Excel: Financial Model of Choice for Wall Street

Excel is a skill that is required of finance students, so those students are typically most comfortable with this tool. However, in an introductory class you are equally likely to have students who are wholly unfamiliar with the program. It can be difficult to effectively teach Excel to newcomers as successful teaching often depends on class size and available classroom resources. Given that finance is but one portion of the material taught in a principles course and that the course often has a relatively large class size, it is unlikely to be assigned to a computer-type lab. In fact, these classes are often taught in large lecture halls and there may be limited space for students to both take notes and use their personal laptops. To make matters worse, the Excel cells can be difficult to view when projected in those larger theatres. Using Excel to teach these concepts also assumes the student has access to a laptop with Excel to bring to class.

Another problem with using excel only to teach these concepts is that it can be difficult to effectively control Excel spreadsheets in an exam situation. If the intent is to evaluate the student’s ability to utilize the correct commands and solve for a given problem, then given the relatively basic nature of these problems, it is relatively simple for students to copy commands from a previous example or homework. Anti-cheating measures, such as using a computer lab for testing or requiring students to engage an online lockdown browser, can be impractical, unavailable, or cause more problems than they solve. The use of tricks, such as hidden areas or cells within the designated quiz or exam spreadsheet, to detect academic dishonesty are a potential option, though they, too, are not universally effective.

Assessment Quiz/Peer Tutors

This exercise is designed to try and establish a baseline within the class, which is particularly important when the class has a large mix of ability and experience with these concepts. The exercise helps to determine the level at which the materials need to be taught and engage students at all levels of experience. It is also designed to provide an experiential learning opportunity and group work for the students to get away from the lecture style format that students in today’s classrooms seem to particularly dislike.

The exercise starts with a pop quiz. Students are given no warning and asked to complete the quiz. It is done before the teaching of the concepts begins and students are asked to simply take the quiz. They are told it has no impact on their grade and will be used to assess the level of the class. Students should be encouraged to use their calculators, but if they do not have them to set the problems up on how they would answer the questions. The quiz is graduated in difficulty, mirroring the progression of the class, with the first questions being relatively simple progressing to advanced discounted cash flow modeling at the end. A sample of the quiz with answers can be found in Figure 4. The solicited student feedback and class demographics can be found in Appendix B.

Figure 4. Sample Time Value of Money Baseline Quiz.

The quizzes are then scored and the instructor can see the distribution of abilities. If the class is made up of students that all do well on the quiz, then the instructor can bypass the financial basics, which they may or may not themselves be comfortable with, and spend more time on the application of the known concepts to real estate. However, if the class ability is mixed, some students will have scored at or around 100%, and others will have gotten little to nothing correct. Students are then broken up in to groups based on the scores with low scoring students paired with high scoring students. They will stay in these groups throughout the financial section of the course, and as the concepts and applications are taught, the high scoring students are asked to help the low scoring students. This method applies the axiom that that you learn/understand something even better when you teach it for the students acting as tutors. For the less experienced students, it avoids the embarrassment of admitting to the class or professor that they don’t understand something or the fear of answering a question wrong in front of the class. These students may be more comfortable working with a peer than their professor.

There are other advantages to this approach. For the professor, the student tutors can help with Excel or calculator usage where the instructor might not be as familiar with those specific tools. It also alleviates boredom for the students that have already had the material mastered. Further it provides more one-on-one, immediate help than a single professor can often provide, especially in larger classes. Students are checking their answers against those in their group, helping to alleviate the stress of being wrong in front of the professor as well as allowing for immediate feedback from the tutor so that students don’t disengage because they don’t know where they went wrong. This technique also circumvents the issue of the experienced students dominating classroom discussions. Indeed, it can be discouraging and demotivating to the less advanced student who get the wrong answers without understanding why. Additionally, these students may not be comfortable admitting to the class that they don’t know the answer, especially in front of other students that appear to know the answers to every question asked, and there is a real risk that those students will simply give up. This technique is often referred to in the educational literature as “pair share” and is meant to make the task at hand less intimidating and more inclusive (Sampsel, 2013).

