| Academic Integrity in Electronic Universities of the New Millennium: A Practitioner's Perspective | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dr. Gilly Salmon, Director of Presentation, Open University Business School gks13@leicester.ac.uk Dr. Colin Gray, Director of External Affairs, Open University Business School C.W.J.A.Gray@open.ac.uk Charles Edwards, Course Team Chair, B800, Foundations of Senior Management, Open University Business School C.P.E.edwards@open.ac.uk Presented to the GATE conference, Paris, September 1998 Abstract: In the increasingly competitive field of management education, the Open University Business School (OUBS) is Britain’s market leader. Drawing on its experience as a pioneer of open and distance learning in the management education field, OUBS has now extended its system of student communication and support to include the use of computer-mediated conferencing (CMC) as a mass teaching tool. This paper describes the use of CMC in the graduate entry course to the MBA, a course that attracts some 1,500 managers each year from across Europe, and summarises the student evaluation of their use of CMC as a learning support medium. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the student’s reaction to CMC for the future effective use of ICT in management education.
1. The management education market The management education market has expanded enormously in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere in the industrialised and the developing world. Business schools have been at the forefront of introducing the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) into higher education driven by the strongly competitive nature of the management education market and the need for business schools to at the forefront of modern management ideas. Competitive forces are growing along with concern over quality issues. Most business school programmes are designed around a model that involves presentation of theory and best practice with delivery of courses aimed at meeting the needs of individual students or corporate. Through the increased use of ICT some of these ambitions may be further fulfilled. However, although there is evidence that business schools are recognising the need to use new technologies, as yet only around a third are developing teaching through ICTs and multimedia (Frand and Britt 1997). The pressure on serious business schools to make more effective use of ICT in their curricula and teaching methodologies is now already apparent. There is sustained and increasing interest in high quality, relevant management development on the part of large national and multi-national corporations (and a corresponding awareness among individual managers of the importance of the provenance and quality of their management education). ICT familiarity, even creativity in its future use, is an essential managerial skill at all levels of management. The Open University Business School (OUBS) continues as market leader in Britain not only in management development but also in the mass use of. ICT for teaching purposes. 2. The Open University Business School (OUBS) 2.1 Teaching methodology The OUBS utilises the established and world-renowned teaching and learning methodologies of the wider Open University, which now has some 30 years of distance teaching experience. The characteristic feature of all OU and OUBS learning is that it is 'at a distance'. This enables managers to learn and apply knowledge, skills and attitudes in their own immediate work context and through study in their own time without taking them away to train and be developed off-the-job. OUBS distance learning methodology also greatly enhances the degree of transferability of knowledge and skills development back into the workplace. The OUBS teaching media mix typically includes:
The opportunities for improving student support are increased by the ICT revolution. The OUBS is deeply involved in a number of experiments and large scale pilots in the use of the Internet and computer conferencing (CMC) to enhance managers’ learning experiences. 2.2 Scope of operations The OUBS offers a professional Certificate, Diploma and MBA. The Certificate qualification is open access, which means that no entry qualification of any kind is required, and is available in a number of parallel versions – one-year integrated, 3-modular, health services and voluntary sector. The Professional Diploma of Management, requires either the Certificate or equivalent qualifications from other suitable institutions for entry. Successful completion of the Diploma gives entry onto the Stage 2 of the MBA. A route into the MBA for managers holding honours graduates is available as a ‘fast track’ entry course. The OUBS provides its eight programmes to some 25,000 managers in more than 30 countries. There have been more than 140,000 student registrations on OUBS courses at Certificate, Diploma or MBA level. 