Within his courses, Associate Professor Marketing Ye Li provides what he characterizes as “minor things” for his students.

“I arrive 10 minutes before class and play music from a custom playlist that the students create related to decision-making topics,” says Li, who teaches Judgement and Decision Making and Managerial Decision Making courses at UCR School of Business.

“I learn all my students names every year, which is about 150 students per quarter, without name tents or name tags, and I take a daily class photo for attendance instead of having them sign in,” he adds. He also encourages attendance at office hours, he says, “by allowing students to decorate their own 1-inch wooden star, and I’ll make a framed collage once I have enough stars.”

Li also runs a class Discord server to enhance communication in addition to office hours, and updates course content by sharing podcasts and TED talks relevant to course work.

These “minor things” are obviously considered major things by his students, who once again honored Li with the student-voted 2023-2024 Golden Apple Award for Business Administration Elective Courses. He was also awarded the prestigious Golden Apple in 2017 and 2022.

“Professor Li is an amazing professor. He cares about his students and puts a ton of effort into his courses,” wrote a student voter when nominating Li for the award. “He has designed courses with activities, data-driven application of class concepts, and intriguing lectures.”

Indeed, Li focuses on active learning. “I encourage students to not take notes during class and just listen to the content of the lecture,” says Li, who provides students the lecture slides and recording. He also designates half of the classroom “as an electronics-free zone, where students can commit at the start of quarter to not use electronics during class, including laptops to take notes. Students in this zone love the lack of distractions,” he says.

Another student voter wrote: “Professor Li is extremely passionate about the topics he teaches, and his form of teaching ensures that students use critical thinking to make decisions. He also makes the material absorbable.”

Li’s courses include weekly web assignments, “which consist of experimental stimuli from the papers they’re going to read that week,” says Li. “I analyze this data to show them the effects—such as anchoring, overconfidence, etc.—that they’ll learn in class.” He also sends personalized emails to each person with their scores.

These strategies are coupled with other innovative teaching methods, including an exercise where student partners design their own precommitment device and track their behavior quantitatively over the course of two weeks. “This demonstrates the power of precommitment/prepayment to help self-control problems, like spending less time on the phone or exercising more,” says Li. “It helps them understand the psychology of dynamic inconsistency, the benefits of precommitment, and what went well or not about their self-control attempt.”

The professor’s research “studies the reasons people make various kinds of decisions, especially involving tradeoffs between sooner and later consequences,” he says. “Some of my most influential work has looked at the role of emotions and cognitive ability influencing these types of decisions. For example, sadness makes people less patient, while gratitude—but not happiness—makes them more patient.”

Along these lines, another student voter wrote: “Dr. Li is well versed in his subject area. I was able to improve my decision-making skills after taking his course. He also provided valuable feedback throughout the course, which let us know how we were performing. He is attentive and cares about his students.”

Recognizing this commitment, Li was lauded by Poets & Quants with the 40 Under 40 Best MBA Professors recognition in 2020. “Ye Li has wowed us as much as he has his students, who have had the luck to see him in action in a classroom,” stated Poets & Quants award evaluators. “What impressed us even more than his mountains of research was the feedback current and former students gave, particularly about how much he genuinely and truly cares for those he teaches.”

With the strategies mentioned and other innovative approaches—including embracing AI as part of the learning process and a group project that resulted in student-generated ideas for campus dining calorie equivalent information, a way for diners to make informed choices—Li is invested in both the education and welfare of his students.

“Professor Li’s courses have offered lessons that will be applicable outside my career, both in life and in personal finance,” wrote a student. “He has been extremely helpful about finding opportunities outside the classroom.”

To that, Li responds: “My favorite moments are when students report using class concepts in their lives and jobs.”