The importance of reflection to marketing educators is increasingly recognized. However, there is a lack of empirical research that considers reflection within the context of both the marketing and general business education literature. This article describes the use of an instrument that can be used to measure four identified levels of a reflection hierarchy: habitual action, understanding, reflection, and intensive reflection and two conditions for reflection: instructor-to-student interaction and student-to-student interaction. The authors also demonstrate the importance of reflective learning in predicting Graduates' perception of program quality. Although the focus was on assessment of MBA-level curricula, the findings have great importance to marketing education and educators.
A structural model of the drivers of online education is proposed and tested. The findings help to identify the interrelated nature of the lectures delivered via technology outside of the traditional classroom, the importance of mentoring, the need to develop course structure, the changing roles for instructors and students, and the importance of designing and delivering course content on the enhancement of the online learning experience. The results support an integrated, building-block approach for developing successful online programs and courses.
Online education has created a “virtual community” learning environment. Effective assessment of this new learning environment is paramount to providing quality education and may provide insights to effective management of virtual communities in the business world. A model of online education effectiveness is proposed and then empirically investigated. Dimensions included in this model are student-to-student interactions, student-to-instructor interactions, instructor support and mentoring, information delivery technology, course content, and course structure. Measures of these dimensions were then analyzed and found to be significant predictors of the variance in students’ evaluations of the global effectiveness of the online educational experience.
It has become evident that students have diverse preferred learning styles and effective instructors must design and deliver courses to meet the needs of those students. This study investigates the four physiological learning styles of visual, aural, read‐write and kinesthetic as they apply to online education. Findings suggest that online students are more likely to have stronger visual and read‐write learning styles. Further, read‐write learners and students that were strong across all four learning styles were likely to evaluate course effectiveness lower than other students while aural/readwrite learners and students that were not strong on any learning style were more likely to evaluate course effectiveness higher than other students.
᭹The meteoric growth in on-line education has focused attention on virtual learning communities.
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Critics suggest that the on-line learner suffers isolation resulting from diminished interaction with others and thus question the quality of the on-line educational experience. ᭹
A case study is presented of an American MBA programme at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater that compares interactions in on-line and traditional learning communities.
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Evidence is presented which suggests that on-line students score higher on measures of interaction than traditional students. Furthermore, interaction is important in predicting effectiveness of courses regardless of mode of delivery. This suggests that interaction can occur in on-line courses and is important in designing such offerings.
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