Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

Future directions of teaching and learning: are we headed the right way?

 

Introduction

Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM), located at Macquarie University, in Sydney, is one of Australia’s leading management schools. It is regularly ranked in the top 100 such schools in the world. As such, the university takes the teaching capabilities of its staff very seriously. It is compulsory for all staff to have a student survey taken in every course they teach, usually about five times per faculty member, each year.

For example, to obtain a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), a student must currently complete 10 core (compulsory) subjects and six electives, from a wide range. Subjects can be taken in a term over a 10-week period (four hours per week), in block format (over two weekends) and in the Sydney city campus or main campus at North Ryde. Overseas teaching (Hong Kong and Singapore) is only offered in blocks and, of course, not all subjects are offered in all formats every term. There are four terms in a calendar year.

The audiences, all management students, have an average age of around 35, with substantial management experience. Indeed, in 2004 the Economist Intelligence Unit, Which MBA? in their ‘Global Full-Time MBA Rankings’ ranked them as No. 1 in the world for student quality. Until recent times, the traditional face-to-face lecture has been the cornerstone of university teaching and learning. But a problem has recently emerged with many institutions reporting falling attendances and a swing to consider other forms of imparting knowledge. What are the options available for today’s management teacher and how do we prepare them for the future?

Technology

To the forefront of ‘modernisation’ is the so-called technological revolution, with its dazzling array of devices at the disposal of the contemporary lecturer. It is taken as gospel by some academics that technology is the way of the future and they have already triumphantly heralded the death of the ‘old-fashioned’ classroom lecturer. Popular among these technologies is the reliance on electronic slide presentations and, of course, the ready availability of the internet. Those who refuse to yield completely to such revolutions are often accused of living in the past. But MGSM has so far stood by its decision to offer only face-to-face teaching at all its venues, in the belief that this is the best way to maintain the high standards it has set itself.

There is a general belief by most of the faculty that a totally online MBA would simply not suffice, since a degree largely obtained from sitting in front of a computer at home will not produce a top class manager. There would be no subjecting the students to demonstrate their ability to work together in groups (a characteristic of nearly all MGSM subjects) and to be exposed to the cut and thrust of criticisms when making a presentation of their work. Without such evidence, it would be impossible to determine the level of management skills they may have.

Although face-to-face teaching is currently a feature of every subject at MGSM, this is not to say that technology is not used at all. Many lecturers have comprehensive web pages that display a vast array of information, including interactive and non-interactive quizzes, problems, case studies and a whole host of other relevant material. But the students are always required to be present at lectures and, indeed, there is an absolute minimum attendance rule of 80 per cent. And despite the seniority of the audience, a roll is still taken!

Despite all this, there is no doubt that, in some circumstances, it would be very convenient for a student to undertake, say, one of their 16 subjects online, since it may be necessary for them to live overseas or be out of the city for a period. A minor compromise to a total face-to-face method could also be considered, however, in offering one or more elective subjects in a flexible mode, such as distance education, online or a combination of both. Present thinking, however, is that this type of offering should be restricted to certain electives and never be offered in any of the core (compulsory) subjects.

Teaching rewards

Such is their commitment to quality teaching, both now and with an eye to the future, in 2004 MGSM decided to introduce a ‘reward’ system for ‘excellence in teaching’, based on the comments and rating of the students. It was abundantly clear that outstanding lecturers were worth their weight in gold and it is not unknown for entire classes of students to petition to obtain their lecturer of choice. It is the experience of former students that plays a major role here in recommending (or otherwise) MGSM for prospective students. Many would be appalled to feel that this experience could be replaced simply by purchasing a textbook, paying for a PIN and being able to log on to a website to download material, with little or no human contact, apart from email.

Each offering of all subjects at MGSM must undergo a student evaluation survey, usually handed out in the final lecture. This consists of 17 Likert scale questions, based around the lecturer’s presentation skills and six open-ended questions, including comments on what they enjoyed or didn’t enjoy about the course and what improvements they could suggest. The responses to these six questions are seen only by the lecturer themselves and are treated as confidential. Not even the dean sees them and so an analysis of these responses is not possible. However, the 17 Likert scale responses are seen by the dean, the associate dean of teaching and learning and the director of academic programs. It is always important to determine just what the audience feels that the teaching faculty do well and what they do poorly. A summary of the complete findings over several years can be found in Croucher, 2006.

