ED-MEDIA 1999 Proceedings Book - Association for the ...

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Re-engineering the MBA Using Virtual Seminars Drew Parker Vivian Rossner-Merrill Rob McTavish Faculty of Business Administration LohnLab for Teaching Technologies LohnLab for Teaching Technologies parker@sfu.ca rossner@sfu.ca mctavis@sfu.ca Simon Fraser University Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada Introduction and Overview: Universities are increasingly subscribing to the notion of executive education, lifelong learning, and program profitability largely as a result of decreased public funding and greater public demands for accountability. At the same time, novel technologies are starting to prove effective for the delivery of remote full or part-time programs. Schools are now starting to offer unique programs that are quickly becoming global through novel delivery methods. Strategic alliances have been formed and new technologies employed and the resulting increased competition between educational institutions underscores the necessity to re-engineer existing programs to meet learning needs that may span a lifetime. The purpose of this paper is to present a case exemplar describing how one university re-engineered its MBA program. Our challenge was to design a single set of courses that would serve the different needs of both students and working professionals. The goal was to develop high quality and sustainable courses and program options to be offered in a highly competitive educational market place that reflects the criteria of excellence required by the University. Why Re-engineer the MBA The North American MBA market has changed dramatically in the past several years. Overall enrollments are dropping (Canadian Business), while product offerings continue to expand. Student educational demands are also expanding concomitant with new developments in educational uses of technology. Thus needs for enhanced communication among dispersed individuals and novel applications of technology led us to explore uses of computer mediated telecommunications in ways to ensure that our Business programs remain competitive with established programs available in Canada. (See, for example, http://www.athabascau.ca or http://info.queensu.ca/index.html.) Thus a necessary part of re-engineering the MBA discussed here included developing high quality, sustainable courses that incorporate a range of flexible study options suited to the virtual learning environment. The concept of re-engineering has a simple premise: to look at underlying processes and consider how Information Technology can support a redesigned methodology. It has come to mean change in almost any form, but continues to reflect changed business processes. The MBA degree is a suitable candidate for re-engineering today due to increased pressure for shortened delivery times, remote locations access, and the need to remain competitive by meeting the variable knowledge needs of students in different workplace situations. These include management development seminars, executive diploma programs, focussed Masters programs, like a Master of Technology, and specialized Master's programs designed for target client groups like nurses, physicians, dentists, agriculturists, financiers, or entrepreneurs. To design programs that allow for incorporation of the range of desirable options, one must study a particular program's underlying processes, including target clientele, timing, method of delivery, and desirability of change. Making programs available while students remain in the workplace precludes disruption of workflow, salary and benefits, and reduction in required residence time for students. Other advantages include considerable cost reduction for corporate sponsored study, allowances for the reusability of course materials for in-house professional training and upgrading of personnel. Modularizing the Business Program: University graduates who move into a management role often look to executive programs to upgrade their management acumen. Our starting point, therefore, was to target working professionals who either do not have business backgrounds, or if they do their knowledge is outdated, who are in situations where the need for education or training in one or more business areas is highly desirable. A second targeted group comprised students who typically have recently graduated from an undergraduate program and are looking to either extend their business education to graduate school or to acquire business education in addition to another discipline, such as computing science or engineering science. To better accommodate the range of prospective students’ needs, we developed a series of integrated modules that together make up a Graduate Diploma Program in Business Administration (GDBA).
