Managing a new approach

"He told me he did really well -- but that he wouldn't be able to pass them now. This was two days after the exam," says Ross.

Ross knew that this student was far from unique -- it's difficult to break students out of the old "cram and memorize" approach to courses that might enable them to survive exams but does little to give them long-term mastery over a subject.

With this in mind the faculty has launched an ambitious plan to redefine how students learn, and how professors teach in the BCom and MBA programs.

Called E3 -- for Enhancing the Educational Experience -- the project aims to change the learning environment for management students.

"We're starting the design of the project with the premise of 'What do you want the student to remember in six months?'" says Ross.

The project has a number of goals aimed at making the classroom experience more rewarding for both students and professors. Too often classroom time -- especially in lower level classes -- is taken up with professors repeating material that is contained in the textbook, with a question-and-answer session tagged on at the very end of the lecture. Not only is this not very rewarding for students, it is monotonous for a professor, who may have to repeat the same lecture five times a week, year after year.

Working with Professor Lynn McAlpine at the Centre for University Teaching and Learning, the E3 team initiated a multi-phase pilot project. Four courses were chosen to be redesigned with specific goals in mind -- allowing students to master "learning outcomes," providing students with a "concept map" (a visual representation of key concepts) and increasing the interactive nature of the class.

One way in which this is done is to put more material for classes online. Using a log-on system to ensure that the students access course materials before they turn up for a lecture frees up a professor to use in-class time more effectively -- discussing concepts, real-world applications, and classroom exercises.

Relieving professors of the chore of delivering basic content also allows for a greater ability to tailor classes for specific professional groups. For instance, over 200 students in the Faculty of Management are engineers or engineering students, who take management classes in the hopes of helping their career later on.

"Management has become almost a life skill that everybody needs to have," says Ross. It is his hope that eventually the new educational model will be able to deliver management training for all sorts of different professional groups.

Ross points out that the need for new ways of doing things was obvious. Producing only a few hundred graduates every year, the faculty was not coming anywhere close to meeting demand. Providing the "life skill" of management is more than providing career skills.

"There's a huge need to be met," he said. "We're turning our back on a social responsibility."

Associate Dean of Management Richard Donovan, whose Introduction to Information Systems class was chosen for the first phase of E3, explains that this doesn't mean that everybody need learn everything about accounting, only the basic concepts they would need for their profession.

"As an associate dean I need to know a lot of law, for instance. But I can't get just what I need for my job at the law school -- they would teach me to become a lawyer," he says. Both he and Dean Ross call this "Mass customization" -- where specific needs can be met by mixing component parts of content and classroom exercises appropriate for the audience.

One question that arises from mass customization is what happens to the lectures and techniques that professors used before? According to project leader Andrea Emrick, E3 is designed to free professors, not chain them to a new method.

"We provide a framework -- we're calling it a platform.... We're trying to take the mundane things and make them easier," she says.