17,000 Certificate, Diplomas and MBAs have been awarded. The customers range from individuals through small businesses and non-profit organisations to large corporations and sovereign governments. The OUBS has 15 centres outside Milton Keynes. The OUBS operates directly in Western Europe. Partner organisations which offer courses leading to OU awards and also provide student support are in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Hungary, India, Romania, Russia, Singapore and Slovakia. In Hong Kong and South Africa, partner institutions offer OUBS programmes as their own awards. 200 OUBS central and regional academic and support staff and more than 800 part-time tutors support and teach students. Management tutors work with the materials provided by the course teams. Access by OUBS tutors to networked computers is very high (Kirkup and Abbot 1998) and some tutor-student contact now takes place electronically. 3. Exploiting ICT in Large Scale Management Education in Practice The OUBS, with its long history of and excellent reputation for supported distance learning is well placed to develop and incorporate the use of ICT into its media mix (Daniel 1996). Computer mediated conferencing (CMC) is frequently considered as the most useful and relevant ICT application for large scale distributed management education (Birchall and Smith 1996). The asynchronous nature of CMC is a particular characteristic of the medium. It enables individuals and groups of people to carry on "conversations" and "discussion" over the computer networks based on the written word (Nixon and Salmon 1996). Users can log-on from any location and at any time using a computer at home or at work. In addition, CMC encourages reflection, co-operation and collaboration (Salmon and Giles 1997). The OUBS introduced CMC as integral part of course learning and communication on its MBA entry course for graduate or professionally qualified managers. Foundations of Senior Management (B800), attracts around 1,500 students each year. It takes a year of part-time study. B800 acknowledges that students come to it with a variety of management backgrounds. The course seeks to provide a creative environment, where mangers pool their different skills within group work, a considerable challenge for a distance taught course. Computers play an important role as a learning and communications medium. Managers use them for financial modelling and analysis, a business simulation game, and – the focus of this paper - for online computer conferencing and communication with students. The advent of CMC offers a new method to add to OUBS’s teaching approaches to enhance the exchange of views and knowledge within tutorial groups and expand the opportunity for group learning. CMC also adds a new dimension to tutor/student dialogue. It has the more immediately visible advantage of administrative enhancements and contact and exchanges between tutors and between, student’s tutors and the course team. The online area adds a new dimension in the creation of a learning ‘community’. The first presentation of B800 in 1996 was the first time the OUBS had specified that, using home-based PCs would be an integral part of a course’s multi-media teaching strategy for all students and tutors. B800 was also the first course in the OUBS to use FirstClass conferencing platform. Each group of 15 students was allocated two tutors. This involved the recruitment of 180 tutors. Each tutor was expected to set up, manage and moderate computer conferences for their own groups of students. We designed, built and ran a 5 stage online tutor training programme which offered confidence, skills and competence in technical, communication and moderating aspects of working online. 110 tutors completed this programme over the winter of 1995/6 and a further 150 from B800 and other MBA courses during the winter of 1997 and 1998. In addition, online student induction was provided to ensure that students were comfortable with the technology, with virtual networking and with appropriate communication styles. Feedback from the student induction conferences was very positive and contributed to the largest ever uptake up and use of CMC in the OUBS during 1997. These online induction programmes have since been undertaken by around 2,000B800 students prior to their course commencing, enabling them to get the benefit of working for their management studies (rather than learning computing). 4. Evaluating the CMC Experience Students’ experience of CMC on the course is fully and carefully evaluated. A third of students completing the courses in 1996 and 1997 were sent questionnaires on all aspects of the course. At an average response rate of 57%, 173 students in 1996 and 221 in 1997 returned questionnaires. In general, student responses to OUBS courses are very positive as Table 1 reveals. Table 1: Student perception of course success "Overall how successfully did the course achieve its stated aims and objectives?"
(On a 1 to 4 scale on which 1 = ‘Not’ at All and 4 = ‘Very’) This positive experience of OUBS courses is, of course an important factor in maintaining high student numbers. It must be maintained if the use of ICT is to be effective. Students’ views were sought on how helpful CMC had been as a course component, how often they used it and for what different purposes, and what benefits they identified with the medium. Table 2: Helpfulness of computer conferencing "How helpful did you find computer conferencing on this course?"
