Online Versus On-Campus Strategic Management Course: A Case Study
Implications for Educators
University and government reports support the fact that distance education is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. As the demand for online education increases, more and more business faculty will face the challenge of redesigning their traditional courses for an online venue.
In addition to the course content students are receiving in the course taken in an online environment, there are also other valuable skills being developed that are vital for business managers. Working as part of a virtual team allows students to gain experience that may well be a very important part of their future career in business. However, from the comments of students in this course, it did not appear clear that they understood the value of learning to work as a virtual team. Instead, they were looking for ways to work in the traditional team setting. This is an opportunity for educators to stress to the students how technology is going to be important in the workplace and encourage, if not require, that all teamwork in the online course be completed virtually.
The results of this study indicate that the online strategic management course was equally as effective as the traditional on-campus courses. It is important, however, that these results not be generalized to include every subject taught by every instructor. As Wiley (2002) pointed out, if sections of online and traditional classes begin with similar students and similar instructors, you should expect similar results. Obviously, the online environment is different than the on-campus environment. Although the overall measure of student success (final grade average) was virtually the same, the components of the final grade (test grades, case studies, and simulation) were different. Adjustments in teaching style and teaching aids were necessary for successful administration of the online course.
Colleges and universities should recognize the need to prepare their faculty to teach online courses - just as the students need technical support, so do the faculty. In this study, the instructor had received over 30 hours of training in online course development through his university and had developed previous online courses.
Development of an online course is a major task. It is suggested that the university provide additional compensation as an incentive for online course development. Delivering an online course also requires additional time and effort. Therefore, it is also suggested that the university provide additional compensation each time the online course is delivered.