MadLibs: Use the Students to Solve the Problem

MadLibs is a template word game where one or more people fill in blanks in a story. Similar to fill-in-the-blank note taking, which is a successful way to keep students on track and promote comprehension, it engages students in the process of learning by having them contribute to the problem at hand. This technique is beneficial to both the student and the professor as it takes much of the pressure to be perfect off of both parties, while simultaneously providing examples that are either organic or subtly guided by the professor that further both conceptual learning and critical thinking. After going through a pre-prepared example where the professor has created both inputs and outputs, the professor put the categories on the board, as detailed in Figure 5. Students are asked what they’d like to solve for, in the case of TVM, and are then tasked with supplying all of the other variables for the problem and solving the problem. Students collectively agree on the correct answer, and incorrect answers can be addressed either by the professor or, if using group tutors as suggested in the above section, another student. This creates an active learning environment where students are engaged as they call out, or are called on to provide, the numbers that make up the basis for the problem. Given that different students are presenting different inputs, the result can be somewhat funny, and it creates opportunities for the professor to say, “let’s think about this” or “does that make sense” without overtly offending or embarrassing anyone given that no one student is responsible for the entire problem.

Figure 5. Sample “MadLibs”.

An example of this might be where one person offers a payment that is larger than the loan amount stated by another student. None of the inputs should be questioned at the time, but upon calculation it allows for a discussion regarding what might have gone wrong or how different inputs would affect our answers.

This is also an excellent technique to engage critical thinking in students. Whereby the output of Excel or a calculator is often seen as “absolute” and students frequently fail to endeavor to determine whether their answer actually makes sense, responding to questions in this manner, or asking for inputs that are greater or less than previous examples help students to work out the theoretical reasons for differences in their results. For instance, if a student asks how increasing the compounding periods will affect our interest rate, or the professor wants to show how a higher interest rate would affect our payment, instructors can ask “what do you think might happen?” before working out the problem, and then use new student inputs for that variable in order to solve the problem. This results in the student learning to think about the answer to questions, try different inputs that reflect the question, and then engage in discussion regarding the output, rather than simply being told the answer. Thus, “learning by doing”.

Conclusions and Areas for Future Research

Teaching any introductory course can be difficult but teaching a fundamental real estate course comes with its own unique set of challenges. The study of real estate is fundamentally interdisciplinary in its nature. Introductory finance, on the other hand, is typically taught by a finance professor who will have a firm grounding in the basics, the subject matter is relatively constrained, and all students are studying one topic. Though finance is a central tenet within real estate, its inherent breadth makes it difficult for faculty to be experts in all relevant areas. Additionally, the general appeal to students across a variety of majors, even when housed within a business school, invariably results in a group of students that are equally diverse in their prerequisite knowledge. The techniques identified above, learning through real world applications, engaging expert guest lecturers, choosing your instructional medium, creating different online or physical resources, proficiency quizzes and peer tutors to aid the less skilled student, and utilizing “MadLib” style examples to develop critical thinking skills to make sure the answers make sense, were all successfully employed by the authors in their real estate principles courses. While the authors make no presumption that any of these techniques are distinct to our classes, we do recognize the unique challenges faced by real estate faculty teaching the fundamentals course. These techniques may be especially helpful to the new junior faculty member, clinical professor/instructor or practitioner adjunct who is assigned to teach a real estate class but may not be well equipped to teaching the financial concepts as they relate to a real estate investment decision. In exploring ways to reduce both student and faculty stress, enhance student learning and outcomes, and create an environment that helps ignite a passion for real estate and their ability to take their studies to the next level, we have concentrated on those “tips and tricks” to teaching real estate finance that have been successful for us.

There are several areas for future research surrounding these suggested techniques for teaching the financial concepts to students in a real estate principles class. While research has been done around active learning in real estate courses, it has typically been applied to more advanced case-type activities. With regards to basic financial concepts, is engaging students in practical and active learning exercises more effective than traditional lecture style teaching focused on theoretical concepts, especially in a survey course such as the fundamentals of real estate? Further study into the perception of expert guest lecturers, and their impact on student learning, or the engagement with, and efficacy of, external resources such as videos and handouts on student learning would also be of interest. Finally, further research can be undertaken regarding the use of tutors and/or group work; does the use of student tutors enhance student engagement and result in more positive outcomes when teaching technical tools and material? Given the importance of this topic and the growing demand for real estate courses in universities it makes sense to explore alternative ways to effectively teach financial concepts that are regularly used by real estate professionals to make investment decisions.

Appendix A

Feedback regarding Expert Guest Lecturer

Source: Author’s Students, Fall 2021

Appendix B

Student Feedback and Demographics from Baseline Quiz Exercise

Source: Author’s Students in Real Estate Investments, Fall 2021