Eric
SF State is just up the road from the Silicon Valley, so technology must
permeate everything we do if we are to stay on the leading edge. We use a
similar electronic approach using a class specific Listserver on the
university server. Students are required to join the list and participation
points are given for on-line as well as in-class discussions. All
assignments are submitted and returned via e-mail attachments. Students
submit questions and drafts of papers on the listserver and comments are
returned on-line for all students to see. We have also used a web page but
so far I have found the listserver to be a superior tool.
We use this template in all of our advanced HR classes and find the daily
learning between the students themselves is extraordinary (it might even
surpass learning from faculty comments). Comments from students are posted
everyday with a high of 25 (out of a class of 22) in one day.
In addition, we use some unique in-class tools. The most effective is
bringing in business professionals to assess and grade student team
presentations. During the semester students get both academic assessment
and assessment from HR professionals from Fortune 500 firms (HP, Oracle,
Cisco, Charles Schwab etc. ). Professional managers seem to have much
more credibility with the students. As a result, students take the
criticism from the professionals to heart and this increases their rate of
improvement ( I estimate it at 33%) over the "faculty only" assessment model.
In our recruiting class we literally "adopt" a local firm's (it was HP last
time) employment function. We use their employment practices as a "live"
case. Each week the teams improve a different employment area ( college
recruiting, interviewing, resume scanning software etc.).
Students are encouraged to learn using "professional" learning tools as
well as the traditional academic ones. HRNET and Recruiting listservers
have added great value. A "Learning Net" of professionals in the area also
help students directly through e-mail, faxes and direct meetings.
Remote learning isn't a substitute for the classroom but it certainly adds
tremendous value if it is used as a supplement to in-class learning.
Regards
John Sullivan
San Francisco State University
At 05:35 AM 5/25/98 -0700, Eric Hansen wrote:
>Hello:
>
>I've just finished my first semester using a web site to facilitate
>teaching a course, and I'd like to share my experience with it to get some
>feedback from others who have also tried using websites.
>
>The course was an MBA capstone course. I teach this on campus in a
>traditional classroom. The class meets once a week, on Tuesday evening, for
>three hours. There is no distance learning component. It is a traditional
>seminar, with about twenty students in the class. Students typically
>organize themselves into about five teams.
>
>I do not use a textbook. Instead, the reading consists primarily of journal
>articles and one or two supplementary books. I make extensive use of
>Harvard Business School cases, both for discussion and for written
>assignments.
>For each class, all five of the student teams prepare to present the
>discussion case. Then, in class, I select one team at random to actually
>present the case, and a second team, also at random, to critique the
>presentation. There follows a general discussion of the case and the
>assigned reading material.
>
>The mid-term exam is a team take-home case. Also, each student writes a
>four-part paper, called an Individual Project, during the semester. In this
>paper, they analyze their current work situation and develop a plan for
>their company and for themselves.
>
>This is the class for which I used a website called CourseInfo.
>
>CourseInfo is a class management set of webpages. It appears to work with
>any browser, including AOL's, although Netscape communicator and internet
>explorer 4.0 appeared to be the ones most commonly used by my students.
>The site consists of a number of different online modules, and I used it in
>a number of different ways to support the student learning experience. The
>announcement feature on the homepage was a good place for general
>information and for an information backup to general email. Of course
>there's the standard page to set up the syllabus and course description. I
>noticed practical advantages to being able to communicate with individual
>students, a group of students, or all of my students at any time, without
>having to wait for the next class meeting.
>
>I had students upload all of the papers that they submit, and I graded them
>and sent them back. Because we were not tied to submitting paper, I offered
>students the option of turning in drafts of their papers early (via the
>CourseInfo) so that I could give them preliminary feedback. For any given
>assignment, about half of the students took me up on my offer. It
>definitely improved the quality of their learning experience, judging from
>the improved quality of the papers. This early feedback also gave them more
>control over their grades. For me, grading a paper the second time was much
>faster than grading one from scratch, so I'm not sure that I put in much,
>if any, extra time doing this for my students.
>
>A related benefit was my ability to manage the students' workload. For
>example, this class met once a week, on Tuesday nights. But because
>students were submitting papers by uploading them rather than turning in
>hardcopy, I wasn't limited to having Tuesday night due dates. Students had
>the ability to submit papers at any time. In practice, they frequently
>opted to have papers due on Sunday evenings or first thing Monday morning.
>
>CourseInfo's communication module was probably the most used feature of the
>site. Each team had a homepage, and they used its chatroom feature to hold
>online team meetings to work on their case preparations. This was pretty
>important, since students were all commuting, and arranging off-campus
>meeting sites was generally inconvenient.
>
>The discussion board was the most active single feature, so far as I could
>tell. Because there were twenty students in the class, classroom
>discussions generally left several people out
the shy ones. Initially, I
>decided to remedy this by using the discussion board as an extension of the
>classroom discussion. Thus students who were not as extroverted as others
>were able to participate actively in 'classroom' discussions. To energize
>the discussion board, I would usually seed it with a few cryptic comments
>of my own about the next class's reading assignment and what that might
>have to do with the assigned case. This made the discussion very relevant
>for the upcoming case presentations.
>
>As you can imagine, the discussion board took off. It became the 'hot' spot
>on CourseInfo. In addition to accomplishing its intended purpose of
>including shy students in the discussion, it emerged as an ongoing daily
>dialogue centered around course topics. By the third week of the semester,
>the quality of the written and oral case presentations shot up, and it
>stayed higher than I've ever seen it for the next twelve weeks. This, in
>turn, energized the in-class discussions.
>
>The grading module allowed students to use their password to access their
>grades at any time. This had a number of advantages over other approaches.
>First, it kept the students much more informed about where they stood with
>regard to their grades. This saved me time answering individual questions.
>Again, it further reduced the amount of paper with which I had to deal.
>Instead of walking into class carrying thick folders full of student papers
>and grading materials, I would just bring the night's discussion case
>nothing more.
>
>Putting this all together, the total impact of using CourseInfo was greater
>than the sum of its parts. At least for this class, CourseInfo radically
>changed the nature of the learning experience. Students were used to having
>a one-night a week class 'meeting,' with maybe one outside team meeting
>every two weeks to prepare assignments. The addition of the site
>metamorphosed this more traditional experience into an ongoing,
>interactive community of learners
literally active on a daily basis. I
>personally had more fun teaching this course than I've had in a long time.
>
>Comments, thoughts?
>
>_______________________________
>
>Eric L. Hansen, Ph.D.
>Associate Professor of Management
>Department of Management
>College of Business
>California State University, Long Beach
>Long Beach, CA
>
elhansen@csulb.edu
>_______________________________
>
>