| Creating New Online Models for Organisational Learning. Workshop 2b - Just in Time Learning |
| Dr. Gilly Salmon, Director of Presentation, Open University Business School gks13@leicester.ac.uk Presented at: efmd Annual Conference: Building New Connections: preparing managers for a different world 1999 Annual Conference 27-29 June 1999 Challenging the Established Distance Learning Models 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 skill at all levels of management. OUBS Scope of operations The Open University Business School (OUBS) continues as a major provider in Britain not only in management development but also in the mass use of ICT for teaching purposes. 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. 17,000 Certificate, Diplomas and MBAs have been awarded. The customers range from individuals through small businesses and non-profit organizations to large corporations and sovereign governments. The OUBS has 15 centres outside Milton Keynes and 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. OUBS Teaching Methodology The UK Open University (OU) falls firmly into the category of single mode university (i.e. distance learning only) albeit one that traditionally has made extensive use of local services (Burt 1997). The OUBS utilizes 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 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 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). The OU's well-rehearsed distance learning methods ensure systems and processes provide for a very high level of quality assurance throughout teaching and assessment. To maintain these whilst responding to the ICT imperatives and customers requirements has been the challenge. Policies, strategies and resources have been carefully put in place to ensure that experiments become pilots, that pilots are evaluated, that successful worthwhile pilots are rolled out to thousands, whilst original or enhanced quality and academic integrity are maintained. 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 multi media, Internet and computer conferencing (CMC) to enhance managers' learning experiences and to explore maintaining the scalability and effectiveness of the OU distance methods. OUBS distance teaching methodology is:
OUBS online adaptation enhances opportunities for:
OUBS is increasingly incorporating knowledge media into its pedagogic model using the following principals:
OUBS Students and Computing OUBS students have the highest level of access to a computer compared to any other OU faculty. In 1998, 94% reported access to a computer across all programmes and 68% had access to Internet, rising to 91% outside the UK. These figures rise up to 99% for MBA courses where access is essential for studying. Lack of access to computing featured for only 5% of 1998 course withdrawals (total respondents 128) (IET 1999b). A similar percentage reported difficulties with computing of students living on the Continent of Europe (total respondents 450) (Regan and Murphy 1998). The main way that computing was used in OUBS study in 1998 was:
Management Student's Responses to Media 1998-99 Based on a survey of 3575 students studying 11 OUBS courses in 1998 (IET 1999a), 5% reported not using their video cassettes with 66% finding them "fairly or very helpful" to study. Audiocassettes were found slightly less helpful to study with 54% fairly or very helpful. Computer conferencing produced, as always, the most mixed responses with 18% of students giving the lowest rating of "not at all helpful" and 15% the highest "very helpful" with many strong positive comments, and a few strong negative comments. (After nearly 10 years of working with computer mediated conferencing in OUBS courses, the jury still is still out). Computer mediated conferencing is used extensively throughout the MBA (6,000 active users) and on a voluntary basis for Certificate. Diploma and Law programmes. The main applications are for communications between students and tutors and students, tutors and course teams, updateable and sharable information exchange, online activities associated with assessment or to follow up face to face meetings, support and problem solving, all on a very large scale. CD-ROMS are becoming an increasingly acceptable media for presenting information, with a considerable commercial sector supplying all kinds of educational material. This means that any OU in-house produced material has to meet increasingly stringent comparison on content and presentation quality. A new generation of CDs was deployed in MBA courses from November 1998. The first qualitative reactions suggest that OUBS CD-ROMs are moving in the right direction. The wider familiarity with CDs however does not mean that we can yet rely on the technology being transparent for OU students. There are still many problems with (for example) students not knowing the configurations of their home computers. Other CD deployments intended for use at home met with initial teething problems simply in getting the CDs to run. There are some divergent views on the experience of using them in courses. Tutors and some students at residential schools in spring 1999 reported very positive results from using a CD as a resource for part of a team exercise. There were however strong clusters of other opinions reported indicating impatience with having to use CD-ROMS and direct suggestions that the deployment was 'trendy'. One view is that some students see the CD-ROM as a passive depository of material to be extracted (often printed out) so it 'can be used'. They do not take the time (and lack of time is an important factor here) to explore beyond the bare necessities. The cost effectiveness of CD deployment to meet these modest demands is questionable. A key feature in moving at least some students to exploit these wider possibilities is tutor awareness of the material, and sensitivity to individual students needs. This in turn depends on direct support for tutors to identify the possibilities and support students in exploration. Other students, and many tutors, saw the CD as an important primary resource that allows different ways of approaching key course themes. For example, OUBS students with a background of small businesses and self-employment found the video and sound material on the dynamics personnel policy of a large organization extremely helpful. They were able in some ways to experience the situations in the case study, not just note them. Principles for the Use of ICT in OUBS teaching methods Based on our experience to date, we have agreed implementation of ICT must:
OUBS's focus in 1999 is on:
New Online Projects and Applications 1999 OU/OUBS mission and pedagogic model is further adapted and realised in 1999:
Conclusions ICT offer huge opportunities for OUBS so long as the very best of the well established teaching methods are maintained. Over the next few years, as the OU becomes increasing global and the concept of on-line courses develops, ICT and in particular networked technologies are likely to assume a much more central role, in OUBS methods. A key challenge is whether ICT 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. Already, however, through online areas for tutor discussion and the monitoring/mentoring system, the sharing of ideas and resources across a wide distance teaching community has been greatly enhanced. Transferring well rehearsed and large scale monitoring, development and assessment 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. Acknowledgement With thanks to Robin Stenham & Edis Bevan, Technology Project Officers in OUBS's Teaching Technology Team for comments on this paper. References
Gilly Salmon June 1999 |