In preparation for my research, I briefed the students verbally when we were together in person for our intensive teaching weekend. I told them that we would be doing an object based learning task to gain a better understanding of sensitivity analysis as part of the upcoming online lecture the following Wednesday and asked them to bring along an object with the following credentials:

• You can hold it in your hand
• It has a story attached or it holds meaning for you
• It could be sold as a product.

As not all the students were present, and by way of reminder, I also repeated the instructions in written format 3 days before the class. I made sure to tell them that the task was a research project, forming part of my PgCert, that they weren’t required to take part. I also said that I would ask for their feedback afterwards but again, there was no requirement to feedback. 

On the day of the online class, there were 9 students in attendance out of a total of thirteen. The cohort live in a variety of time zones and the classes are always recorded and available afterwards. The attendance on that particular day was in line with the other classes. As part of my introduction to the class, I once again told them that we would be using an object based learning task to better understand sensitivity analysis. The task was scheduled for the latter part of the class following other content on business finances to allow any students who didn’t wish to take part to leave when they wished. 

That particular class was on the topic of business finances. I provided a brief explanation of the concept of sensitivity analysis using an example to demonstrate. In brief, sensitivity analysis can be defined as “a valuable tool for understanding the robustness of a financial model – evaluating how the output of a model is affected by changes in input values and assumptions”.

I reminded everyone about the object credentials, then I provided further instructions for the group task as follows: 

• Hold the object in your hands & show to camera if possible.
• Take it in turns to describe your object, include defining features and the assumed price if the object was to appear in a shop.
• Each person adjusts one variable of your choosing, for example: cost of production, price or demand

• Observe and share how that impacts your “profit.” Consider different percentages of variation (eg. +20% or -10%).
• As a group, offer suggestions or discuss strategies to counter negative impacts.
• If you have time, rotate adjustments.

Students were broken into three randomly assigned breakout groups – each with 3 students. They were given 15 minutes to complete the task. I stayed in the main room for the first 5 minutes in case of technical difficulties (based on Tim’s advice) then I paid a visit to each breakout group to observe the conversation. I had warned the students that I would pop in but wouldn’t contribute to the discussion so they could simply ignore my presence. I was delighted to see lively discussions taking place in each group. 

When I brought the students back to the main room, I asked for someone from each group to provide a summary of what they discussed along with any questions. I also put up the following questions to guide our discussion: 

• If production costs go up, what could you do?
• Which variables had the biggest impact on profitability?
• What strategies did you consider to maintain or increase profitability when variables changed
• Do you think sensitivity analysis is also a useful tool for services?

Each group was engaged with the task and they had brought an interesting range of objects. Examples were: 

• A student who is originally from Hong Kong, residing in the UK who brought a teddy bear dressed in Scottish attire along that she got when she completed her undergraduate degree at Edinburgh University. 
• A student who is from Egypt who brought along traditional tea cups used in celebratory cultural events. 

 I would have liked to have continued the discussion for longer but had to conclude it fairly quickly as we had reached the end of the scheduled time for the class and I was conscious that I wanted students to stay on longer to provide me with feedback on the task. 

At that stage, I ended the task, provided a link to the quantitative feedback survey in the chat and advised students that they could leave, or alternatively stay on longer to talk about the process of the task. I will write about the process of feedback in my next blog post. 

I was pleased with how the task worked although it felt a little rushed at the end. I was relieved that I hadn’t encountered technical issues with the breakout groups and I felt that the energy of the group was lifted by providing them with an opportunity to talk to one another directly. I loved seeing the variety of objects the students brought along with them and although the timing was a challenge, it was encouraging that they had embraced the task so much and wanted to carry on talking about it for longer. Carrying out this task increased my own confidence in utilising breakout groups and trialling new methods with students.