The modules are designed for a variety of applications: • in whole, they offer a specialized graduate diploma, • in whole, they provide a “pre-MBA” qualifying program for students wishing to prepare for advanced studies in an MBA or Executive MBA program, • in standalone formats, they may be used singly or for cross-disciplinary incorporation into other related or complementary courses or programs, • as a packaged grouping, they may be selected for professional development or specific training or upgrading needs, • in packaged or standalone formats, they can be reassembled for overseas or national delivery. Program Description and Design: Graduates of this program are expected to have acquired a fundamental mastery of core topics in Business Administration, and have proven ability to work strategically in teams, and to present and defend complex material. Professional development courses, on the other hand, are available on a fee for purchase basis and may or may not include on-line or in-person instruction. Modules to be used for adaptation to cross-disciplinary areas are available on request. The modules, singly or combined in a program, are suitable for students studying in cohorts or on their own. Students complete a total of eight half courses plus a project at a minimum, and must make up a series of qualifying courses if their background doesn't include coursework in a particular area, namely Management Science and Information Systems, Accounting, Finance, Marketing or Human Resource Management. The overall program goal was to design courses that would be offered entirely over the Internet. In most cases, students are expected to meet only in their respective virtual seminars. All students are required to participate in on-line group conferencing and to have, or have access to, the necessary computing equipment. Because students meet instructors and study in asynchronous and synchronous learning environments, they will be able to work independently of time and place-based constraints. The LohnLab for Teaching Technologies group assisted with all phases of the planning including selection of technologies appropriate for the program and for the design and delivery of courses. Their instructional design expertise provided guidance in using principles of instruction drawn from empirically viable models of instruction and learning that were used to organize the desktop interface and inform the processes of teaching and learning. Instructional design features focused on optimizing teaching and learning practices that pertain to the virtual seminar setting but are flexible enough to vary with the goals and objectives of the different course modules in the program. Design features focus on providing a tightly structured course architecture and carefully laid out processes and procedures for students to follow. Once these parameters were designed we then concentrated on implementing teaching and learning methods that maximize opportunities for collaborative online group activities, tasks, and assignments and foster lively discussion and debate of pertinent issues. Optional strategic learning practices were also embedded in course design. These were specifically intended to provide mature, returning students with study tips and aids they may find helpful after prolonged absence from study. For most courses the instructors presence was initially quite directive but moved into more of a facilitative role once students were active in the learning process, both singly and in groups, and seen to be taking a good deal of responsibility for their own learning. Examples of course design features will be presented and discussed in terms of their suitability for the content concerned and contribution toward enhancement of instruction and learning processes and outcomes. Benchmarks for Early Success: Although the material to be covered is established curriculum, the form of delivery is radically different from the status quo. In this case, we designed a program specifically for non-resident students designed to be offered through the computer mediated medium of instruction using tools provided through the Internet. Because of the experimental nature of the program there are a number of key risk areas where we needed to have demonstrated successes: • student acceptance as indicated by enrolment figures, establishing wait lists and course and program completion rates • faculty buy-in. In order for the program to succeed, good faculty must be convinced of the value of experimenting with new mediums of instruction and course delivery • institutional commitment to completion of the course cycle • The success of courses and of the program must be demonstrable. This includes metrics of student performance, evaluation of the program, acceptance of incoming students and acceptance by employers wanting training and upgrading opportunities for their employees. The program is currently in process and students have completed the first half of their coursework. Benchmark outcomes to date are available and will be discussed in our session. Information on the success of course design features and strategic learning practices, however, will not be available until the completion of the first cycle.
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Designing an Interactive Learning E
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develop an educationally meaningful
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2. Functionality of the BSCW System
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3. First empirical findings During
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of the users as participating actor
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2. Other Characteristics of the Pro
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education resources are being produ
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y using a drop-down menu: Informati
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Results Computing ability and expos
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instructional designs while introdu
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Global Educational Multimedia Serve
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Assured Access/Mobile Computing Ini
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The University has set up a secure
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* Changes in educational paradigms
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Using Computer Imagery and Visualis
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Publishing an imej Journal for Comp
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In summary, we offer the following
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Discussion Forums and Peer Review F
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Languages and Statistics: Solutions
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Kelly and Leckbee (1998) indicate,
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A Wide Array of Uses: Inquiry and I
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Effects of Question-Based Learning
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The EFFECTS of TRAINGING METHOD on
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3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY A 10-day ex
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prototype for futuristic learning e
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Designing a Course Web-Site to Supp
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International Collaborative Learnin
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Facilitation frameworks Bostrom et
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From table 2 it can be seen that te
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Learning in Safety and Comfort: Tow
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Networking The Nation Noel Craske S
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Norfolk Stations. Schools of Distan
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one-on-one with Teaching Assistants
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Java. One of them is already an exp
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• Personal study room management
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As has already been discussed in th
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On-line Support of On-Campus Educat
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In-service Teachers Teaching Pre-se
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Page 93 and 94: To address this problem Webfuse dra
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Page 133 and 134: Architecture of HEZINET The system
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Page 155 and 156: Toward a framework for instruction
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Page 163 and 164: Multimedia Cases in Teacher Educati
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Page 169 and 170: Conclusion The project is still und
Page 171 and 172: An Investigation into Faculty Attit
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Page 175 and 176: Selecting Internet Technologies to
Page 177 and 178: Designing and Implementing Web-Base
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