(On a 1 to 4 scale on which 1 = ‘Not’ at all Helpful and 4 = ‘Very Helpful’) The second year’s presentation revealed an improvement in students' satisfaction as the Course Team adjusted features of the course that proved problematic in the first year. Whilst half of 1997 students gave a positive rating to the helpfulness of computer conferencing (no mean achievement for a new educational technology), it was necessary to ascertain why the medium is not perceived key component by the majority. Students are reluctant to expose their contributions to a world of people they do not know or do not know well. Many will read – and perhaps learn from others’ contributions – but will not make their own contributions. The course "Masterclasses" on each of the functional blocks of the courses typically attract about 30 active contributors and 200 reading-only "browsers". Even in the ‘safer’ local tutor group conferences, 47 % of managers responding to the 1997 questionnaire said they read contributions in their local tutor conferences contributions frequently or very frequently, but only 16% said they contributed frequently. Direct e-mail contributions of the conferencing system were clearly felt to be safer: 35% used e-mail to contact students/tutors about course issues frequently or very frequently and 51% did so occasionally. A second issue is the pressure of time on this particular intensive foundation course, which inevitably means that students use less of the learning opportunities they are provided with than they might wish to do so. Overall, 45% of students classified CMC as providing a ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ significant benefit as a "way of sharing/discussing ideas", even though less than half that number actively contributed, suggests a gap between appreciation and use. A third factor is the quality of tutor moderation of electronic tuition, which is monitored. The Open University has always had extensive systems to monitor, provide feedback on the quality of its tutors’ performance, and offer development where necessary. This has been an important way of assuring the quality of academic support. Until recently, monitoring took the form of visits to face to face tuition by full-time academic staff, and the systematic monitoring of correspondence tuition, based on a peer review system. Drawing on these, a new system of online monitoring of B800 tutors was implemented from February 1996. This involved a series of virtual "visits" to each conference by selected peer tutors. The monitors provided reports on their view of the conferences and commentary where they found good practice by the on-line tutors. Some two years later, this process has developed into an extensive system of monitoring, grading and feedback of tutors’ work. However, it has become increasingly clear that the facilitation and further development of good practice needs to be supported by an on-going system of monitoring/mentoring. By the third course presentation this systematic monitoring of tutors’ electronic tuition revealed that 47% of tutors were using CMC effectively as a teaching and communication medium, 40% effectively as a communication medium only, and 15% as neither effectively. Some tutors interpret student scepticism of CMC as meaning that the medium is not as valuable as other forms of tuition, whilst some students report that a lack of active tutor moderation explains why they have benefited less than they could have done from CMC-based tuition. This can be a difficult circle to break! The development of electronic tuition skills is clearly a gradual process that will require further skill and system development and investment. Although the development of CMC as a teaching medium still, not surprisingly, requires further work and experimentation, as a means of reducing the ‘distance’ from open management education, CMC has had a major impact. 55% of managers responding to the 1997 questionnaire indicated that CMC provided a ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ significant benefit to their "feeling part of a wider students body". As OUBS continues to develop the global market for management education, this benefit of CMC may prove to be a major feature of its open learning technology. 5. Conclusions The B800 experience is showing us that CMC enhances the distance learning media mix in the creation of a learning community. Though it is not considered a substitute for face to face seminar experience, it helps provide for students who cannot attend seminars. There are also plans to provide an online experience for the minority of students who cannot attend the residential school component. Whether CMC can totally substitute for some parts of traditional delivery methods remains a challenge for the future. Through online areas for tutor discussion and the monitoring/mentoring system, the sharing of teaching ideas across a wide distance learning teaching community has been greatly enhanced. Over the next few years, as the OU becomes increasing global and the concept of on-line courses develops, CMC is likely to assume a much more central role, alongside or integrated into the use of the Internet. A key challenge is whether CMC continues to enhance the distance learning media mix or whether it can substitute for some aspects- perhaps leading to full-scale on-line courses without the loss of academic integrity. Transferring well rehearsed and large scale monitoring and development systems, for tutors and for students, to the online environment remain for us one way of continuing to ensure high quality integrated student experiences in a challenging market arena.
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