Under the reward scheme, based on the results of these surveys, there were some perhaps surprising outcomes. Of the 40 or so faculty, there were five lecturers who stood out way above the rest. The revealing aspect was that they all had one thing in common. None of them used electronic slide presentations to lecture but, rather, they tended to rely on the tried and tested method of writing on the whiteboard, simply talking to the audience and using an overhead projector whenever they felt any extra teaching resources were necessary.

Many educators base their presentations on their own experience as students and it could be argued that this was simply the way they had learned the material themselves, and was just being mimicked by them. However, this was clearly not the case, since the ages of these five ranged from very early 30s to late 50s. It was just that they had formed the view in their own mind that this was the best way to present the ideas at hand. And they were extremely successful at it.

What is important to students?

Apart from identifying factors at which teachers are good and not so good, it was important to determine those factors that are really of great moment to the students when rating a teacher. These are all helpful in deciding the future direction of teaching at MGSM. It turned out that there were five questions that correlated extremely highly with the teacher rating. All of these had a significant correlation coefficient value of r greater than 0.900 (p < 0.001). These were:

• I would rate this unit as very good. (0.943)
• The teacher explained concepts clearly. (0.939)
• The teacher stimulated interest in the subject. (0.934)
• The teacher presented the subject matter clearly. (0.915)
• The subject had structured content to assist learning. (0.911)

There were five questions that had the lowest correlation with the teacher rating were:

• Relatively the workload of this unit was heavy. (0.132)
• Feedback on my assessment was timely and useful. (0.477)
• Good class dynamics and interaction. (0.578)
• Assessment accurately assessed my knowledge. (0.627)
• I was encouraged to ask questions. (0.648)

Curiously, all questions in the survey had a significant correlation (to varying degrees) with teacher rating apart from the question relating to workload. That is, students did not blame the teacher if they considered the workload for the subject too heavy or light, although it is precisely the teacher who is responsible.

It is also apparent that stimulating interest and the ability to clearly explain material and concepts is crucial to be considered a good teacher. At the other end of the scale, it is interesting to note that the questions on appropriate assessment and timely and useful feedback, although significant, correlate less highly with rating a teacher.

Future directions for educators

The golden days of the MBA market may well be behind us and business schools are now working harder than ever to gain their share and prepare their educators for the future. A sharp eye must still be kept on the market place and it is always important to be aware of just what the competition is offering. This includes not just a diversification of the types of degrees on offer (for example, an executive MBA and various specialist MBAs) but the way in which they are presented. It is indeed a trying time for educators with pressure on them to perform and make their subjects interesting, challenging and relevant to the modern business professional. Poor teaching cannot be hidden from this eager band of students, since they are quick to display their displeasure if they feel they are being short-changed in any way.

Student evaluation surveys have been shown to be to be an effective method of assisting faculty to identify problem areas in their teaching and for deans in assisting in their performance management of their staff. It is important, however, that these surveys do not develop into popularity contests, where teachers are afraid to chastise students for poor behaviour or try something new in their class for fear that it will result in lower ratings. So far, with a mature audience, there is no real evidence of this. But teachers, even if they rate highly, must be always prepared to change their tried and trusted methods to keep abreast of the needs of students and the ever changing demands of a quality management education.

In the decades ahead, there will no doubt be a quantum leap in technology and this will entice academics to avail themselves of the latest teaching tools. But can anything ever replace the face-to-face human element of teaching? Only time will tell, but there are subjects taught at university even now that have very low attendance rates, either because of poor quality teaching or there is so much information handed out that the lecturer adds very little to what is written. The problem here is with the presenter and his or her technique.

The best and most interesting lecturers seem to have no difficulty in commanding full lecture theatres and this may well always be the case whatever the 21st century has in store. We should prepare all our teaching staff in the art of quality delivery of information whatever that mode may be, but especially to be comfortable in the face-to-face aspect that I believe will be with us for a long time yet.

References

Croucher, JS (2006). ‘Student evaluation forms: what can we make of them?’ In Review of business research. Vol. V1, No.1, pp.147–151.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr John S. Croucher earned his first PhD in Operations Research at the University of Minnesota, USA, in 1973, and a second PhD in history at Macquarie University in 2005.  He is currently a Professor of Management and Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management (MGSM) at Macquarie University.

Professor Croucher is the author of 15 books on statistics, mathematics, crime, history, humour and management, along with over 100 research papers in his fields of expertise. He is also a noted newspaper columnist, being the author of ‘Number Crunch’ that has appeared for over seven years in both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age in Melbourne. He also writes the weekly ‘Statistically Speaking’ column in the Mail on Sunday, in the UK. For eight years he was a television presenter on rugby league matches in Australia.

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