The School of Business has been awarded a $60,000 grant by the General Electric Fund to develop a model course that will break away from the traditional teaching methods. According to Associate Professor Paul Miesing, who is leading the project, the course uses technology to "demonstrate how the very technologies that impact today's ever-changing corporate operations can also deliver business education."
The model class, which was first taught during the spring, "The Social, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Business," is structured more like a business than a college class and introduces the two new technologies of Lotus Notes and the Internet to create a learning community in which students are accountable for their own learning. Students engage interactively to make decisions consistent with corporate and government policies, taking into account ethical risks, recommending remedial action and coordinating all ethics briefings and company-wide training. And in essence, the student's own personal computer becomes an assessment center that contains information, assignments and problems that they must work with.
Professor Miesing plans to work with faculty in the School's other four departments to develop similar prototype courses. "Our intent," said Miesing, "is to develop this new approach within one department, work out any problems, make any appropriate changes and then expand development to include courses in other departments. Our ultimate goal is to provide our students with the tools that prepare them to compete effectively in a highly sophisticated, electronically based, information-sharing work environment."